prohibition was moved by no less a person than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Perceval, who commended it on the ground that “the severest pressure was already felt on the Continent from the want of that article,” and that “it was of great importance to the armies of the enemy.”[14] Such, in an age neither “ignorant” nor “barbarous,” is authentic British precedent, but now ostentatiously forgotten.

(6.) The same recklessness, of such evil omen, breaks forth again in a despatch of the Foreign Secretary, where he undertakes to communicate the judgment of the British Cabinet on the President’s Proclamation of Emancipation. Here, at least, you will say there can be no misunderstanding and no criticism; but you are mistaken. Under any ordinary circumstances, when great passions find no vent, such an act, having such an object, and being of such unparalleled importance, would be treated by the minister of a foreign power with supreme caution, if not with sympathy; but, under the terrible influence of the hour, Earl Russell, not content with condemning the Proclamation, misrepresents it in the most barefaced manner. This was done in a communication to Lord Lyons here in Washington. Gathering his condemnation into one phrase, he says that it “makes Slavery at once legal and illegal”[15]; whereas it is obvious to the most careless observer, who looks only at the face of the Proclamation, that, whatever its faults, it is not obnoxious to this criticism, for it makes Slavery legal nowhere, while it makes it illegal in an immense territory. An official letter so incomprehensible in motive, from a statesman usually liberal, if not cautious, is another illustration of that irritating tendency which will be checked, at last, when it is fully comprehended.

(7.) The activity of our navy is only another occasion for criticism in a similar spirit. Nothing can be done anywhere to please our self-constituted monitor. Our naval officers in the West Indies, acting under instructions modelled on the judgments of the British Admiralty, are reprehended by Earl Russell in a formal despatch.[16] The judges in our Prize Court are indecently belittled by this same minister, from his place in Parliament,[17] when it is notorious that there are several who compare favorably with any British Admiralty judge since Lord Stowell, not even excepting that noble and upright magistrate, Dr. Lushington. And this same minister has undertaken to throw the British shield over a newly invented contraband trade with the Rebel Slavemongers viâ Matamoras, claiming that it is “a lawful branch of commerce” and “a perfectly legitimate trade.” The “Dolphin” and “Peterhoff” were two ships elaborately prepared in London for this illicit commerce, and they have been duly condemned as such; but their seizure was made the occasion of official protest and complaint, with the insinuation of “vexatious capture and arbitrary interference,” followed by the menace, that, under such circumstances, “it is obvious that Great Britain must interfere to protect her flag.”[18]

(8.) This persistent, inexorable criticism, even at the expense of all consistency, or of all memory, has broken forth in forms incompatible with that very “neutrality” so early declared. It was bad enough to declare neutrality, when the question was between a friendly power and an insulting barbarism; but it is worse, after the declaration, to depart from it, if in words only. The Court of Rome, at a period when it dictated the usage of nations, instructed its Cardinal Legate, on an important occasion, as a solemn duty, first and above all things, to cultivate “indifference” between the parties, and in this regard he was to be so exact, that not only should no partiality be seen in his conduct, but it should not be remarked even “in the actions and words of his domestics.”[19] If, in that early day, before steam and telegraph, or even the newspaper, neutrality was disturbed by “words,” how much more so now, when every word is multiplied indefinitely, and wafted we know not whither, to begin, wherever it falls, a subtle, wide-spread, and irrepressible influence! This injunction is in plain harmony with the refined rule of Count Bernstorff, who, in his admirable despatch at the time of the Armed Neutrality, says sententiously: “Neutrality does not exist, when it is not perfect.”[20] It must be clear and above suspicion. Like the reputation of a woman, it is lost when you begin to talk about it. Unhappily, there is too much occasion to talk about the “neutrality” of England.

I say nothing of a Parliamentary utterance, that the national cause was “detested by a large majority of the House of Commons”; nor do I speak of other most unneutral speeches. I confine myself to official declarations. Here the case is plain. Several of the British Cabinet, including the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, two masters of “words,” have allowed themselves in public speech to characterize our present effort to put down Rebel Slavery as “a contest for empire on one side and for independence on the other.” Here are “words” which, under a specious form, openly encouraged Rebel Slavery. But they are more specious than true, revealing nothing but the side espoused by the orators. Clearly, on our side it is a contest for national life, involving the liberty of a race. Clearly, on the other side it is a contest for Slavery, in order to secure for this hateful crime new recognition and power; and it began in rebellion against the solemn judgment of the American people, declaring, in the election of Abraham Lincoln, that Slavery shall not be extended. Our empire is simply to crush Rebel Slavery. Their independence is but the unrestrained power to whip and sell women and children. If at the beginning the National Government made no declaration, yet the real character of the war was none the less apparent in the Presidential election, out of which it grew, and in the repeated declarations of the other side, who did not hesitate to assert their purpose to build a new power on Slavery,—as in the Italian campaign of Louis Napoleon against Austria the object was necessarily apparent, even before the Emperor tardily at Milan put forth his life-giving proclamation that Italy should be free from the Alps to the Adriatic, by which the war became, in its avowed purpose, as well as in reality, a war of liberation. That such a rebellion should be