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In the view which I have taken of this extraordinary proceeding as a violation of the enlistment act, I am happy to find myself sustained by the opinion of an eminent lawyer of Great Britain, a copy of which I do myself the honor likewise to transmit.

Renewing to your lordship the assurances of my highest consideration, I have the honor to be, my lord, your most obedient servant,

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS.

The Right Hon. EARL RUSSELL, SC., SC., &C.

No. 4.

Opinion of R. P. Collier.

CASE.

JULY 23, 1862.

You will receive herewith copies of the following affidavits in reference to a gunboat known as No. 290, which was built by Messrs. Laird & Co. at Birkenhead, as it is believed for the Confederate States of America, and which is now lying ready for sea in all respects in the Birkenhead docks. No. 1. Affirmation of T. H. Dudley.

No. 2. Affidavit of I. DeCosta.

No. 3. Affidavit of M. Maguire.

No. 4. Affidavit of Hy. Wilding and M. Maguire.

No. 5. Affidavit of A. S. Clare.

No. 6. Affidavit of Wm. Passmore.
No. 7. Affidavit of Edward Roberts.

No. 8. Affidavit of Robt. John Taylor.

An application has been made, on the affidavits Nos. 1 to 6, inclusive, to the collector of customs at Liverpool, to detain the vessel under the provisions of the act 59 Geo. III, cap. 69, but under the advice of the solicitors to the customs the board have declined to sanction the detention of the vessel.

You are requested to advise the consul for the United States at Liverpool whether the affidavits now submitted to you disclose facts which would justify the collector of customs in detaining the vessel under the act in question.

OPINION.

TEMPLE, July 23, 1862.

I have perused the above affidavits, and I am of opinion that the collector of customs would be justified in detaining the vessel. Indeed, I should think it is duty to detain her, and that if, after the application which has been made to him, supported by the evidence which has been laid before me, he allows the vessel to leave Liverpool, he will incur a heavy responsibilitya responsibility of which the board of customs, under whose direction he appears to be acting, must take their share.

It appears difficult to make out a stronger case of infringement of the foreign enlistment act, which, if not enforced on this occasion, is little better than a dead letter.

It well deserves consideration whether, if the vessel be allowed to escape, the federal government would not have serious grounds of remonstrance. R. P. COLLIER.

No. 5.

Mr. Squarry to Mr. Adams.

TAVISTOCK HOTEL, COVENT GARDEN,
London, W. C., July 23, 1862.

SIR: I beg to inform you that I saw Mr. Layard at the foreign office after leaving you this afternoon, and ascertained from him that the papers forwarded by you in reference to the gunboat No. 290 were submitted yesterday to the law officers of the crown for their opinion. The opinion had not, up to the time of my seeing Mr. Layard, been received, but he promised, on my representation of the extreme urgency of the case, to send for it at once. Mr. Layard was not disposed to discuss the matter, nor did he read Mr. Collier's opinion.

I now enclose a copy of the case with Mr. Collier's opinion, and a copy of the letter which I have addressed this afternoon to the secretary of the board of customs.

I have the honor to be, &c.,

His Excellency THE AMERICAN MINISTER,

5 Portland Place.

A. F. SQUARRY.

No. 6.

Mr. Squarry to Board of Customs.

TAVISTOCK HOTEL, COVENT GARDEN,
London, July 23, 1862.

SIR: Referring to an application which I made on behalf of the United States government, under the instructions of their consul at Liverpool, to the collector of customs at Liverpool, on Monday last, for the detention, under the provisions of the act 59 Geo. III, cap. 69, of a steam gunboat, built by Messrs. Laird & Co., at Birkenhead, and which, there is no doubt, is intended for the Confederate States, to be used as a vessel-of-war against the United States government, I beg now to enclose two affidavits which reached me this morning from Liverpool, one made by Robert John Taylor, and the other by Edward Roberts, and which furnish additional proof of the character of the vessel in question.

I also enclose a case which has been submitted to Mr. Collier, Q. C., his opinion thereon.

with

I learned this morning from Mr. O'Dowd that instructions were forwarded yesterday to the collector at Liverpool not to exercise the powers of the act in this instance, it being considered that the facts disclosed in the affidavits made before him were not sufficient to justify the collector in seizing the vessel.

On behalf of the government of the United States I now respectfully request that this matter, which, I need not point out to you, involves consequences of the greatest possible description, may be reconsidered by the board of customs, on the further evidence now adduced.

The gunboat now lies in Birkenhead docks ready for sea in all respects, with a crew of fifty men on board. She may sail at any time, and I trust the urgency of the case will excuse the course I have adopted of sending these papers direct to the board instead of transmitting them through the collector at Liverpool, and the request, which I now venture to make, that the matter may receive immediate attention.

I have the honor to be, your obedient servant,

SECRETARY OF H. M. BOARD OF CUSTOMS, London.

A. F. SQUARRY.

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SIR: I have further to report to you on this matter that I have again seen Mr. O'Dowd, the solicitor to the board of customs, who informs me that on receipt of my letter addressed to the secretary yesterday, the board resolved to refer the matter to the law officers of the crown, by whose opinion they would be guided as to seizing the vessel.

I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,

His Excellency THE AMERICAN MINISTER.

A. F. SQUARRY.

No. 308.]

Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,

Washington, July 28, 1862. SIR: If the surmises and apprehensions which prevail here are at all indicative of occurrences in Europe, then political society there is agitated and occupied by suggestions, schemes, and plans of intervention in our affairs. Passing by chronic affections of the public morals in Europe, I apprehend that it is now excited by some recent irritations. Congress has just now augmented our tariff of imports on foreign merchandise. Since nearly all the positions at which we aimed have been attained and occupied, there is more decided resistance made by the insurgents upon the few which it remains for us to carry.

Our assault upon Richmond is for the moment suspended. No great and striking movements or achievements are occurring, and the government is rather preparing its energies for renewed operations than continuing to surprise the world with new and brilliant victories. The tone of the insurgents has been suddenly emboldened, while recent expressions of grief and sorrow, which naturally and justly follow battles attended by great losses of cherished lives, for the moment have seemed to indicate that the friends of the Union are less resolute and hopeful than heretofore. Cotton, the great want of Europe, has not flowed out of the ports which we have opened as freely as was unreasonably expected by the manufacturers of that continent, and their disappointment seems ripening into despondency.

It is not upon isolated events, much less upon transitory popular impulses, that governments are expected to build their policies in regard to foreign countries.

What I think is important, not less for foreign nations than for ourselves, is always to hold our civil war under contemplation, not merely as broken streams of unequal widths and intermitting currents, but as one continuous river, and so not to forget its source, its direction, and not only its immediate and local, but also its ultimate and universal effects.

It is only the reflecting observer who habitually considers the course of events occurring in any one country as being determined, or at least materially influenced, by natural causes lying wholly or in part outside of that country, and which create a force commonly recognized under various names as the opinion of mankind, or the spirit or the genius of the age or

of the times. Even such observers, while directing the opinion of mankind towards the abolition of slavery in the countries which tolerated it, have habitually forgotten that foreign interests and agencies have co-operated with domestic ones in the planting, hedging, cherishing, and preserving of slavery, and equally so in aiding or hindering and retarding its removal. It is not unnatural, therefore, that those who, anywhere, have discussed the subject of slavery with a view to its removal have forgotten that a policy directed to that end must for a time materially affect private and public interests, reaching far beyond the direct action of the policy itself. There are two African slaveholding nations on the American continent-Brazil and the United States. The world has agreed that the practice of slavery by these two nations is, on their part, an error, perhaps I may say a crime, and has for more than half a century demanded its speedy and complete discontinuance. This impatient demand was inspired by convictions of natural justice and sentiments of universal humanity, and the United States and Brazil, in different degrees, according to natural circumstances and national sympathies, have responded. The empire of Brazil has interdicted the African slave trade, and slavery is declining there from that cause. The United States prohibited the African slave trade, but, owing to peculiar circumstances, slavery recovered from the blow, and alarmingly increased. The United States have, therefore, interdicted slavery in the new and unorganized portions of the republic, with the expectation that under that interdiction slavery would slowly, perhaps imperceptibly, but certainly, decline.

No sooner did these measures take effect than Brazil and the United States began to experience inconveniences resulting from them. This was expected; for it is a political truism that every political reform, in proportion to its magnitude and its ultimate benefits, is immediately followed by social inconveniences, losses, and sufferings. If it were otherwise, public virtue, or virtue in the conduct of nations, would be relieved of trials such as individual virtue never escapes. It is understood that in Brazil whole provinces in which the coffee tree is relatively unproductive are being depopulated by the removal of slaves to others more favorable to its culture, the price of labor increases, and the relative profits derived from it abate. In the United States the slaveholders resist the reform, and wage civil war to overthrow the government. Brazil and the United States have not claimed from other nations any indemnity for, or even any sympathy in, these sacrifices. They would have exhibited a want not merely of magnanimity, but of common sense, if they had done so. But both of these countries have a right to expect that other nations will bear with equal magnanimity their own lesser shares of the inconveniences resulting from the measures which were adopted, in part at their own instance, and in the name of common justice and humanity. I think that this expectation has not been disappointed in the case of Brazil. I do not hear that any nation or people propose to disturb or destroy, or aid in disturbing or destroying, that empire because coffee has become relatively more scarce, and therefore more costly. All nations take cheerfully the coffee that Brazil can send them, and look elsewhere for supplies of the deficiency.

But in this country the slaveholding insurgents solemnly resolve to compel foreign nations to join them in overthrowing the government, and to guaranty boundless and endless African slavery on this continent by burning the cotton already produced, and preventing the production of more; and, strange to say, these nations are asked to entertain the question whether they shall not intervene to defeat the reform they so justly urged, at the cost of the national existence of the United States. The resistance of the

slaveholders is thus seen to be not merely treason against this country, but a war against human nature itself, and the European nations not only claim to be neutral, but they are represented as hesitating whether, under the pressure of a want of cotton, they shall not become allies in that war.

What are the reasons urged upon those governments by short-sighted politicians for such a proceeding. They are various, but none of them will bear examination? First it was said that civil war among us endangers the commerce of foreign nations, and that they have a right to practice neutrality. So, indeed, they have, if their commerce is endangered, and if pronounced neutrality will save their commerce. But no slaveholding cruiser from this country ever attacked, or even menaced, the commerce of Europe before the attitude of neutrality was adopted. Then it was said that the United States resorted to a blockade, but the blockade is an appli cation of force allowed by the laws of nations to all belligerents. Then the blockade was represented as being imperfect; but if it had been so, it was therefore the less injurious. Then it was too rigorous, and prevented the export of cotton and the import of fabrics. Is not this the lawful object of a blockade? Then it was alleged that the closing of the cotton ports by the blockade was continued too long. We opened them to trade, and invited it; the insurgents refuse to let cotton be sent forward to market. We apply all our means and energies, confessedly greater than any nation ever before applied, to suppress insurrection and restore the freedom of our inland and foreign commerce, and we gain victory after victory, yet this does not satisfy our enemies abroad. Defeats in their eyes prove our national incapacity. Victories won in conformity with the most humane practices of war are attended with such destruction of life as to shock and confound their sensibilities. Complaints against an increase of duties on foreign merchandise, and against the rigor of our taxation, come upon us in the very same breath with representations that our engagements will never be fulfilled, and our bonds not yet matured are advised to be forced back upon our newly filled money market for sale. The same voices which are proclaiming to the world that the preservation of the Union is a task too expensive for the government denounce the revenue measures adopted to secure the accomplishment of that task as hostile to foreign nations. first the government was considered as unfaithful to humanity in not proclaiming emancipation, and when it appeared that slavery, by being thus forced into the contest, must suffer, and perhaps perish in the conflict, then the war had become an intolerable propagandism of emancipation by the sword.

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I do not require you to complain, as these facts, perhaps, might warrant me in doing, that there seems a predisposition in western Europe, if not in favor of the slaveholders and their cause, at least against the Union and the cause of humanity that is now for weal or woe identified with its preservation.

I have brought this identification of the cause of humanity with that of our country thus prominently into view for the purpose of showing that the motives and the objects of those who oppose or seek to embarrass the latter, either at home or abroad, may be well understood and fairly weighed, and the moral as well as the material resources of the country may not be undervalued.

Having done this, it remains for me only to say further, that the purpose of the American government and people to maintain and preserve the Union and their Constitution remains unchanged; that the war in which they have been engaged, though it has been opposed by agencies and influences abroad which we had not foreseen, has been crowned with successes which are satisfactory to our calmer reason and judgment; that

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