The Sun.
London, England, 1864-02-17 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

llEttatb.--The maxim enunciated by Grotius,
" Hostem esse qui faciat quod /testi placet," as one
which should regulate the conduct of neutrals
towards belligerents, has been strangely disregarded
by her Majesty's Government in their treatment of •
the Confederate States. Lord Russell's theory of
neutrality appears to consist in complacency to the
strong belligerent, and contempt to the weak. When
it is possible to strain international or municipal
law to the despite of the Confederates Lord Russell
exhibits extraordinary energy and determination.
Violation of British territory, hostilities carried
into British waters in utter contempt of the
rights and lives of British subjects, provoke from
him but a feeble remonstrance ; but when Federal
interests are threatened no language can be too
strong and no action too determined. The guise of
a faintly disputed legality is sufficient justification
for a blow to be dealt to the Confederates with the
prospective reward of an approving smile, or, what
is perhaps more likely, of a short intermission of
bluster, from the Federals. The last esomplifici-
Lion of Lord Russell's peculiar view of neutrality
is the case of the Tuscalooza. The Tuscaloosa, a
Confederate cruiser, was seized by the Govern-
ment of the Cape of Good Hope, under orders
from home, in Simon's Bay, on the 27th of
December last. She was formerly called the Con-
rad, but after her capture by the Alabama she was
rechristened, and converted into a man of war by
Captain Semmes for the service of the Confederate
State. Some three months ago she had been allowed
to remain unmolested in the harbour of Simon's Bay,
and had been recognised by the authorities there as
a Confederate man of war. She is commanded by
Lieut.:Lowe, who reported that since her last visit
the Tuscaloosa had been cruising between the Cape
and Brazil, and had spoken nearly one hundred
vessels. But of that number only one was a Fede-
ral, which, having an English cargo on hoard, was
released on giving a bond. Thus no act has been
committed on her part which can render her more
liable to seizure than she was three months ago.
Lieutenant Lowe, in full confidence in his right to
British hospitality, came to Simon's Bay with the
intention of getting the bottom of his vessel re cop-
pered and of taking in supplies. But on the day
after his arrival, the admiral, Sir Baldwin Walker,
dispatched from the flag ship a lieutenant and a
boarding party of twenty-five men to take posses-
sion in the Queen's name. Lieutenant Lowe imme-
diately lodged with the admiral a formal protest
against the seizure, which protest it appears, has been
forwarded to the Home Government. And the United
States consul, on the other hand, lodged a claim tothe
vessel on behalf of her former owners, which claim
has apparently been recognised by the Government,
as he has been informed by the authorities that the
Tuscaloosa will only be detained until she can be
handed over to them. The proposition is indisput-
able that when a ship is captured it is the duty of
the captors to send her into some convenient port
belonging to themselves for adjudication. But this
proposition can only refer to belligerents who have
some ports to which they can bring their prizes.
All the ports:of the Confederate States are blockaded,
so that the commanders of Confederate men of war
have been compelled to constitute themselves prize
tribunals, and to adjudicate upon the vessels which
they hay e captured, simply because it is out of their
power to bring them before a more regularly consti-
tuted court. It is said that the point of difference
bet ween the legal authorities of the Cape and this
country is whether Captain Semmes is competent to
condemn prizes without taking them before the
usual prize tribunals. If the Tuscalooza is not legally
condemned she has not become, by the rights of war,
the property of the Confederate Government, and
her owners may claim her as their property. If,
on the other hand, she was legally condemned, she
is entitled to all the privileges accorded by neutrals
to belligerents, and, amongst others, to the refuge
of our ports and to such supplies which are not of a
warlike character. Lord Russell has clutched with
his usual avidity the opportunity to inflict an injury
on the Confederate cause, If special pleading could
prove that Captain Semmes could not constitute a
legal tribunal for the adjudication of prize, a blow
would be dealt to the Confederates and a favour
conferred upon their antagonists. But we have
yet to learn that the Government of one nation can,
by any stretch of international law, dictate to the
Government of another nation which is recognised
by her as a belligerent, what tribunals it shall con-
stitute prize courts. Captain Semmes claims to con-
stitute such a court by virtue of a special authority
from his Government; and surely his Government
has no less authority to appoint Captain Semmes a
judge of prize than the Federal Government has to
make Judge Betts the principal performer of judi-
cial farces in these very matters in the District
Court of New York. There is no regular interna-
tional, or even, says Vattel, municipal court to ad-
judicate upon questions of lawful prize or capture.
This is a jurisdiction assumed by the Sovereign, in
whom the right and power of declaring war and
peace is vested. In Great Britain the power to de-
cide questions of naval prize is delegated by the Sove-
reign to the Judge of the Admiralty Court, before
which tribunal it can only, in the first instance,
be brought. In like manner in the Confederate
States the Government de facto is equally em-
powered to delegate its power to such persons or
tribunals as they choose; and other nations can
have no right to dispute their authority. It so hap-
pens, from the peculiar circumstances of the Con-
federate State, that the court so constituted differs
from that of other powers. Bat for that reason,
unless Captain Semmes's proceedings were charac-
terised by gross injustice, their authority is not,
therefore, to be impugned. The Tuscaloosa, after
being condemned as a prize, was duly commissioned
for the Confederate service, and thenceforward was
entitled to all the immunities of a ship of war, one
of which is freedom from arrest. There is peculiar
inconsistency in her present seizure, as she has once
been recognised by the authorities as a man of war;
and it is questionable whether they are not estopped
by their own former act of recognition from now
proceeding against her. rlowever, whatever may
be the ultimate result of the protest made by Lieut.
Lowe to the Home Government, the delay c nse-
quent upon all legal proceedings will have produced
the desired result. l'he Confederate cruiser will be
under an embargo for some months to come, and
the Federal merchant vessels, whom their Govern-
ment are too weak to protect, will enjoy an immu-
nity from seizure under Lord Russell's protecting
cegis,

TIMES.—Mr. Gladstone introduced his bill for the
better Collection of Taxes, which was read a second
time on Monday night, in a speech which was a
miracle of ingenuity. Few could have supposed that
there existed on this dry ground so many varied
materials of moral and imaginative interest. It is
true that the greater part of mankind are hopelessly
ignorant as to the nature of the gulf between the
tax collector and the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
and how it is bridged over. The tax paid and the
receipt filed, no one cares to know what becomes of
the money, except that one occasionally reads in the
papers the portentous account of a collector having
disappeared, and the taxes having actually to be
levied again. An event so hideous we class with a
conflagration or an attack of hydrophobia—a cala-
mity that only occurs to one in ten thousand, or not
so many. But the general public now learns from
Mr. Gladstone that there is a world of existence, of
incident, and of excitement in that fiscal hierarchy
of which the collector, with his iron pen, his ink-
bottle, and his book, is the humble messenger and
representative ; and that in it there are grievances,
jealousies, opportunities of spite and persecution.
and room for catastrophes, even to the chance of
whole parishes being laid under unknown
collectors against their will, plundered whole-
sale, and compelled to make good the defalca-
tions of men whom they had no hand in ap-
pointing. That taxpayers, indeed, should suffer
grievances is intelligible and probable ; but that
parishes, commissioners of land-tax, assessed taxes,
and income-tax, clerks, assessors, and even col-
lectors, should be actually suffering untold wrongs,
is a revelation which the world was hardly prepared
for. It is a new source of interest, and a new field
of sympathy. In the almost utter exhaustion of
domestic incidents our novelists might find a new
world in Mr. Gladstone's disclosures. A general
officer or a lady of rank compelled by a rejected
assessor, or a jealous Board of Commissioners, to
collect taxes and to sell up half the neighbourhood,
being thrice obliged to abandon the London season,
a Continental tour, and still more interesting en -
gagements, bat taking a just revenge by bolting
with the money and leaving all the neighbourhood
to pay their taxes over again, the surveyor to go
into the Gazette, and the clerk to commit suicide,
would, at least, have the claim of novelty, and
a dedication to Mr. Gladstone would secure a
large and entehusiastic class of readers. For our
part, we will not rush in where the veil is so
recently raised, and where Mr. Gladstone him-
self cannot answer for the temper of the agen-
cies he has brought to light. Our interest is
that of the taxpayer. In that capacity
we are
quite content to have no voice in the appointment
of the collector, particularly as we recognise the
principle involved in the present system of volun-
tary assessment, that so long as the Treasury does
not appoint the collector it will not be answerable
for his defalcations. Of course we consider it an
object to secure that the ghost of a tax once laid, it
shall not revisit us. Then, too, we cannot but ac-
knowledge the simplicity and economy of making
one set of efficials do all the work. On one point
there must still be a difference of opinion; or rather,
as Mr. Gladstone says, a decided objection, for the
present, to collection by the officers of the Inland
Revenue. In many places the office of collector is