Now, giving the application of the motive for this repeal of part of sec. 8, and of the whole of sec. 6, of the old law, which I have imputed to it, viz., a design to favor "the restoration of the independence of Ireland," I ask the reader to consider for a moment the chairman's reasons for recommending it. The complaint against the old provisions is, that they may render a single man, a society, or an association of men, responsible for acts committed by a people." And the remedy proposed by the new law is, that every man shall only be held accountable for his own doings. That is, you shall no longer indict single or collective Fenians for setting on foot or providing means for any military expedition to be carried on against Canada or Ireland from United-States territory, nor shall the President of the United States have authority to employ the land and naval forces of the Union for the suppression of any such Fenian invasion so long as, or because, Fenianism is the cause of a people. You may indict an Irishman for making war against England on his own hook, as a solitary Irish belligerent, and would he not be an Irishman indeed to be such a belligerent? — but, when he is the exponent of the cause of a people, he is not to be a subject of prosecution under American neutral laws.

Since when I would ask-have General Banks and the House of Representatives found the Fenians to be "a people"? And, pray, is not England "a people" as well? And did we not give Sir John Crampton, the British minister at Washington, his passports, in 1855, for undertaking to make the United States a recruiting-ground against Russia in the Crimean War? It seems, that, after allowing the Fenians to hold public meetings and openly "prepare the means for a military expedition against Canada, Ireland, England, or where not, and after allowing such sort of proceedings to go on with perfect impunity for months, General Banks now takes it hardly that there was a law by which they might have been prosecuted, and were not; and now proposes to repeal, not only that wholesome provision of the statute, sec. 6, above quoted, but also the one under which General Meade actually interfered with their movements in a stage of flagrant hostilities, sec. 8, also above cited.

It is very true, as General Banks urges, that these provisions are not to be found in the British code; and so far he can find a chance to scale" downwards from our neutral level. But had the Committee on Foreign Relations duly weighed how much less applicable to that kingdom the insular position of England has rendered these provisions than to the continental position of the United States? and how far the deficiency is supplied by the provisions of the Foreign-Enlistment Act, already referred to, forbidding any vessel (for of course the exit from England must be by vessel), or master of a vessel, to carry away any recruits or enlisted soldiers from British territory?-provisions which the Committee have made a show of incorporating to some extent into their project, but which are so inartificially ingrafted upon the House Bill that I venture to pronounce them perfectly nugatory. Besides, too, as I have already hinted, if ever so skilfully incorporated they are incapable of being so adapted to our continental location as to secure our neutrality on the Canadian and Mexican borders with equal efficiency as that of the British act in regard to the islands of the United Kingdom.

But, again, if these repealed provisions, against setting on foot military expeditions, &c., are not a part of the British neutral code, they are certainly not a part of that legislation of our own, of the era of 1817-18, which the Committee so inveigh against, as shaped after foreign dictation. These sections, which General Banks proposes to repeal, were part of Alexander Hamilton's original draft of the law of 1794, our first and famous code, and have been repeatedly tested in American practice since, down to the present day. Pretty plainly, they were meant to hit the warlike schemes of Genet and the French Government at that day; and did successfully answer that purpose, if the fame gained by us for their enforcement, on which I have already dwelt at such length, is any proof of their value and efficiency. Pray, are the Committee on Foreign Relations ready to maintain that the French republic of 1794 — that fiery democracy, which had on foot, at one moment, fourteen armies, fighting all Europe was not as much of "a people" as the Fenians of 1866? or that "our country was not as deeply in

debted" to the French of Louis XVI.'s day as to the Irish of the present?

Again, if General Banks concedes that the individual Irish belligerent who enlists or procures others to enlist ought to be prosecuted, does he consider it good logic that the men or the association of men who "set on foot a military expedition". ought to be let alone, and have carte blanche to get up a war?

that Patrick or Michael, who is deluded into putting his name to a paper containing he knows not what, shall be sent to prison, if complained of; but that Roberts or Sweeney, who disturb the whole body politic with Fenian musters and Fenian marchings to and fro, shall be put above the reach of the law, because acting in the name of "a people?"-nay, if report speaks true, that the said Roberts shall have the freedom of the floor of Congress, in order to advise legislators how to draw the teeth out of the statutes, and make Fenianism both safe and respectable?

One word more on this topic of Fenianism, and I will pass from it. Supposing that I quite mistake the object of the repeal of the sections above considered, and supposing that I misjudge the chairman's and the committee's motives generally in alluding to the Fenian movement at all, I cannot forbear to make that movement a criterion of another portion of General Banks's proposed policy, which, he will doubtless fully concede, embodies and sets forth one of his fundamental ideas. That I may do the General no injustice, I will quote his exact language in explanation of the idea referred to (Report of the Committee, &c., p. 7) :

"The highest interests of civilization demand that the liberties and rights of neutrals should be extended, and the privileges and powers of states at war diminished. Upon the recognition of this principle depends the progress of nations, the independence of states, the liberties of the people. To restrict the rights of neutrals and enlarge the power of belligerents is to reject the teachings of Christianity and the improvements of civilization, and to return to the doctrines of uncivilized nations and the practices of barbaric peoples."

Now, I desire to ask the honorable chairman, whether, in his opinion, it is not "enlarging the power of belligerents" most

flagrantly and most injuriously, to give carte blanche to the Fenians to set on foot and prepare the means for military expeditions from United-States soil against British possessions, and to strike from the President's hands, at the same moment, the power of employing the land and naval forces of the Union to suppress the prosecution of such enterprizes. I desire to ask him, further, whether, in his candid judgment, it is not "restricting the rights of neutrals " most scandalously and most unchristianly, to permit the Fenian faction to drag the great body of the American people, who desire to keep themselves neutral as to any quarrel between England and Ireland, and who, I doubt not, regard Fenianism as a huge swindle or a fanatical delusion, into a groundless war with England about Irish grievances of six centuries' standing.

Then, as to our Canadian neighbors, whose inoffensive territory is to be overrun and subjugated in order to make a standpoint for belligerency against remoter England, how does General Banks think, that some of these phrases, which I have just quoted from his Report, have struck the Canadian ear, in the light of those alarms and preparations to meet an unknown invader, which have harassed the dwellers of that province for the last six months?

"The highest interests of civilization demand that the liberties and rights of neutrals should be extended."

are we

Pray, will not the Canadians have said, "That means our liberties and rights, does it not? We are neutrals, not?—whose liberties and rights ought to be extended. And can it be an extension of them for the American Congress to adopt a law which will compel us to sleep with our arms under our pillows, perpetuating and legalizing the miserable embroilments from which we thought ourselves so happily delivered by the late enforcement of United-States neutrality?"

"To enlarge the power of belligerents is to reject the teachings of Christianity and the improvements of civilization, and to return to the doctrines of uncivilized nations and the practices of barbarous peoples."

ee

Can General Banks" (these same Canadians would, doubtless, further urge) "have seriously put forward such a sentiment

as this, for an inducing motive to repeal those provisions of American law against filibusterism, which have, during the late Fenian raid, proved our best protection against the designs of turbulent and fanatical Irishmen, and whose biting and efficacious terms have constituted such a study of their leaders, lest the demonstration of the executive will at Washington should at any moment stamp out their reckless incendiarism? "

"Unchristian and uncivilized to enlarge the power of belligerents,' says General Banks. And yet; in the same moment, he strikes hands with Roberts and Sweeney to get up an invasion of our borders and carry on as unjustifiable a war against our peaceful, neutral province as was ever waged by an uncivilized nation or a barbarous people."

Has the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs ever held up these sentiments of his Report to his own consideration from the Canadian point of view? And would he venture to say, if he himself were one of these Canadian dwellers, that he could approve his own logic any more than his own law?

I leave this topic of Fenianism here; sure that the manifest injustice and injury to be wrought through its protection and encouragement by the new congressional movement, as tested in the case of provincial Canada alone, supposing no other friendly neutral country is to be affected by it, are such as to leave no doubt of the inexpediency of the United States' embarking in the new scheme inaugurated under General Banks's auspices.

But possibly there has not been as much legislative harm as yet consummated by the new project, supposing it in its present shape to ultimately pass the Senate and become a law, as our Canadian and British friends have been led to imagine and deprecate. This leads me to consider the amount of repeal or modification of existing statutory law actually involved in the adoption of General Banks's project, as amended by the House of Representatives, and how far the aim and animus of the new movement are thereby expressed and put into legislative shape.