Chap. XII. kept on board in order that their evidence might be forthcoming when she should be brought before a Prize Court. Two officers, with thirteen men, were put in charge of her, and ordered to carry her to Philadelphia. On the way thither, the three prisoners rose against their captors, disarmed and secured them, regained possession of the ship, and managed-with the help of three or four of the prize-crew, who volunteered to lend a hand rather than remain in confinement, but who were all landsmen-to carry her into Liverpool, after a voyage of thirty days, in which they encountered rough weather and many difficulties and hardships. On being informed of these facts by the United States' Consul at Liverpool, Mr. Adams made a demand on the British Government for the restitution of the ship. He denounced the rescue as a fraudulent and an outrageous act, casting a stigma on the good faith of the British nation; he cited the condemnation of such a proceeding which was pronounced by Lord Stowell in the case of the Catherine Elizabeth;1 and 1 "If a neutral master attempts a rescue, he violates a duty which is imposed upon him by the law of nations, to submit to come in for inquiry as to the property of the ship or cargo; and if he violates that obligation by a recurrence to force, the consequence will undoubtedly reach the property of his owner; and it would, I think, extend also to the confiscation of the whole cargo entrusted to his care, and thus fraudulently attempted to be withdrawn from the rights of war.”— (Rob., v, 232.) The reasons for condemnation were more fully stated by the same great Judge in The Dispatch (Rob., iii, 278): "Taking it then to be a case of forcible rescue of a neutral ship from the hands of a lawful cruiser, the law is clear, and the principle of it is founded on the soundest maxims of justice and humanity. If neutral crews may be allowed to resort to violence to withdraw themselves out of the possession taken by a lawful cruiser, for the purpose of a legal inquiry, and may (as it has been termed) hustle them out of the command of the vessel, the whole business of the detention of neutral ships will become a scene of mutual hostility and contention; the crews of neutral ships must be guarded with all the severity and strictness practised upon actual prisoners of war, for the same measures he insisted that, however it might be regarded by the Chap. XII. Municipal Law of England, some jurisdiction must exist competent to redress so manifest a wrong. On the part of the British Government it was answered that they had no power to take the vessel out of the possession of her owners, whose rights had never been extinguished by the sentence of a Prize Court. Had the rescue failed, there was no doubt that the attempt would have rendered her liable to condemnation; but Lord Stowell's judgment "furnished no authority for contending that the Municipal Law of a neutral country is under any obligation, or has any authority, to enforce, or to aid in enforcing, the right of the belligerent to capture-or, in other words, is empowered to exercise prize jurisdiction as between captors and neutrals." "You speak," continued Lord Russell, "of the rescue of the Emily St. Pierre as being a fraud by the law of nations. But, whether the act of rescue be viewed as one of fraud, or of force, or as partaking of both characters, the act was done only against the rights accruing to a belligerent, under the law of nations relating to war, and in violation of the law of war, which, whilst it permits the belligerent to exercise and enforce such rights against neutrals by the of precaution and distrust will become equally necessary; the intercourse of nations neutral and friendly towards each other will be embittered by acts of hostility mutually committed by their subjects. At present, under the understanding of the law which now prevails, it is the duty of the cruiser to treat the crew of an apparently neutral ship, which he takes possession of for further inquiry into the real character of herself and her cargo, with all reasonable indulgence; and it is the duty of neutrals under that possession to take care that they do not put themselves in the condition of enemies by resorting to such conduct as can be justified only by the character of enemies. It is the law, and not the force of the parties, that must be looked to, as the redresser of wrongs that may have been done by the one to the other. I have no hesitation in pronouncing this ship and cargo liable to condemnation, on the ground of the parties having declared themselves. enemies by this act of hostile opposition to lawful inquiry." Chap. XII. peculiar and exceptional right of capture, at the same time leaves to the belligerent alone the duty, and confers upon him the power, of vindicating such rights and of enforcing such law. The same law not only does not require, but does not even permit, neutral nations to carry out belligerent rights. You allude to the conduct of the United States' Government in the case of the Trent; but the flagrant wrong done in that case was done by a naval officer of the United States; the prisoners whose release was demanded were in the direct custody and keeping of the Executive Government; and the Government of the United States had actually the power to deliver them up, and did deliver them up, to the British Government. But the Emily St. Pierre is not in the power of the Executive Government of this country; and the laws of England, as well as the law of nations, forbid the Executive Government from taking away that ship from its legal owners."l This correspondence came to a somewhat abrupt conclusion, partly due, as it appears, to a curious discovery made at the American Legation. It was found that a claim resembling that which the United States were making against Great Britain had in the year 1800 been made by Great Britain against the United States, and that it had been refused on the very grounds which, when urged by Lord Russell, had proved so unsatisfactory to Mr. Adams.2 1 Earl Russell to Mr. Adams, 24th May, 1862; 12th June, 1862. 2 Lord Grenville's Instruction to Mr. Liston, and Mr. Pickering's reply, are given in Parliamentary Paper, North America, No. 4 (1863), pp. 138, 139. The answer of the American Secretary of State was as follows: : "I have now the honour to state to you that while, by the law of nations, the right of a belligerent power to capture and detain the merchant vessels of neutrals, on just suspicion of having on board enemy's property, or of carrying to such an enemy any of the articles which are contraband of war, is unquestionable, no precedent is recol There can be no doubt that the American Government Chap. XII. was right in 1800 and wrong in 1862, and the English Government wrong in 1800 and right in 1862. The enforcement of blockades is left, and rightly left, by the Law of Nations to the belligerent alone. They are enforced by the exercise of the belligerent right of capture; and this right is the weapon which International Law places in his hands for that express purpose. Capture is an act of force, which has to be sustained by force until the property in the vessel has been changed by a sentence of condemnation. If she escape meanwhile from the captor's hands, it is not for the neutral to restore her to him. Resistance or a rescue is, for the reasons given by Lord Stowell, a distinct offence, drawing after it a distinct and appropriate penalty-confiscation. But here again it is for the belligerent to inflict the penalty, and it is not the business of the neutral to help him to do this, either by recovering his prize for him or by treating the act as a crime. lected, nor does any reason occur, which should require the neutral to exert its power in aid of the right of the belligerent nation in such captures and detentions. It is conceived that, after warning its citizens or subjects of the legal consequences of carrying enemy's property or contraband goods, nothing can be demanded of the sovereign of the neutral nation but to remain passive. If, however, in the present case, the British captors of the brigantine Experience, Hewit, master; the ship Lucy, James Conolly, master; and the brigantine Fair Columbia, Edward Carey, master, have any right to the possession of those American vessels or their cargoes, in consequence of their capture and detention, but which you state to have been rescued by their masters from the captors and carried into ports of the United States, the question is of a nature cognizable before the tribunals of justice, which are opened to hear the captors' complaints; and the proper officer will execute their decrees. You suggest that these rescues are an infringement of the law of nations. Permit me to assure you that any arguments which you shall offer to that point will receive a just attention." CHAPTER XIII. Trade in Munitions of War with North and South.-Anxiety of the Confederate Government to procure sea-going Ships of War.Mission of Bullock and North, and their Operations in England.Vigilance of the United States' Legation in London and of the Liverpool Consulate.-Case of the Oreto or Florida.-Case of the Alabama. Subsequent Attempts; successful in the cases of the Georgia and Shenandoah, unsuccessful in others.-The Alexandra; the Ironclads; the Rappahannock.-Action of the British Government in each case.— -Prosecutions under the Foreign Enlistment Act. To the workshops of Europe,-and especially to its chief workshop, Great Britain,-both belligerents had recourse for the supplies of arms and munitions necessary to enable them to place great armies in the field. "On the commencement of the war," says the American Annual Cyclopædia for 1861, "the United States' Government found itself scantily supplied with small- arms, the armouries in the Northern States having been in great part stripped, and the arms removed to the Southern States. The chief dependence for the supply of muskets was upon the Springfield Armoury and that at Harper's Ferry. The capacity of the few private armouries was only a few thousand muskets annually; and on the destruction of the arsenal and armoury at Harper's Ferry on the 19th of April, 1861, together with 15,000 muskets, to prevent their falling into the hands of the Confederates, the resources of the Government were seriously diminished. It was, no doubt, the want of arms that limited the call of the President for volunteers, on the 15th of April, to 75,000 men; and until muskets could be imported from |