ment in the United States in accordance with these views, a sentiment which No. 612 Conföderirle has its origin in the hard teachings of the war as it has progressed. It was Staaten, 1. August believed (or so confidently affirmed) that there was a large party in the Southern 1862. States devoted to the Union, whose presence and power would be manifested there as soon as the public force of the United States was present to sustain it. I need not say how fully the experience of the war has dispelled this delusion. ¶ Again, it was believed, and confidently relied on, that in the social structure of the Southern States there was a large population of the dominant race indifferent, if not hostile, to the basis on which that social structure rests, in which they were not interested, and who would be found the allies of those whose mission was supposed to be in some way to break it up; but the same experience has shown that the whole population of the South is united, as one people, in arms to resist the invader. Nothing remains then on which to rest any hope of conquest but a reliance on the superior numbers and the supposed greater resources of the Northern States. I think the results of the last (or pending) campaign has proved how idle such expectations were, against the advantages of a people fighting at home, and bringing into a common stock of resistance, as a free will offering, all that they possessed, whether of blood or treasure. A spectacle now historically before the world. It is in human experience that there must be those in the United States who cannot shut their eyes to such facts, and yet, in the despotic power now assumed there by the Government, to give expression to any doubt would be to court the hospitalities of the dungeon. One word from the Government of Her Majesty would encourage those people to speak, and the civilized world would respond to the truths they would utter,,,that for whatever purpose the war was begun, it was continued now only in a vindictive and unreasoning spirit, shocking alike to humanity and civilization." That potent word would simply be to announce a fact, which a phrenzied mind could only dispute, that the Southern States, now in a separate Confederacy, had established before the world its competency to maintain the Government of its adoption, and its determination to abide by it. To withhold it would not only seem in derogation of truth, but would be to encourage the continuance of a war, hopeless in its object, ruinous alike to the parties engaged in it, and to the prosperity and welfare of Europe. To Earl Russell. J. M. Mason. No. 613. GROSSBRITANNIEN. Min. d. Ausw. an den Commissar der conföderirten Staaten in London. Gründe der englischen Regierung für Verschiebung der Anerkennung der Conföderation. Foreign Office, August 2, 1862. Gross Sir, I have had the honour to receive your letters of the 24th of July No. 613. and 1st instant, in which you repeat the considerations which, in the opinion of britannien, 2. August the Government of the so-called Confederate States, entitle that Government to 1862, Gross No. 613. be recognized of right as a separate and independent Power, and to be received britannien, as an equal in the great family of nations. In again urging these views you 2 August 1862. represent, as before, that the withdrawal of certain of the Confederates from the Union of the States of North America is not to be considered as a revolution, in the ordinary acceptation of that term, far less an act of insurrection or rebellion, but as the termination of a Confederacy which had, during a long course of years, violated the terms of the Federal compact. I beg leave to say in the outset that upon this question of a right of withdrawal, as upon that of the previous conduct of the United States, Her Majesty's Government have never presumed to form a judgment. The interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, and the character of the proceedings of the President and Congress of the United States under that Constitution, must be determined, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, by the States and people in North America who inherited, and have till recently upheld that Constitution. Her Majesty's Government decline altogether the responsibility of assuming to be judges in such a controversy. You state that the Confederacy has a population of 12,000,000; that it has proved itself for eighteen months capable of successful defence against every attempt to subdue or destroy it; that in the judgment of the intelligence of all Europe the separation is final; and that under no possible circumstances can the late Federal Union be restored. On the other hand, the Secretary of State of the United States has affirmed, in an official despatch, that a large portion of the once disaffected population has been restored to the Union, and now evinces its loyalty and firm adherence to the Government, that the white population now in insurrection is under 5,000,000, and that the Southern Confederacy owes its main strength to hope of assistance from Europe. ¶ In the face of the fluctuating events of the war; the alternations of victory and defeat; the capture of New Orleans; the advance of the Federals to Corinth, to Memphis, and the banks of the Mississippi as far as Vicksburg, contrasted, on the other hand, with the failure of the attack on Charleston, and the retreat from before Richmond; placed too between allegations so contradictory on the part of the contending Powers; Her Majesty's Government are still determined to wait. In order to be entitled to a place among the independent nations of the earth, a State ought to have not only strength and resources for a time, but afford promise of stability and permanence. Should the Confederate States of America win that place among nations, it might be right for other nations justly to acknowledge an independence achieved by victory, and maintained by a successful resistance to all attempts to overthrow it. That time, however, has not, in the judgment of Her Majesty's Government, yet arrived. Her Majesty's Government, therefore, can only hope that a peaceful termination of the present bloody and destructive contest may not be distant. To Mr. Mason. I am, &c. Russell. No. 614. CONFÖDERIRTE STAATEN. Commissar in London an den k. grossbritannischen Min. d. Ausw. Protest gegen die Auslegung des Blokaderechts durch die englische Regierung. 24, Upper Seymour Street, Portman Square, January 3, (received January 3) 1863. My Lord, - No. 614. Conföderirte your Lordship, dated on the 7th July ultimo, I said: ,,I am instructed by 66 Staatsarchiv IV. 1863. 17 Staaten, 3. Januar 1863. No. 614. concur in the adoption of certain principles of international law, and after having 3. Januar 1863. ples thus adopted, to the prejudice of the interests and rights of the Confederacy; and that upon being approached, in respectful and temperate terms, with a request for explanation on a matter of such deep concern to the Confederation, that Cabinet refuses a reply. ¶ That Her Majesty's Government can have no just ground for refusing the explanation asked, because of the absence of the recognition of the independence of the Confederate States by the other nations of the world. It was not in the character of a recognized independent nation, but in that of a recognized belligerent, that the two leading Powers of Western Europe approached the Government of those States with a proposition for the adoption of certain principles of public law, as rules which shall govern the mutual relations between the people of the Confederacy as belligerents, and the nations of Europe as neutrals, during the pending war. Two of these rules were for the special benefit of Great Britain as one of those neutral Powers. It was agreed that her flag should cover enemy's goods, and that her goods should be safe under the enemy's flag. The former of these two rules conceded to her, as a neutral, rights which she had sternly refused when herself a belligerent, with a single temporary waiver thereof in her late war with Russia. To these stipulations in her favour, the Government of the Confederate States will adhere with scrupulous fidelity. On the part of Her Majesty's Government, it was agreed that no blockade should be considered binding unless,,maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy;" and yet on the first occasion which arose for the application of this, the only stipulation that could be of practical benefit to the Confederate States during the war, Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in an official despatch published to the world, appends a qualification which in effect destroys its whole value, and when appealed to for an explanation of this apparent breach of an existing solemn agreement between the neutral and the belligerent declines an answer. ¶ In view of these facts, I am instructed by the President to address to your Lordship, as Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, this formal protest on the part of the Government of the Confederate States against the apparent (if not executed) purpose of Her Majesty's Government to change or modify, to the prejudice of the Confederacy, the doctrine in relation to blockade to which the faith of Her Majesty's Government is, by that of the Confederate States, considered to be pledged. I am further instructed to say, that the President abstains for the present from taking any further action than by his protest thus presented; and to accompany it by the expression of his regret that such painful impressions should be produced on his mind, by so unexpected a result from the first agreement or understanding between the Government of the Confederate States and that of Her Majesty. I have, &c. To Earl Russell. J. M. Mason. No. 615. Min. d. Ausw. an den Commissar der conföderirten - Die Erfordernisse der Effectivität einer Blokade Foreign Office, February 10, 1863. Grossbritannien, 10. Feb. 1863. Sir, - I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of No. 615. the 3th of January, referring to the letter which you addressed to me on the 7th of July last, respecting the interpretation placed by Her Majesty's Government on the Declaration with regard to blockades appended to the Treaty of Paris. ¶ I have, in the first place, to assure you that Her Majesty's Government would much regret if you should feel that any want of respect was intended by the circumstance of a mere acknowledgment of your letter having hitherto been addressed to you. With regard to the question contained in it, I have to say that Her Majesty's Government see no reason to qualify the language employed in my despatch to Lord Lyons of the 15th of February last. It appears to Her Majesty's Government to be sufficiently clear that the Declaration of Paris could not be intended to mean that a port must be so blockaded as really to prevent access in all winds, and independently of whether the communication might be carried on in a dark night, or by means of small low steamers or coasting craft creeping along the shore; in short, that it was necessary that communication with a port under blockade should be utterly and absolutely impossible under any circumstances. In further illustration of this remark, I may say there is no doubt that a blockade would be in legal existence although a sudden storm or change of wind occasionally blew off the blockading squadron. This is a change to which, in the nature of things, every blockade is liable. Such an accident does not suspend, much less break, a blockade. Whereas, on the contrary, the driving off a blockading force by a superior force does break a blockade, which must be renewed de novo, in the usual form, to be binding upon neutrals. ¶The Declaration of Paris was, in truth, directed against what were once termed,,paper blockades;" that is, blockades not sustained by any actual force, or sustained by a notoriously inadequate naval force, such as the occasional appearance of a man of war in the offing, or the like. The adequacy of the force to maintain the blockade must indeed always, to a certain extent, be one of fact and evidence; but it does not appear that in any of the numerous cases brought hefore the Prize Courts in America, the inadequacy of the force has been urged by those who would have been most interested in urging it against the legality of the seizure. The interpretation, therefore, placed by Her Majesty's Government on the Declaration of Paris was that a blockade, in order to be respected by neutrals, must be practically effective. At the time I wrote my despatch to Lord Lyons, Her Majesty's Government were of opinion that the blockade of the Southern ports could not be otherwise than so regarded; and certainly the manner in which it has since been enforced gives to neutral Governments no excuse for asserting that the blockade has not been efficiently maintained. ག It is proper to add that the same view of the meaning and effect |