I have this moment returned from my conference with his lordship. I read to him the greater part of your despatch No. 228. The conversation that followed was interesting, though brief. It was shortened by the cir cumstance that the hour previously fixed for the reception of the Japanese commissioners had arrived. As there is not time to prepare a report by this steamer, I shall be compelled to defer it until next week. I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant, Hon. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. Secretary of State, Washington, D. C. Earl Russell to Mr. Adams. FOREIGN OFFICE, May 7, 1862. SIR: In your letter of the 24th of April you call my attention to the case of the British vessel Emily St. Pierre, which, having been captured by a cruiser of the United States for an attempt to break the blockade of Charleston, was, on her voyage to Philadelphia for the purpose of being proceeded against in the admiralty court, retaken from the prize crew by the master, and some of her own crew left on board her, and brought into Liverpool; and you request that suitable directions may be given to restore the vessel at an early day to the authority from which she has been violently taken. I have consulted the law advisers of the crown on this matter; and, in conformity with their opinion, I have now the honor to state to you that her Majesty's government are unable to comply with your request for the restoration of the Emily St. Pierre, inasmuch as they have no jurisdiction or legal power whatever to take or to acquire possession of her, or to interfere with her owners in relation to their property in her. Acts of forcible resistance to the rights of belligerents, when lawfully exercised over neutral merchant ships on the high seas, such, for instance, as rescue from capture, however cognizable or punishable as offences against international law, in the prize courts of the captor administering such law, are not cognizable by the municipal law of England, and cannot by that law be punished either by confiscation of the ship, or by any other penalty; and her Majesty's government cannot raise, in an English court, the question of the validity of the capture of the Emily St. Pierre, or of the subsequent rescue and recapture of that vessel, for such recapture is not an offence against the municipal law of this country. I have the honor to be, with the highest obedient, humble servant, CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, Esq., &c., &c., &c. consideration, sir, your most RUSSELL. No. 248.] Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, May 9, 1862. SIR: Your despatch of the 24th of April, No. 146, has been received. Your proceeding in asking from the British government the restoration of the prize ship Emily St. Pierre is approved, equally for its promptness and the grounds upon which it was adopted. The President does not allow himself to doubt that the claim will receive early and just consideration. I am, sir, your obedient servant, CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, Esq., &c., &c., &c. WILLIAM H. SEWARD. No. 249.] Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, May 12, 1862. SIR: Your despatch of the 25th of April (No. 148) has been received. The progress of the national arms continues so auspiciously as to excite the insurgents to desperation and to require of their abettors in Europe extreme activity and diligence to rescue a cause which, without foreign intervention, seems already lost. You may now assume that the Mississippi in its whole length is restored to the federal authority. Richmond is practically held in close siege by General McClellan. Norfolk, with all the coasts and tributaries of Hampton roads, is cleared of insurrectionary land forces and naval forces. Our navy, already large and effective and daily increasing, is now released from two very arduous and exhausting sieges in which it has been so long engaged, and it is scarcely to be doubted that, with the cooperation of the armies already in the field, every port and every fort on the sea-coast will be recovered within the time that the vessels bringing contributions and auxiliaries will require to complete their voyages from England. I have expected constantly, since the arrival of the last mail, to be enabled. to send out by the steamer which will carry this despatch a proclamation of the President's, modifying the blockade I still hope to be able to do so. But the President, with the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of War, has been absent from the capital for several days, and they have only just this hour returned from Hampton roads. If I fail to get the paper perfected to-day, I shall still hope to send intelligence of the issue of a proclamation by despatch over the wires to overtake the steamer at Cape Race. If there be, as we do not doubt there is, a sincere desire on the part of the maritime powers of Europe to see an end of this painful strife, hardly less severe in its injuries to them than to us, it is to be expected that the partial opening of so many of the southern ports will be sufficient to put an end to distrust of our complete and speedy restoration of the American Union. SIR: I enclose a copy of a proclamation of the President, of this date, opening certain ports which have recently been blockaded. The treasury regulations to which it refers have not beeen received, but will immediately follow. I am, sir, your obedient servant, WILLIAM H. SEWARD. [Same to Mr. Dayton.] C. F. ADAMS, &c., &c., &c. A PROCLAMATION. Whereas, by my proclamation of the nineteenth of April, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, it was declared that the ports of certain States, including those of Beaufort, in the State of North Carolina, Port Royal, in the State of South Carolina, and New Orleans, in the State of Louisiana, were, for reasons therein set forth, intended to be placed under blockade; and whereas the said ports of Beaufort, Port Royal, and New Orleans have since been blockaded; but as the blockade of the same ports may now be safely relaxed with advantage to the interests of commerce: Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, pursuant to the authority in me vested by the fifth section of the act of Congress approved on the 13th of July last, entitled "An act further to provide for the collection of duties on imports, and for other purposes," do hereby declare that the blockade of the said ports of Beaufort, Port Royal, and New Orleans shall so far cease and determine, from and after the first day of June next, that commercial intercourse with those ports, except as to persons and things and information contraband of war, may, from that time, be carried on, subject to the laws of the United States, and to the limitations and in pursuance of the regulations which are prescribed by the Secretary of the Treasury in his order of this date, which is appended to this proclamation. i In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington, this twelfth day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-sixth. [Ls.] By the President: WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. This matter having been disposed of, I then remarked that I was still in the receipt of letters from my government urging me to continue to press her Majesty's minister for some action on the subject which I had heretofore labored so much to present to his attention. But as I had little confidence in the success of any repetition I might make of my former arguments, I hoped his lordship would permit me to read to him the last despatch which had reached me. I had not, indeed, been directed to lay it before him, nor to leave a copy of it. The time and manner of using it had been left wholly to my discretion. But as it seemed to me to have been carefully and elaborately drawn as a full exposition of the views of the government at this crisis, I was of opinion that it was no more than just to both parties that it should be communicated in extenso. His lordship said he should be glad to hear it, and then I read all of it but the single passage at the close of the first paragraph. After I had done, his lordship remarked that he had no disposition to call in question any of the statements made in the despatch. It might be just as there alleged But there still remained much to be done. New Orleans, Savannah, and Charleston continued in the possession of the other party, and the resistance of the great armies left the result yet awaiting further development. I replied to this by saying that from the outset I had entertained little doubt of what the end of this struggle would be, provided that we were left entirely to ourselves to work it out. In my mind that end was now rapidly approaching. I had become much more concerned in considering what the state of things was likely to be after it had been attained. It was with very great regret I was compelled to express my conviction of the rapid increase among the people of the United States of feelings of irritation and bitterness towards this country. I received the evidence of it from so many and such opposite sources that I could not question the fact. My own disposition had been and continued to be of the most friendly character. But I very much feared that if her Majesty's government did not hold forth some means which would enable its friends to maintain the existence of a reciprocal feeling, the seeds would be planted of a hostility that would bear bitter fruit for the whole of the next generation. His lordship replied that it was much to be regretted, but the fact was that this hostile feeling had always prevailed in America. Down to the period of the Prince of Wales's visit whatever the English had done, it seemed to animate all classes alike to take it amiss. Even such a person as Mr. Everett, from whom better things might be expected, seemed to omit no opportunity of finding fault with what they did, and stimulating the popular prejudice at their expense. It seemed a hopeless task to attempt to correct this tendency. I then begged leave to suggest to his lordship whether there was not another side to the picture. I thought I was in a situation to present it, for I had had peculiar opportunities for observing it, from the fact that members of my family had repeatedly been called to act on the scene. Immediately after the peace of 1783 my grandfather had been sent here as the first minister. He came with a disposition to establish the most friendly rela tions. He had not been favorably impressed with the policy of the French government, and was anxious to equalize the balance of influence in America. And so well was this known that the King, George III, at his audience, appeared to me to have stepped to the verge of the proprieties of his position in making allusion to it. Then was the first opportunity_to_conciliate America. And Mr. Pitt seemed to have conceived the idea. Had the commercial policy he recommended been adopted, the United States would have been more closely bound to this country after their independence than they ever had been whilst colonies. In lieu of this, the principles of Lord Sheffield's pamphlet were accepted, and it was decided to await the possibilities of an unfavorable issue to our experiment of government. The natural consequence was an alienation, which ended in the war of 1812. At the close of that war my father was sent here to do what he could to effect a re-establishment of amicable relations. His disposition was all that could be wished. It was met by indifference and repulsion. From that period I had every reason to know the impressions that had gone far to regulate his action as a public man down to the close of his life towards Great Britain. And now I had come here with the most anxious desire to preserve relations of amity, which seemed latterly to have been taking a more positive character than ever before. I had done everything in my power during my residence to that end. I was anxious, whenever I might return home, to have the means of making a favorable report to my countrymen. I supplicated his lordship, then, not to compel me to go back without the possession of the smallest evidence that could refute the inevitable arguments that would be drawn from the position that Great Britain had thus far chosen to assume during this struggle. * I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant, Hon. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, * CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. Secretary of State, Washington, D. C. No. 160.] Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward. LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, SIR: I have had the honor to receive from the department despatches numbered from 237 to 241, both inclusive; likewise a telegraphic despatch, dated the 1st instant, containing the welcome intelligence of the capture of New Orleans, which I immediately communicated by telegraph to Mr. Dayton. The intelligence was received here with such general incredulity that even my announcement of the official confirmation scarcely dispelled the doubts. The cause of this possibly may be that it dissipated many illusions indulged in of late on very small foundations. I now transmit the copy of my reply to Lord Russell's note, a copy of which is already on its way to you, with my despatch No. 158, of the 9th instant. Since that date I have received a note from his lordship, dated the 10th, in answer to mine addressed to him on the 8th, to which I felt it my duty to make a rejoinder on the 12th instant. Copies of these two notes likewise accompany this despatch. I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant, Hon. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. Secretary of State, Washington, D. C. Mr. Adams to Earl Russell. LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, MY LORD: I have the honor to acknowledge the reception of your lordship's note of the 7th instant, touching the case of the British vessel Emily St. Pierre. I do not understand from the terms of that note that her Majesty's law advisers entertain a doubt of the correctness of the law as explained in my application of the 24th of April for the restoration of that vessel. Indeed, it would be difficult to find any doctrine more precisely laid down by the highest judicial authority of Great Britain than that which applies to this particular case. I pray your lordship's attention to the language of the late Lord Stowell, famed all over the world for his exposition of international law. "If a neutral master attempts a rescue, he violates a duty which is |