the ports of the United States, held not to be amenable to courts of law, and never ordered by the Government to leave any port."

Whether the American Executive showed political sagacity and the American courts judicial discretion in their dealings with the Cassius, is no part of our thesis; but that, as a matter of fact, the American nation dealt with her in a manner diametrically opposite from that stated by the Attorney-General, and in a spirit which should have prevented her case ever being likened to that of the Georgia or quoted to American disparagement, is, we submit, one of the clearest demonstrations of history.

If, perchance, any doubt hangs over the final result of the suit for a forfeiture, all we have to say, is, that we shall be content to have the British nation act toward the Georgia, and all that tribe, in the spirit of the Cassius precedent; leaving out the forfeiture. When the British Government have sent an armed force to prevent the escape of another Georgia, as soon as they are informed of such an expedition being meditated in their ports; when they have indicted, convicted, and PUNISHED her builders and equippers, in case she has escaped; - when they have sent orders to all the ports of the British empire to seize her, in case she makes her appearance again before going into a Confederate port to procure a legitimate transfer and a national commission; when, after having fortified herself with a (so-called) national character, and having again come within British jurisdiction, they shall have upheld and justified civil and penal proceedings against her at the risk of a war with as powerful a nation as France, and which proceedings shall have detained her till she rots at the wharf and is abandoned in disgust by her belligerent equippers for one, we shall confess ourselves satisfied with British administration of International law. Until then, we shall hope never to hear this precedent of the Cassius again drawn forth, from the file, as an arrow from the quiver of an enemy.

III.

THE CASE OF THE SANTISSIMA TRINIDAD, AND JUDGE STORY ON NEUTRAL DUTIES.

BUT there remains the case of The Santissima Trinidad for Sir Roundell Palmer to fall back upon. This is the American case which has afforded so much capital to English Confederate-sympathizers in parliament and the courts: this is the case upon which Lord Chief Baron Pollock, at the jury-trial of the Alexandra case, broke out in eulogy upon American jurists, as having rendered "the pursuit of the law almost captivating," and then based his main ruling (if the Chief Baron can be got to admit that there was any ruling in that case) upon an unfairly-selected definition from Webster's Dictionary: this is the case which helped inspire Baron Bramwell with so much joy for the "fearless and honest principles" on which law was administered in America ("the same fearless and honest principles as those on which, I venture to say, law is administered here" in England), and which showed its fruits thereupon in a judgment of his, avowedly sanctioning "an evasion" of the British statute; and this, finally, is the case from which the Parliamentary advocates of the Rebellion, from Sir Hugh Cairns down to Mr. Roebuck, have derived an inexhaustible fund of argument and law, based upon the dicta of the (so-called) "great American jurist."

The Attorney-General, we believe, has not indulged in any praise of Mr. Justice Story in this speech, in the course of his various citations from his opinions. We are almost disposed to thank him for this; so common has it become for Englishmen to begin their hostile citations of American authorities with a preliminary eulogy of American judges and

statesmen. We are now so accustomed to this, that instead of "timeo Danaos et dona ferentes," we may well change the poet's sentiment into laudes "ferentes." There are, to be sure, honorable exceptions to this practice; among which we would particularly specify "Historicus;" and, we desire to add, in all sincerity, the Attorney-General, himself. We do not hesitate to say, that we regard his praise as generally sincere; and that, when bestowed, it falls within the classic postulate of value, as coming from a "laudato viro." Perhaps his admission, in the present connection, of the "United States having really settled all the doctrines of law applicable to this kind of neutrality, by fitting out vessels in their ports for belligerent nations," is (in the italicized portion) intended for a Parthian arrow; but we prefer to accept it in a friendly sense, and to take back nothing from our expression of respectful esteem.

Coming now to The Santissima Trinidad decision, and the weight of praise which Judge Story has had to bear for having pronounced it, we have to say, in the first place, that it was not the case of a vessel so far as we have any light about it which, according to Sir Roundell Palmer's allegation, "had violated the United States' Foreign Enlistment Act over and over again." We are not aware that the Independencia (which was the aggressive belligerent; the name of the case, "The Santissima Trinidad," being borrowed from the aggrieved vessel,) ever had any other reputation than what she got from this judicial proceeding. She does not figure in diplomacy, was never made the subject of ministerial complaint, that we are aware of, nor do we ever remember to have seen her name connected with any of the numerous cases of illegal capture in violation of the American Foreign Enlistment Act, which filled the United States Supreme Court about the period of her adjudication; - The Gran Para, The Arrogante Barcelones, &c. She appears to have been one of the ordinary run of Buenos-Ayrean privateers, whose illegal equipment in an American port, at the time of the South American struggle for independence, consisted not in an original outfit, but only in an increase of armament or force; an

important distinction, as the Attorney-General is aware, which has always been observed in American legislation and diplomacy, which justly marks, in the latter case, a much more mitigated degree of culpability. A very good statement of this distinction (if the Attorney-General has not considered it), will be found in Mr. Jefferson's letter to Mr. Hammond, of Nov. 14, 1793, published in 4 Jefferson's Writings, p. 78, (H. A. Washington's ed. 1861), which is not contained in the American State Papers.

If, in the next place, Sir Roundell Palmer means to imply "by [the Santissima Trinidad] never being ordered by the Government to leave any port," that the American Government ever knew of her presence in an American port,much more that such presence was ever brought to their notice either judicially or diplomatically, we should be glad to have him furnish any proof of the fact. What is stated in the report of facts in the 7th volume of Wheaton, about her coming back to the United States in 1817, after her voyage out to Buenos Ayres, refers to a period of time, some five years antecedent to the decision of the case in 1822. If Sir Roundell Palmer supposes that, at this latter date (1822), when for the first time the Federal Court decided that she had offended against American law by an increase of her force, the Independencia still lay in the port of Baltimore, we should be glad to be apprised of any evidence establishing the fact. Again, if there is any force in saying that the Santissima Trinidad [the Independencia, rather,] was "held not to be amenable to courts of law," in a case where nobody sought to make her amenable to a court of law,—since no proceeding, either civil or criminal, was ever commenced against the capturing vessel, herself, the Independencia, but only against her prize

we have to reply—that so far as the adjudication upon that prize is concerned, the directly-opposite statement is the true one: The Independencia was "held amenable to the law," and her prize, the Santissima Trinidad's cargo, was taken away from her, notwithstanding that the captors set up that she was a public ship of war, and that her doings could not be inquired into. Let us try to make this plain by epitomizing the facts:

The Independencia (treated by the court as a public ship of war of the Buenos-Ayrean Government), brings into Baltimore certain prize-property captured on the high seas from two Spanish vessels, the Santissima Trinidad and the St. Andre; and the prize-property (not the capturing ship) being libelled by the Spanish owners (or on their behalf by the Spanish Consul) in a civil suit, on the ground that the Independencia had had her force increased in an American port, the captors set up in bar, that the Federal Court cannot take jurisdiction of the subject-matter, because the Independencia is a public ship of war. But the Court decide, thatthough the Independencia is a public ship of war—she is as liable as any privateer to have her illegal prizes, when brought into American jurisdiction, taken away from her, if she has violated the Foreign Enlistment Act; and the court having inquired into that matter, and found, that on a certain occasion she has increased her force illegally in an American port, do thereupon take the prize-property away from her and give it back to the Spanish claimants.

If this is not holding her amenable to the law, we do not know what to call it; nor can we understand how the AttorneyGeneral could ever have uttered the sentence attributed to him in the Times, implying the contrary.

The reader can judge for himself, also, whether this case, as thus stated, is any authority for Sir Roundell Palmer's other proposition, "that the United States never adopted the practice of inquiring into the previous history of public ships of war." Here the Federal Supreme Court, after solemnly deciding that the capturing ship was to be treated as a public ship of war, proceeded deliberately to inquire whether she had been originally equipped in an American port in violation of neutrality, or had ever increased her force in the same violation, and finding the evidence sufficiently decisive under the latter head, condemned her prize-property and restored it to its original owners.

This ruling of the Supreme Court was but a confirmation of their doctrine in the case of the L'Invincible, in the first of Wheaton, to which we have already referred. Judge Curtis's