UNITED STATES Consulate, SIR: I have the honor to enclose to you herewith copies of two communi cations just received from the captain general, by which you will see that in the question of the Mary Scaife he has acted in accordance with the authorities he cites as having consulted-that is, the captain general has not in any way intervened in the matter, except to declare my protest as not sufficient to authorize him to prevent the departure of the brig, and in stating that the non-compliance on the part of the seller, a citizen of the United States, with the necessary and legal forms of sale, as the indorsement and registering of the same in this consulate, does not in any manner affect the validity of the purchase on the part of the British subject; and, further, that the entry at this port of the said brig under a flag adopted by a portion of the southern States of the United States of America, now in rebellion against the legitimate government of the said United States, and the sale of the brig without having complied with the requisite registering of said sale in this consulate, as required by the laws of the United States, does not and cannot, either directly or indirectly, imply the recognition of the said rebellion. This seems to me impossible, as either the Mary Scaife was admitted subject to the laws of our treaties with Spain, and to the maritime laws of the United States, or she was admitted as independent, and not owing obedience to said laws and treaties. The captain general does not, however, decide this point, as he states only that the legality or illegality of the sale is a question not to be decided by the Spanish laws, but by the existing treaties between Great Britain and the United States. The British consul, however, affirms that the sale and purchase, having been duly made through a notary public of this city, and the purchaser having presented himself before him with a passport and other proof of his nationality, he could not refuse to furnish him a temporary register, by which the vessel is placed under the British flag for the term of six months, or until she can be regularly registered in some British port. You will see, therefore, that the local authorities pretend to show the good faith and legality of the sale by the recognition of the same by the British consul, and the consul asserts that the sale has been duly and legally made through a notary public, and that the vessel has thereby become British property-each party relying upon the other to sanction the course he has pursued. As I now submit to your inspection the final papers in regard to this sale and change of nationality of the brig Mary Scaife, and the vessel having left this port, any further action on my part will probably not be demanded. However, in calling your attention to the latter part of the captain general's more lengthy communication, I beg to inform you that, should the course I have taken in this difficult matter meet with your approbation, I should be exceedingly obliged to you if you would notify me as soon as convenient, as I am anxious to inform the captain general of your approval, in reply to this part of his communication, and also to inform him that questions and events of great importance sometimes arise, even as the present, where a consul is obliged to act in a partially diplomatic manner, both on account of the seriousness of the event or question and for want of time to be able to bring the matter for decision before the legation from which he depends. I have applied to the custom-house for a list of the cargo outward, and as soon as received shall forward to Washington, with the description of the vessel, as I am sure she will again attempt the blockade. I am, sir, your most obedient servant, HORATIO J. PERRY, Esq., JOHN ALBRO LITTLE, Consul. Chargé d'Affaires, United States Legation, Madrid. Mr. Perry to Mr. Liltle. LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, SIR: Your communications to No. 16, inclusive, of August 7 have been received, with their enclosures, and inform me of your own proceedings in the case of the brig Mary Scaife, as well as those of the Spanish authorities, British consul, and other parties at your port. These papers are very interesting, and I take pleasure in acknowledging the very efficient, temperate, and business-like way in which you seem to have managed this whole affair. It is the province of the captain general to see that you do not take upon yourself the discharge of diplomatic or political duties, especially as he himself would lack authority from his own government to correspond on such subjects; but it is quite within your province, and is, indeed, a promi nent part of your consular duty, to watch over the proper execution of all treaties, ordinances, and customs, which affect the condition of ships and mariners from the United States at the port of Barcelona; and, in the case of anything extraordinary occurring, to make the facts known to the local authorities, with such observations as you may think necessary, in order to convey a proper idea of the case, so that their action, if any be taken, should be adequate, and based on a full knowledge of the case. I have failed to see that you have transcended your duty in any respect in the course of this affair. I have been in frequent correspondence with our consuls at Gibraltar, Malaga, and Cadiz, on the subject of the vessel referred to, and trust she may be intercepted in the straits, or taken on our coast, where her description would have preceded her. Respectfully, &c., your obedient servant, JOHN ALBRO LITTLE, Esq., United States Consul, Barcelona. HORATIO J. PERRY. Mr. Perry to Mr. Seward. No. 76.] LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, SIR: Your instructions, Nos. 39 and 40, reached me together at this royal seat, and yesterday I had an opportunity of putting the copy of a treaty with Great Britain, enclosed with your No. 40, into the hands of the Duke of Tetuan; also communicating to him verbally the substance of that despatch. The minister entered into conversation on the subject of slavery and the slave trade in the island of Cuba; but as the ideas expressed were not new or essentially different from those which Spanish official personages have been accustomed to manifest for a long time past, I may be excused reproducing them here. I found occasion, however, during this interview to turn the conversation in a natural way upon the subject of your despatch No. 39, and in a purely confidential and unofficial way-the character of the interview now permitting a sort of frank and uncalculating revelation of what was intended for my private use and instruction alone-read to the Duke of Tetuan, in Spanish, your instruction dated July 31. The effect was evidently and de cidedly an agreeable one; and, though the duke could hardly be expected to enlarge much upon the subject of his own permanence in power, you will hardly need my assurance that the interests of the United States lost nothing by the interview referred to. The subject of Mr. Corwin's treaty with Mexico opened the way for me again to show that the United States were not ambitions of territorial aggrandizement on the south of our present frontiers. I was glad of this opportunity to speak with the real head of this government on this question; and though the arguments, facts, and statements, which I advanced were, perhaps, substantially the same I have heretofore used to Mr. Calderon Collantes, and reported to you, I was not left in doubt as to their effect upon Marshal O'Donnell. Perhaps the connexion between filibustering and secession was more clearly and forcibly brought out than I have been able to do it heretofore. The duke did me the honor to listen with great interest as I traced the history of the aggressive and unscrupulous policy pursued by Mr. Jefferson Davis and other southern leaders, both in the exterior and in the interior, from the time of the mission of Mr. Pierre Soulé, in Spain, to the actual rebellion and war against the constitutional government of the United States. He was shown, also, in what way the statesmen of the north, now at the head of our affairs, had opposed and counteracted these dangerous designs, sustained always by the great conservative masses of the American people. And when the Spanish minister had seen always the same men, the same motives, and the same manner of proceeding, producing the effects of the annexation of Texas, the war with Mexico, the conspiracy for war with Spain for the conquest of Cuba, the invasion of Central America, the bloody terrorism of Kansas, and, lastly, the traitorous war of these ambitious men against the conservative power of the American Union which checked and thwarted their designs, he was well prepared for the conclusion that the north is now actually fighting in America the battles of Spain and of all other foreign states having territory contiguous to our southern frontiers. The arrival of the chargé d'affaires of Russia, by appointment, closed this interview, but not till the duke had begged me to come to him again to speak on this same subject, which interested him deeply. I regret, however, that other affairs will cause my return to the legation in Madrid to-night, whence I shall address you, perhaps, to-morrow. With sentiments of the highest respect, sir, your obedient servant, HORATIO J. PERRY, Hon. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State, Washington. Mr. Perry to Mr. Seward. No. 81.] LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, SIR: It is incumbent on me to report to you the changing phases of opinion in Spain as to the war in which the United States are engaged. You know from my former despatches that the sympathies of this government from the beginning were with the faction which seemed to offer some hope of dividing the republic and diminishing our power in the western hemisphere. Mr. Preston, of Kentucky, had, in the latter part of his term of office here, labored to aid the conspirators, and not without success. He had the good sense, having also the means, to spend annually at this court something more than double the salary assigned to his post. The society of the court, the aristocratical and governing classes, were found by me in June, 1861, deeply imbued with the ideas which he had labored to cherish, and the notion of an aristocratical and chivalrous society in the south of the United States, armed to resist the aggressions of an underbred, sans culotte democracy at the north, was the prevalent idea of these classes concerning us. They were still full of the resentments and apprehensions produced by our filibustering exploits of former years, which were for them connected only with the name of the United States. The Confederate States was a new name, as yet unsullied, and the rebels who had taken up arms against the government of the United States could not but be the friends of Spain. My first care, as you are aware, was to undo all this by showing that the filibustering and aggressive policy which had marked our policy towards Spain for some years before was the work of the same men and the same parties who had now gone into rebellion against the government of the United States; that their designs upon Cuba and other territories contiguous to our southern limits had failed of execution only on account of the resistance of the conservative masses of our people of the northern States. That the extension and perpetuation of their own political power, the mastery of the policy and destinies of the entire Union, was the motive for the annexation policy of our southern statesmen; falling to secure which they had resolved to divide the republic, thus assuming to themselves the direction of the foreign as well as the interior policy of the southern part. I showed the government of Spain, by the speeches pronounced in South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana at the breaking out of the rebellion, that its leaders already, leaping beyond the eventualities of the war against the federal government, were holding up to the population of the south the plan of immediately annexing Cuba, San Domingo, and Mexico, as one of the grand results to be obtained by severing their connexion with the north, and I urged the conclusion that the continued union of the south with the north of the United States was the best guarantee to Spain of her own peace in North America. You are aware that the conduct of this government soon became to be more friendly towards us than that of either England or France. Aside from the now governing classes, the people of Spain are liberal of democratic in their political sentiments and aspirations. The United States were for them the model and example of all that is desirable in government. Their natural sympathies for us had been rudely jostled by our filibusters, but the grandeur of our national prosperity and the spectacle of our increasing power was not an eyesore to them, but, on the contrary, a triumphant argument in favor of the political ideas we represented and they loved. They were a good deal troubled, however, upon one point. The Spanish liberals said to me always: but if the people of the south wish to separate and establish a distinct government, what right have you, according to the principles of popular sovereignty, to impede that movement? The answer was that the rebellion at the south was the work of comparatively a few men for their own ambitious purposes, but not heartily desired and supported by the people of the south, whose majority was, on the contrary, loyal to the Union and the Constitution. The statistics of the slave-owning and non-slave-owning classes, and the popular votes of such States, where popular votes had been permitted, were appealed to in support of this view, and the armies of the government were truly represented as marching to liberate the people of the south from the oppression which a rebellious faction exercised over them. But it is necessary to confess that the incidents of the war have much debilitated this argument. It is truc at bottom, but it no longer serves. In the opinion of the masses of Europe, who judge from the great visible facts of our contest, the south is to-day a brave and united people, fighting for their independence against a government whose yoke they repel. They are fighting successfully against great odds, and neutralizing by their valor and conduct such merely material power as has seldom been displayed before by any government for the coercion of any people. And it is generally recog nized that the people of the south, by the extent of territory they defend, by the number and bravery of their armies, by the skill of their generals, by their attitude of apparently unalterable determination, by the peaceful submission of their slave population, and the apparent unanimity of their will to live apart, have demonstrated that they do possess the conditions necessary to constitute a solid, separate, and independent nation. There is, therefore, but one sentiment, one argument left for us who represent the Union before the peoples of Europe; this is the sentiment of popular abhorrence for African slavery; the argument that the south is fighting to maintain and perpetuate that institution, whilst the north, avowedly or covertly, is fighting against it. I cannot speak for any except myself, but I am persuaded, no matter what our individual ideas of interior policy may have been heretofore, all who faithfully strive to serve the United States of America abroad at this juncture, are obliged to use this argument, do use it to the extent of our respective power and ability. At home I was a conservative. I write now from slave-holding and slave-trading Spain. Nevertheless it is my duty to inform you that this is the only ground we stand on in this country; the only point which has told for us here for some time past. I have urged it and caused it to be urged in every form and place which the social customs of the country open to my influence. I have written it and spoken it in season and out of season. Those popular and liberal journals whose editors honor me by seeking my ideas and statements on the subject of our affairs have not ceased to reproduce it. I sincerely trust that in taking this course I have not misinterpreted your instructions or wishes in this respect. Your recent and most important instruction (No. 44) of August 18 has reached me, and its unanswerable reasoning would have been, ere this, urged by me upon the attention of this government were it not for the absence of the court and ministers in Andalusia. If Mr. Koerner's movements should permit I shall join the court this week. As to the effect here of recent events, I could send you excerpts from the Spanish press of all colors, but you will not need to burden your attention. with these writings. I enclose, only as a sample of the ideas which prevail in the circles of the government, the article of the Epoca (ministerial journal) of to-day. * * * I cannot deceive you; outside our own limits the remoter benefits or evils to come to men from the maintenance or loss of our territorial integrity are not seen or are little heeded. Men care very little about our Union, and between the Constitution of the United States and the paper made at Montgomery the people of the world see little to choose; both occupy and cover the ground gained by our fathers eighty years since, and which then gave them the sympathies of the world. Reducing our question of to-day to the simple terms of a government on one side, and a numerous, brave, and compact people, determined to be in dependent of that government on the other, popular ideas of democratic |