a Commander in the Royal Navy, protested strongly against the insult offered to the British flag, as did the captain of the vessel; and both claimed the Envoys as under the protection of England. The American lieutenant disregarded the protest, seized the men, and suffered the Royal Mail Steamer to pursue her voyage. Stripped of criminations and recriminations as to the coarseness and brutality of the manner in which the act is said to have been done on the one side, and as to the violence of the remonstrances on the other, these are the material facts of the case.

As soon as the intelligence reached England, the Government met in Cabinet Council. Nothing could be more dignified, calm, and honourable than the attitude of England at this moment. She waited, with firm resolve indeed, but without petulance, rodomontade, or fury, for the announcement of the advice which the Ministers would tender to the Queen. Nothing could be wiser than the course which the Ministers pursued. They gravely considered whether the laws which govern the intercourse of independent States had or had not been broken. Setting aside all questions of mere feeling, they called in the counsel of the legal officers whom the Constitution provides for their aid; and after adequate deliberation they deter

mined, we believe quite unanimously, that international law had been doubly violated by the act of the San Jacinto that by this act both the honour of their country had been assailed, and an injury done to those whom she was under an obligation to protect. J

Let us pause here for an instant; for the lesson is worthy of our study. Nobody can be much in society without being acquainted with a class of persons who decry the study of international jurisprudence. "What (6 can it matter now what Grotius has said? who cares "about Bynkershoek? Never mind Vattel. Times "are changed since the days of Lord Mansfield and "Lord Stowell. Story and Wheaton are dead, you "know; and then the verses in the Anti-Jacobin." Another class of persons point to the instances in which the law has been broken, and by the precedents of crime defend the invasion of right. But the flippancy of the former and the shallowness of the latter declaimers leave untouched the fact that there is, after all, a law to which States, in time of hostilities, appeal for their justification-that there are writers whose exposition of that law has been stamped as impartial and just by the consent of the great family of Statesthat they are only slighted by those upon whose crimes they have, by anticipation, passed sentence-that municipal, as well as international law is often evaded

and trampled down, but exists nevertheless-that States cannot, without danger as well as obloquy, depart from doctrines which they have professed as the guide of their relations with the commonwealth of Christendom. To see a mighty State like England doing homage to this principle is a noble spectacle. She might, in hot haste, have smitten her aggressor in his most vulnerable part. She might have raised his blockade, and been hailed as a benefactor by her own citizens and every maritime State. She might have revelled in the applause of the many, at home and abroad, who confound rashness with vigour and violence with energy. But she put aside the temptation. She inquired what justice and right, affirmed by usage and precedent, warranted; and, finding their voice in her favour, she demanded the reparation which is her due, and with the triple armour of a just cause she calmly abides the issue. The question which we are about to examine is, whether she has rightly interpreted the law which she professes to obey. In the prosecution of this inquiry we will endeavour to leave no argument or precedent adverse to her claim unconsidered.

First, it must be admitted that America was clearly entitled to visit and search a neutral merchant ship on the high seas. She has never parted with a

belligerent right firmly established by the case of the Maria, and which she foresaw might one day be of great value to her. The Trent, however, was not a vessel of that class. She was on the contrary of a class which one of the oracles of American jurisprudence has pronounced, not unreasonably, to be exempt from liability to condemnation for carrying the despatches of the enemy. Mr. Lawrence, in his last edition of Wheaton (Ed. 1855, p. 567), observing on the dictum of Lord Stowell with respect to the penalties incurred by a neutral vessel carrying despatches, says:

It is conceived that the carrying of despatches can only invest a neutral vessel with a hostile character in the case of its being employed for that purpose by the belligerent, and that it cannot affect with criminality either a regular postal packet or a merchant ship which takes a despatch in its ordinary course of conveying letters, and with the contents of which the master must necessarily be ignorant. This view, it is supposed, is not inconsistent with the text, which refers to a fraudulent carrying of the "despatches of the enemy."

Since the former European wars, some Governments have established regular postal packets, whose mails, by international conventions, are distributed throughout the civilized world; while in other countries every merchant vessel is obliged to receive, till the moment of its setting sail, not only the despatches of the Government, but all letters sent to it from the post-offices.

The author cites Hautefeuille, Droits des Nations Neutres, t. 2, p. 463, who is of the same opinion, and the Postal Treaty of December 1848, between the

United States and Great Britain. This treaty provides that when war has broken out between the two countries, their respective mail packets shall be permitted to continue without molestation their service, until six weeks' notice be given by the Government of either country; after the lapse of which period, the packets are to return under special protection to their ports. Certainly, the inference from this partial immunity of the mail packets between the two countries when belligerents, is favourable, at least, to the suggestion of the entire immunity of this class of vessels when either country is neutral.

Nor is it immaterial to observe that on board this Royal mail steamer there was a Commander of the Royal Navy, not, indeed, in command of the ship, but representing the Crown as far as the mail was concerned, and imparting a character to the vessel which at least took it out of the character of an ordinary private vessel. We are satisfied that not only America, as we have shown, but France, would have regarded it as a public vessel. It is clear that neither the Commander nor the letters in his custody were amenable to the Prize Court. Let us concede, however, this point in favour of America, against her own authority. The act of the San Jacinto in visiting and searching the Trent is by this concession, reduced from the violation of a strict right to a violation of comity.

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