sum total of the national loss, but none of them are elements which enter into a claim for pecuniary indemnity. According to well established legal principles, our claim, so far as it is merely of a pecuniary character, must be confined to losses by actual depredations. In an action against the worthy Captain Semmes himself, supposing him to be before a competent court, and able to respond, with all his demurrers and dilatory pleas overruled, we could hardly claim to hold him responsible in damages for any thing but the direct and proximate consequences of his acts. The expense incurred in trying to keep out of his way, would not be a matter of judicial consideration.

Such, then, being the extent of our pecuniary claim on the British government (for it cannot be too distinctly borne in mind that our claim is not against the British public at large), what is the next item? Much has been said, and much will continue to be said, of the hasty and unseasonable concession to our insurgents, of belligerent rights. It was to them, perhaps, a very valuable and important concession, but it is to be remembered that this recognition of a mere fact must have come at last. They certainly were belligerents in the summer of the year 1861, if they had not become so in May of that same year. The recognition on the part of England may have been an unfriendly and discourteous act, but how can it be called a violation of our rights? It was a matter in which, perhaps, a decent regard for international civilities would have justified and perhaps may be said to have required some delay; and perhaps they should at least have waited until our minister, then on his way to England, had arrived. But the most that we can say is, that it was premature, and that the ministry ought to have waited for official information from our own government. It may possibly be true, as Mr. Bemis insists, that their reliance on our proclamation of the blockade, as a justification, was an afterthought. But long before this concession of belligerent rights, much had been done on our side of the Atlantic that indicated but too plainly what was coming. State after State had. formally withdrawn itself from the Union, so far as such a withdrawal can be accomplished by mere legislation and by vote. State after State had disowned and excluded from its limits every shadow and vestige of the Federal authority. They had organized a new confederation, had formed a new government, so far as all this could be done on paper, and had raised armies. In April, they

struck their first blow, and all the world now acknowledged that that first blow was the beginning, not of a riot or a skirmish, but of what certainly may be called a war, if ever there was such a thing as a war. Before that first blow was struck, the whole world saw that war was coming, and was close at hand. The British government eagerly, and joyfully perhaps, declared, on the 6th day of May, 1861, that it had come. And the event has shown that their declaration was true as a matter of fact. But even if it had not proved true in point of fact, it would have been no violation of any international right. It might have been a great breach of decorum, or a great national insult; but whether civil or uncivil, friendly or unfriendly, considerate or hasty, it was an act entirely within their own discretion to do or not as they pleased. We on our part might have resented it by an instant declaration of war; but when it comes up for consideration long afterwards, as a matter of national complaint, it must be viewed with more calmness. If our insurrection had in fact proved to be a mere riot which had been suppressed by our civil authorities, the belligerent rights conceded to the insurgents would have been only an expression of ill-will against us, of as little practical importance perhaps as our own recognition of Hungary, some years ago, not merely as a belligerent, but as a nation. The concession of belligerent rights to our insurgents was not the cause of the fitting out of the privateers. They were not fitted out till long after the war had become a perfectly established fact, recognized as such by the whole civilized world.

This item in one list of grievances is usually spoken of as the climax of all injuries, the crowning wrong and indignity that no merely human patience could be expected tamely to endure. Mr. Sumner denounces the declaration of neutrality as a declaration of equality between our national government and the rebel" slavemongers"; as an insult to our government; as a "moral absurdity, offensive to reason and to all those precedents which make the glory of the British name." Is there not some slight confusion of ideas in this view of the case? All that we had any legal right to demand of England was a strict and impartial neutrality;and the sum and substance of all our complaints against her government is simply that she did not faithfully fulfil that obligation. The Queen's Proclamation of Neutrality can hardly be said to have been intrinsically wrongful and offensive of itself. It was

a warning and command to her subjects to do the very thing that we insist they were bound to do, and the very thing and only thing which we had a right to insist that they should do. The fact that the rebels were "slavemongers" (to use the classical expression of Mr. Sumner) has nothing to do with the matter. So far as the obligation of neutrality was concerned, England placed both combatant parties upon equal ground. If she had done otherwise, it would not have been neutrality; if any thing in the time and manner of issuing the proclamation justifies us in saying that it was a premature concession, "a hasty recognition," we may have had cause to take offence: but it is difficult to conceive how it can be made the subject of a treaty. It cannot be paid for in money; it is too late now to resent it by a declaration of war; it is sheer absurdity to talk of retraction or apology. There is absolutely nothing that we can ask the British government to do about it,and it is impossible to understand what Mr. Sumner proposes that we should do as to this (as he seems to consider it) most important item in our list of wrongs.

By far the greatest part of the wrong which England inflicted upon us during our late struggle, is one which money cannot pay for, and which no treaty can adjust. When our rebellion, unprovoked and unreasonable as we considered it, first broke out, we flattered ourselves that we were upholding lawful authority against revolutionary violence and disorganization; that the world generally would understand that our disturbances had their origin in the domestic conflict of opinion in this country on the subject of slavery; that it was also universally known that the entire secession movement was in the interest of slavery as a permanent and dominant national interest; and that although, from our position, we claimed only to uphold and maintain the Constitution, and the existence and authority of the Union under it, and so were not at liberty directly to assail slavery in its local strongholds, we at the North at least deplored its existence, and would be glad to witness its downfall. We supposed that England also was sincerely, and on principle, a foe to slavery; but we were not at all prepared for the discovery that she was a thousand times more a foe to democracy. Nothing could have been more dismal and overwhelming than our disappointment at finding that all the sympathies of the British public and all the moral weight of British opinion were on the side of our foes. Of course, it was no matter of sur

prise that a large portion of the people of Great Britain, imperfectly informed of the merits of the case, and perhaps caring about them but little, should have bestowed their applause and sympathy upon the party which seemed numerically the weaker, yet defended its cause with such spirit, and with such a brilliant promise of success. But the difficulty lay much deeper. The cry everywhere throughout the kingdom was that the great republic had broken down, and all England clapped its hands with delight. England rejoiced and triumphed in the prospect of our downfall without reserve and without disguise. We were everywhere denounced as mere wrong-doers. Our efforts to defend our Union and preserve our nationality were stigmatized everywhere as unjustifiable and unchristian obstinacy, in prolonging a hopeless and meaningless, and for that reason a brutal and inhuman, war. There was not a word of encouragement or sympathy for us (with a very few honorable exceptions) from the periodical press-from the peerage from parliament- the clergy- the army-the navy-or the commercial classes. Bankers hastened to lend their money to the rebels, and the confederate loan was current on the London Exchange at a higher rate than that of the United States. So far as the public opinion of a country can be expressed in any mode intelligible to other nations, it was with substantial unanimity against us, and in favor of our enemies. The whole moral weight of England was upon the side of the Confederates; and she did about all that she could, short of actually declaring war against the United States, to help them gain the victory over us.

But all these things, offensive, injurious, and insulting as they were, have very little to do with any international claims or grievances that can be made the subject of a negotiation or arbitration. They show that the state of public opinion in England was all wrong; but we do not claim to call the government of that country to account for errors of that kind. We have happily passed the point of time when the mistaken public sentiment of Great Britain gave us any cause for alarm. The only point of view in which it is now a matter of any practical importance, is, that it throws some light upon the animus which inspired their languid and feeble efforts to prevent the escape of the Alabama from the port of Liverpool. It is not at all strange, in such a state of public sentiment, that the official telegram to Liverpool for the arrest of that vessel should unluckily fail to arrive till after office hours on a

Saturday afternoon. It throws some light upon Lord Russell's insolent inquiry, addressed to Mr. Adams, whether it is common in America to arrest a vessel on a charge of an intended breach of neutral law without proof. The victorious conclusion of our great contest is a sufficient answer to all cavils, to all reproaches and insults; to all the shouts of triumph over our anticipated downfall. We can bear, without a murmur, the recollection that we had not a single friend upon the bench of bishops, and that respectable bankers invested in the confederate loan. We are willing that the high church-and-state tory should dislike our institutions, if he should feel so inclined, and should speak of them in any terms that he may happen to choose. But there is a portion of the matter in dispute between the two nations which admits of being made the subject of a treaty, and which can be settled by an arbitration. It is no sufficient reason for refusing to go so far, by treaty and by arbitration on fair and equitable principles, that there were also certain other unpleasant matters which are not the subjects of a negotiation, and do not admit of being disposed of by treaty. It is something, that, so far as the claim for damages is concerned, Great Britain, to use a phrase often heard in the New England courthouses, has offered "to leave it out to men," to submit the question to a fair and impartial arbitration. Payment of the money under such circumstances would be an acknowledgment of the wrong, and apparently all the practical reparation for it that can be made. The offer to submit to arbitration is very little, if at all, short of it.

The position in which England stands at this moment is substantially this: She offers to make full reparation for all actual spoliations committed in violation of her neutral obligations, resulting from the want of suitable and proper legal provision for enforcing those obligations upon her subjects, or from the inadequate administration of such law in that behalf as was in existence; she has also invited us to join her in such new legislation, as to the duties of neutrals, as experience has shown to be needful. Under the circumstances, what more ought we to demand? and what other basis of negotiation does the nature of the case admit of?