the prize-commissioners. This letter of the 11th reached me on Monday morning, and having in view our conversation on Saturday evening, I embraced the opportunity of sending him at once the following reply:

"SIR:

"NAVY DEPARTMENT.

April 13, 1863.

"I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication of the 11th inst. enclosing a note of Lord Lyons' and correspondence relative to the mail of the Peterhoff.

"His lordship complains that the Peterhoff's mails were dealt with 'both at Key West and at New York in a manner which is not in accordance with the views of the government of the United States, as stated in your letter to the Secretary of the Navy, of the 31st October last.'

"Acting Rear-Admiral Bailey, an extract from whose letter is enclosed in the correspondence transmitted on the 14th ult., gave Her Majesty's Consul at Key West an authenticated copy of the law of the United States, and of the instructions based thereon, on the subject of papers which strictly belong to captured vessels and the mails. By special direction of the President, unusual courtesy and concession were made to neutrals in the instructions of the 18th August last to Naval officers, who themselves were restricted and prohibited from examining or breaking the seals of the mail-bags, parcels, etc., which they might find on board of captured vessels, under any pretext, but were authorized at their discretion to deliver them to the consul, commanding naval officer, or the legation of the foreign government to be opened, upon the understanding that what

ever is contraband, or important as evidence concerning the character of a captured vessel, will be remitted to the prize-court.

"On the 31st of October last, I had the honor to receive from you a note suggesting the expediency of instructing naval officers that, in case of capture of merchant vessels suspected or found to be, vessels of insurgents or contraband, the public mails of every friendly or neutral power, duly certified or authenticated as such, shall not be searched or opened, but be put as speedily as may be convenient on the way to their designated destination. As I did not concur in the propriety or 'expediency' of issuing instructions so manifestly in conflict with all usage and practice, and the law itself, and so detrimental to the legal rights of captors, who would thereby be frequently deprived of the best, if not the only evidence that would insure condemnation of the captured vessel, no action was taken on the suggestions of the letter of the 31st October, as Lord Lyons seems erroneously to have supposed.

"In the only brief conversation that I ever remember to have had with you, I expressed my opinion that we had in the instructions of the 18th of August, gone to the utmost justifiable limit on this subject. The idea that our naval officers should be compelled to forward the mails found on board the vessels of the insurgentsthat foreign officials would have the sanction of this government in confiding their mails to blockade-runners and vessels contraband, and that without judicial or other investigation, the officers of our service should hasten such mails, without examination to their destination, was so repugnant to my own convictions, that I came to the conclusion it was only a passing sug

gestion, and the subject was therefore dropped. Until the receipt of your note of Saturday, I was not aware that Lord Lyons was cognizant such a note had been written. Acting Rear-Admiral Bailey has acted strictly in accordance with the law and his instructions in the matter of the Peterhoff's mail. The dispatch of Lord Lyons is herewith returned.

This letter exhibiting our different views and opinions, would I supposed, cause the subject to be brought before the President and Cabinet; but instead of this, Mr. Seward wrote me on the 15th, that he had submitted the subject to the President who approved his course, that the Peterhoff's mail was to be given up, and that it was an inauspicious time to raise new questions or pretensions under the belligerent right of search.' This hasty committal of the President was a sort of snap judgment so unlike him, and so inconsistent with his character and general course, that it was evident to my mind that confiding in the Secretary of State, he had given his sanction to the proceeding without a full knowledge of the facts, or of the irregular and illegal act which renounced our unquestioned right, and, if made a precedent, would work serious injury to the country. I was not willing therefore, that the question should be thus summarily disposed of nor to remain quiet under the admonition respecting new questions or pretensions.' The warning

that Great Britain would take offence-an argument often used to affect the President on doubtful or disputed points by the State Department, I knew how to appreciate, and therefore wrote the following:

"NAVY DEPARTMENT.

April 18, 1863.

"SIR:

"I have had the honor to receive your note of the 15th inst. in reference to the mails of the Peterhoff which are in possession of the prize-court in New York. I am not aware that this Department has raised any new questions or pretensions under the belligerent right of search,' in the case of the mails of the Peterhoff. Had there been ground for such an imputation, it could hardly, on an occasion to which so much importance has been given, have escaped the observation of Lord Lyons. He however, advances no such charge, directly or by implication, and founds the demand made by him exclusively on the concession which he, apparently through some knowledge of the details of your letter to me of the 31st October, had been erroneously led to believe was made by this government, in instructions given to the commanders of its vessels of war.

"The true question in the present case is, whether the administration of the law shall be suffered to take its ordinary course, or whether the court established to administer the law, and which has certainly been in existence long enough to know its powers and duties, shall be arrested in the discharge of its functions by an order of the Executive, issued on the demand of a foreign government, which exhibits no evidence, and in fact makes no charge that law or usage has been violated on our part.

"If the Peterhoff was captured and sent to the prizecourt without any reasonable grounds for such a proceeding, then undoubtedly the opening of the mails, if it takes place, may have been an illegal act-but in my judgment, not otherwise. If it is to be assumed that the capture was wrongful, not only the mails, but the vessel and cargo should at once be surrendered.

"It may be an unfavorable time to raise new questions or pretensions,' but it is certainly no time to renounce any right or to unsettle any long and well-established principles and usage. Such a surrender would be a confession of weakness which, even if it existed, it would be inexpedient and injurious to make known to our enemies. If the case be one of doubt, it will be time enough to yield when the doubt is dispelled, and we are found to have been in the wrong. We may then yield

and make amends.

"I do not consider it necessary to discuss the question of genuine or spurious and simulated mails; but will merely suggest that if what pretends to be a mail is to be considered, in all cases, prima facie sacred, and exempt from examination, it will hereafter be found exceedingly difficult, in practice, to distinguish the spurious from the genuine ; nor indeed would there be any necessity for the fabrication of a spurious mail.

“In the meantime I cannot but hold that the prizecourt is lawfully in possession of the mail-bag in question, and that the court itself is the proper authority to adjudge and determine what disposition shall be made of it. I propose to avoid all new questions by leaving the whole matter to this ancient method of adjustment, established by the consent of nations, and it was in order to avoid innovations, as well as to maintain our national rights and the legal rights of the captors, that