gard to the former history of the Georgia, the Government have omitted nothing which they could do under the circumstances. That ship has now returned as a Confederate ship—a public ship of war, with a regular commission as such. I must here notice one observation of my honorable friend. He says, that from the 1st of April, 1863, until the following 23d of June, this ship the Georgia-was registered in this country in the name of a British owner, a merchant of Liverpool, and that, therefore, she was cruising, burning, and destroying vessels at a time when she was a British ship. I must demur altogether to the law of my honorable friend in that respect. The register is nothing but the title of a British owner for a municipal purpose in this country. A ship which has a British register, and which is afterwards transferred to a foreign belligerent Power, cannot, by the mere fact of her still remaining registered in England as the property of a British owner, in any way be justly styled a British ship. (Hear, hear.) Nor can it be said that she has not become what this vessel really isa public vessel of war. I regret that my honorable friend should have used an argument that may seem to give countenance to assertions which have repeatedly been made, but which are quite destitute of foundation, that these ships are British pirates. (Hear, hear.) That expression is untrue in fact dishonorable to this country; and I trust that all those who have the honor of this country at heart, whatever they may see to condemn in the conduct of persons concerned in fitting out and navigating such vessels as those referred to, will not give encouragement to a proposition so extravagant, and so completely without foundation. I now come to the point suggested by the motion of my honorable friend. He points to the fact that the Georgia is now at Liverpool. The ship came in, being at the time a regular commissioned public ship of war. There is no doubt she was entitled to come in in that character by license of the Crown as long as the rules issued by Her Majesty in January, 1862, remain unaltered, because those rules permit ships of war belonging to the belligerents to come into our ports under certain restrictions. They must not remain more than twenty-four hours, except for repairs, they must not receive repairs in the nature of warlike equipment, and there are strict limits as to leaving as soon as the repairs are completed. This ship being a public ship of war, is permitted to come into our ports, and so comes in lawfully as a ship of war. The Government desired to have information regarding the circumstances under which she had entered our port, and as to the length of time she was likely to remain. They understood she had been brought into dock, it was presumed, for the purpose of repair,

and it was afterwards stated that she was likely to be dismantled and sold. If the latter were the case, there would be no harm done to the other belligerent Power by relieving her from all fear of opposition on the part of the dismantled vessel. My honorable friend has asked whether the Government think the admission of such ships as he describes that ship to be, consistent with their international obligations, their profession of neutrality, and the preservation of British interests. The Government certainly has not considered the limited and qualified admission of ships of this kind into British ports to be at all inconsistent with their duty in any respect. But for the first element in the case to which the honorable gentleman has called attention, that the vesse] was originally manned and equipped from British ports, I think that every one would grant her right to admission into our ports. I must, however, notice that my friend has imported into the case a consideration which has been frequently dwelt upon in the various publications issued upon this subject—namely, that this ship has never been in any of the ports of the belligerent Power under whose flag she sails. It is argued from this fact that this is a circumstance which prevents a ship from acquiring the character of a belligerent ship of war. It has been said that there is some rule or other, some settled principle of international law, which will bear out this conclusion. It should not be our practice to invent new rules of international law to suit particular cases, and such a rule as this was never heard of. (Hear, hear.) To say that a country whose ports are blockaded is not at liberty to avail herself of the resources which are at her command in other parts of the world, that she may not buy ships in neutral territory and commission them as ships of war without bringing them to her own country first, is a doctrine which is quite preposterous (hear, hear), and all the arguments founded upon such a doctrine only tend to throw dust into men's eyes and to mislead them. We cannot, therefore, upon those grounds make this ship an exception in our ordinary rules. And now I come to the real question. I have not the least doubt that we have a right, if we thought fit, to exclude any particular ship or class of ships, if we consider that they have violated our neutrality; but such power is simply discretionary on the part of the Government, and should be exercised with a due regard to all the circumstances of the Does the circumstance of a ship happening to have been fitted out in violation of the neutrality of a neutral nation entitle her to be refused recognition as a public ship of war? Happily, we find an answer to this question in the history of the jurisprudence of the United States, and I do not find that the United States, which have really

case.

settled all the doctrines of law applicable to this kind of neutrality, by fitting out vessels in their ports for belligerent nations, ever adopted the practice of inquiring into the previous history of public ships of war, which labored under the suspicion or allegation of having been fitted out in their ports in violation of their neutrality. In the cases of the Santissima Trinidad and the Cassius, the particulars of which were similar to those of the Georgia, Mr. Justice Story said:

"In general, the commission of a public ship, signed by the proper authorities of the nation to which she belongs, is complete proof of her national character. A bill of sale is not necessary to be produced, nor will the courts of a foreign country inquire into the means by which the title to property has been acquired. It would be to exert the right of examining into the validity of the acts of the foreign Sovereign, and to sit in judgment upon them in cases where he has not conceded the jurisdiction, and where it would be inconsistent with his own supremacy. The commission, therefore, of a public ship, when duly authenticated, so far at least as foreign courts are concerned, imports absolute verity, and the title is not examinable. The property must be taken to be duly acquired, and cannot be controverted. This has been the settled practice between nations, and it is a rule founded in public convenience and policy, and cannot be broken in upon without endangering the peace and repose as well of neutral as of belligerent Sovereigns. The commission, in the present case, is not expressed in the most unequivocal terms, but its fair purport and interpretation must be deemed to apply to a public ship of the Government. If we add to this the corroborative testimony of our own and the British Consul at Buenos Ayres, as well as that of private citizens, to the notoriety of her claim of a public character, and her admission into our own ports as a public ship, with the immunities and privileges belonging to such a ship, with the express approbation of our own Government, it does not seem too much to assert, whatever may be the private suspicion of a lurking American interest, that she must be judicially held to be a public ship of the country whose commission she bears."

That decision referred to a case in which the United States Foreign Enlistment Act had been violated over and over again. The other belligerent has no concern whatever in the course which the Government may think fit to adopt with reference to this vessel; and if the Government refused her admission to the ports of the United Kingdom, it would only be done for the purpose of vindicating our authority. I cannot find, however, that the United States ever followed such a

course. The Santissima Trinidad and the Cassius were both received into 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: There are, also, a very considerable number of cases reported in which prizes brought into the ports of the United States were either restored, or questions raised in courts of law as to their restoration; but I can find no instance of any prohibition or exclusion from any port of any prize after her conversion into a ship-of-war. We are not therefore warranted, upon the authority of the United States, in excluding this vessel from our ports. The honorable member for Huntingdon has asked if the Government think the admission of such vessels to British harbors consistent with our international obligations. This question renders it necessary to determine the right of the other belligerent in this matter. Now, upon this question, I will quote from the judgment of Mr. Justice Story in reference to the case of the Amistad de Rues. I hope not to utter a single word in the slightest degree offensive to any one in the United States, and least of all to their Government; but I cannot help wishing that the authority I have mentioned had been more recognized, when, over and over again, those extraordinary and extravagant demands were made upon our Government to pay the value of all the ships taken on the high seas by the Alabama and similar vessels. (Hear, hear.) I need hardly remind the House that in 1793, when the United States did give us compensation for certain prizes not restored, that compensation was strictly limited to ships when brought into their ports fitted out in violation of their laws, and was not extended to any prizes taken upon the high seas. All they did was to name a particular date, and to prohibit the French from bringing in any more of their prizes after that date. Mr. Justice Story thus lays down what is the limit of the obligation which the neutral owes to the belligerent in this matter:

"When called upon by either of the belligerents to act in such cases, all that justice seems to require, is, that the neutral nation should fairly execute its own laws, and give no asylum to the property unjustly captured. It is bound, therefore, to restore the property if found within its own ports; but; beyond this, it is not obliged to interfere between the belligerents."

So that he distinctly says that we are to execute our laws fairly, we are to give no asylum to prizes captured by ships fitted out in violation of our neutrality, and to property unjustly captured; but he does not say, that an asylum may not be given to public ships of war, whatever their previous history; and he adds, that, beyond the limits which he

mentions, we are not obliged to interfere between the belligerents. The authority of Mr. Justice Story, therefore, distinctly excludes the proposition that belligerents have any rights entitling them to require interference by the neutral, to the extent of excluding absolutely from her ports ships of this description, if it does not seem to the neutral herself necessary so to do. (Hear, hear.) I say, then, we have done all that authority requires us to do. And now I will ask what reasons there are for the hesitation of the Government to take the extreme step of absolutely excluding these particular ships from our ports, when, at the same time, all the ships of the United States Government were (are) admitted. (Hear.) Some reasons can be given; the House will judge of them; I believe they have had considerable influence upon the determination of the Government upon this question, and I think they are such as are consistent with an honest desire to maintain our neutrality and fulfil our international obligations. In the first place, the maintenance of neutrality is plainly consistent with the maintenance of our own rights, and I entirely repudiate the argument sometimes used that you are not to enforce your own laws, because the effect of doing so may possibly be to put one of the parties to greater disadvantage than the other. Neutrality does not require that. On the other hand, where you have no law to enforce, then it becomes worthy of consideration, whether you may not be weighing down the balance in a manner not entirely consistent with neutrality, if you adopt voluntarily a rule which would practically exclude from the asylum you allow in your ports the whole of the navy of one belligerent and no part of the other belligerent. (Hear, hear.) That is one principle. And then there is another. The whole of the honorable gentleman's argument assumes, that the facts, and the law applicable to the facts, are substantiated, that we are in a position as between ourselves and the Confederate States to treat the matter as beyond controversy, and that the Georgia was, in fact, fitted out in violation of our neutrality. Now, we may have strong reason to suspect this, and may even believe it to be true; but to say that we are to act upon mere suspicion or belief against another State, upon certain facts which have never been judicially established, and which it is not easy to bring to the test as between Government and Government that is a proposition which is not without grave consideration to be accepted. (Hear, hear.) The difficulty of that view is increased by the fact that we have no diplomatic relations with the Confederate States, and cannot communicate with them in the ordinary way. We have not recog

nized them, and, what is more, the Government of the United States,