1862] THE EVIDENT DANGER. 375 remonstrances, and submitted in almost unbroken silence to all the wrongs that the United States chose to inflict on its commerce. The Cabinet of Great Britain, however, did not confine itself to such implied acquiescence in these breaches of international law which resulted from simple inaction, but, in a published dispatch of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, assumed to make a change in the principle enunciated by the Congress of Paris, to which the faith of the British Government was considered to be pledged. The change was so important and so prejudicial to the interests of the Confederacy that, after a vain attempt to obtain satisfactory explanations from that Government, I directed a solemn protest to be made. In a published dispatch from her Majesty's Foreign Office to her Minister at Washington, under date of February 11th, 1862, occurred the following passage: "Her Majesty's Government, however, are of opinion that, assuming that the blockade was duly notified, and also that a number of ships is stationed and remains at the entrance of a port sufficient really to prevent access to it, or to create an evident danger of entering it or leaving it, and that these ships do not voluntarily permit ingress or egress, the fact that various ships may have successfully escaped through it (as in the particular instance here referred to), will not of itself prevent the blockade from being an effectual one by international law." The words which I have italicized were an addition made by the British Government of its own authority to a principle, the exact terms of which were settled with deliberation by the common consent of civilized nations, and by implied convention with our Government, as already explained, and their effect was clearly to reopen to the prejudice of the Confederacy one of the very disputed questions on the law of blockade which the Congress of Paris proposed to settle. The importance of this change was readily illustrated by taking one of our ports as an example. There was "evident danger," in entering the port of Wilmington, from the presence of a blockading force, and by this test the blockade was effective. "Access is not really prevented by the blockading fleet to the same port; for steamers were con |