more than one fifth of the amount in circulation. It may be the doctrine will never come to prevail that a specie basis in whole or in part is no more indispensable to a sound and safe paper currency than an exclusive specie currency is possible or desirable in a country like this. It may be that the people will never come to believe that a legal-tender paper currency, issued exclusively by the National Government—based upon the credit of the nation, constituting a lien upon all the property of the country, and proportioned in amount of issue to the needs of the people for it as an instrument of exchange—would, for all home uses, possess in full perfection the nature, functions, and powers of money. It is a subject we do not propose to discuss. It is enough now to say that the notes of the United States, fundable in national six per cent. bonds, and drawing interest as they do semi-annually in gold, must be admitted by everybody to be as safe a currency as the banks as a whole have ever supplied, and to possess other advantages which make them incomparably a better currency than that of local banks.

The high price to which gold has been carried by gambling speculators, is not to be taken as indicating a proportionate want of confidence in the success of the national cause and in the intrinsic value of the national securities. It indicates nothing of the sort—at any rate, whatever it may be taken to indicate, it is none the less true that United States six per cent. bonds were from the first eagerly sought for and taken as investments at the rate of a million a day—faster indeed than the Government could at first supply them; with a constantly augmenting demand, until in the last week of October thirty-six millions were disposed of—leaving only one hundred and fifty millions unsold, which will doubtless all be taken before this paper is published. Comment on this is entirely needless.

OUR FOREIGN RELATIONS.

In the conduct of our foreign relations, certain official declarations in the early part of the war on the policy and purpose of Government in carrying it on, are to be regretted as gratuitous and unfortunate. It is to be regretted also that the capture of the Trent and the seizure of Mason and Slidell was not at once disavowed as being contrary to our doctrine on neutral rights, and the rebel emissaries surrendered without waiting for reclamation on the part of the British Government; or, if it was thought best to await that reclamation as containing a virtual concession of our doctrine, it would have been better—more dignified and effective—if the reply had been limited to a simple statement that the surrender was necessitated by the principles always maintained by our Government, and not by a reclamation which the British Government, by its own construction of public law and by its own practice, was not entitled to make, but which being made, might now, it was to be hoped, be taken as an abandonment in the future of the ground heretofore maintained by that Government.

CONCESSION OF BELLIGERENT RIGHTS TO THE REBELS.

There has been some dissatisfaction with the conduct of our official communications with Great Britain and France respecting the question on belligerent rights and neutral obligations which the rebellion has raised. But there are points of no inconsiderable difficulty and delicacy involved in these questions, which a great many people, in their natural displeasure against the English and French, have failed to consider. Our Government deserves the credit of having consulted the interests without compromising the dignity of the nation. Admitting the conduct of the British and French Governments in recognizing the rebels as belligerents to be as unfriendly and as unrequired by the obligations of public law as it is generally held to be among us, that would not make it right or wise for our Government to depart from the tone of moderation. We can no more make it a matter for official complaint and demand against these Governments, than we could the unfriendly tone of many of their newspapers and Parliamentary orators. We might say to them: We take it as unkindly in you to do as you have done; but if they will continue to do so, we have nothing for it but to submit. Even if we could have afforded it, we could not rightly have gone to war with them for doing what we ourselves—through the necessity of our circumstances—have been compelled in effect to do, and what they, though not forced by any such necessity, had yet a right—and in their own opinion were obliged—by public law to do. We could not have made it a cause of war, and therefore it would have been worse than idle to indulge in a style of official representation which means war if it means anything.

THE REBEL CRUISERS.

The question of the rebel cruisers on the high seas is a question by itself. The anger excited among us by the injuries we have suffered from these vessels is not strange; nor is it strange that our anger should beget a disposition to quarrel with Great Britain and France for conceding the rights of lawful belligerents to the perpetrators of such atrocities. The rebels have no courts of admiralty, carry their prizes to no ports, submit them to no lawful adjudication—but capture, plunder, and burn private vessels in mid ocean. Such proceedings by the laws of nations are undoubtedly piratical in their nature. We have a right so to hold and declare. We may think that Great Britain and France are bound so to hold and declare. But what then? Should they have ordered their men of war to cruise against these rebel cruisers or to capture every one which they might chance to encounter, and to send them home for trial? We may think they were bound in vindication of public law to do so; but could we make their not doing so a matter of formal complaint and a cause of war? There are a number of things to be well considered before any one should permit himself to quarrel with our Government for not quarrelling with Great Britain and France on this matter.

BRITISH VIOLATION OF NEUTRAL OBLIGATIONS.

But the conduct of the British Government in allowing her ports to be made the basis of these nefarious operations—in permitting vessels of whose character and purpose there could be no doubt to be built in her ports—not to be delivered in any Confederate port, but in effect armed and manned from her ports to go immediately to cruise against our commerce on the high seas—is an outrageous violation of the obligations of neutrals, for which that Government may justly be held responsible. It is a responsibility which no technical pleading about the insufficiency of British laws, either in matter of prohibition or rules of evidence, can avoid. Great Britain is bound to have laws and rules of evidence which will enable her effectually to discharge her neutral obligations; whether she has or not, does not alter her responsibility to us. Her conduct may rightfully be made a matter of official complaint, and of war too—if satisfaction and reparation be refused. It is a case in which our rights and dignity are concerned; and it is to be presumed that our Government will not fail to vindicate them.[1]

LEGISLATION—THE CONFISCATION LAW.

The action of Congress has in everything been nobly patriotic in spirit, and in nearly everything it has wisely and adequately met the exigencies of the crisis.

But we are compelled to hold the Confiscation Act, in the form in which it was passed, as a mistake.