The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-16 00:00:00

EARL RUSSELL TO MR. ADAMS.

Foreign -office May 10, 1862.
Sir,—ln the letter I had the honour to receive
from yon yesterday, you appear to me to have con-
founded two things totally distinct. The Foreign
Enlistment Act is intended to prevent the subjects
of the Crown from going to war when the Sove-
reign is not at war. Thus private persons are pie-
hibited from fitting out a ship of war in our purls,
or from enlisting in the service of a foreign state at
war with another state, or in the service of insur-
gents against a foreign sovereign or state. In
these cases the persons so acting would carry on
war, and thus engage the name of their Sovereign
and of their nation in belligerent operations. But
owners and masters of merchant ships carrying war-
like stores do nothing of the kind. If captured for
breaking a blockade, or carrying contraband of war
to the enemy of the captor, they submit to capture,
are tried, and condemned to lose their cargo. This.
is th 3 penalty which the law of nations has affixed
to such an offence, and in calling upon her Majesty's
Government to prohibit such adventures, you in
effect call upon her Majesty's Government to do that
which it belongs to the cruisers and the courts of
the United States to do for themselves. There can
be only one plea for asking Great Britain thus
to interpose. That plea is, that the blockade is itn
reality ineffective, and that merchant ships can
enter with impunity the blockaded ports. But this
is a plea which I presume you will not urge. Her
Majesty's Government have considered the blockade
as an effective blockade, and have submitted to all
its inconveniences as such. They can only hope that
if resistance should prove to be hopeless, the Con-
federate States will not continue the struggle; and
that if, on the other hand, the restoration of the
Union should appear to be impossible, the work of
devastation now going on may cease.
Her Majesty's Government can only desire the
prosperity of the inhabitants of the United States,
whatever may be the event of the present civil war.
—I am, &c., (signed) RUSSELL.
Mr. Adams replied, on May 12, in a letter which
concludes as follows:

I pray your lordship's pardon if I submit
that you appear to have entirely overlooked a
plea which I am confident enough to imagine
of no inconsiderable weight. That plea is,
that the kingdom of Great Britain endeavour,
in spirit as well as in the letter, to preserve the prin-
ciple of neutrality, if not of friendship, towards a
foreign nation in amity with it, to which it has
pledged itself. [he precise mode in which that shall
be done it does not presume to prescribe. That the
toleration of such conduct in subjects of Great Bri-
tain as I have had the pain heretofore to expose is
eu~ely a violation of that neutrality, is justly to be
inferred from the very language of her Majesty's
proclamation. For it is therein declared that pre-
cisely such acts of theirs as I have been compelled
here to complain of, are done " in derogation of their
duty to her as a neutral sovereign, and incur her
high displeasure." If such, then, be the true cha-
racter of the proceedings to which I have hitherto
called your lordship's attention, they surely merit
something more of notice from her Majesty's mini-
sters than an intimation that they will be suffered
to pass unreproved unless the punishment shall be
inflicted by the nation whom they are designed to
injure. The object of the government of the United.
States has not been to relieve itself of the duty of
vigitai ce to capture offenders against the law; it
has rather been to avoid the necessity of applying
additional stringent measures for their ow❑ secu-
rity against British subjects found to be engaged.
in such illicit enterprises, made imperative by the
conviction that no preventive co•operaticn what-
ever can be expected from her Majesty's Govern-
ment; it has rather been to avoid the risk of con-
ounding the innocent with the guilty, because alt
lappen to be involved in a general suspicion ; and
aistly, it has rather been to remove at as early a day
as may be consistently with its own safety the-
restrictions on the trade with foreign countries
•vhich these evil doers are labouring with so mucta
Industry to force it to protract. Your lordship
eaves me little hope of any co-operation of her
Majesty's Government to these ends. Nevertheless,
i trust I may be permitted to indulge the belief
t hat the time is not now far distant when the diffi-
culties thus interposed iu the way of its progress
will have been so tar removed by its own unassisted
action as to relieve both countries from the painful
necessity of further continuing the discussion
Renewing, &c.,

(Signed) CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS.
Earl Russell's reply closes the corresponnence
EARL itUSSELL TO MR. ADAMS.
Foreign-office, May 17, 1862.
do not wish to prolong this correspond-
ence, and shall only make one remark in answer to
your last letter. It the British Govt rnment, by
virtue of the prerogative of the crown, or by
tuthority of Parliament, had prohibited, and could
have prevented, the conveyance in Britisa mer-
chant-ships of arms and ammunition to the Con-
federate States, and had allowed the transport of
such contraband of war to New York and to other
Federal ports, hzr Majesty's Government would
nave departed from the neutral position they have
issumed and maintained. It, on the other hand,
her Majesty's Government had prohibited, and-
could have prevented the transport of arms and
,ininunition to both the contending parties, they
would have eeprived the United States of a great
part of the means by which they have carried 011
he war. The arms and ammunition received froth
Great Britain, as well as from otter neutral man"
tries, have enabled the United States to fit out the
formidable armies now engaged in carrying on the
war against the Southern States; while by meant;
of the blockade establish.ed by the Federal Go-
vernment the Southern States have been deprived
of similar advantages. Th..) impartial observance
of neutral obligations by her Majesty's Governmees
has thus been exceedingly advantageous to the
cause of the more powerful of the two contendieg
parties.—l am, &c.,
(Signed) RUSSELL.

KINGS AT ARMS.—Take the heralds, for example.
Here are Garter Kit g of Arms, and all his m)stio
brethren, kings, heralds, and pursuivants : Norroy and
Clarencieux, Rouge Croix, Rouge Dragon, Portcullis, and
Blue Mantle, " with hues as livoly and appellations e 0
quaint as the attendants on a fairy court." "For gorge'
ousness of attire, mysteriousness of origin, and, in fact, Ibr
similarity of origin," says the author I have just quoted?
the late Mr. Leigh Hunt, "a knave at cards is not unlike
a herald." A story is told of an Irish King of AiP
who, waiting on the B.shop of Killalee to summer;
bim to Parliament, and bang dressed, as the cere'''
mony required, in his her aldic attire, so mystified
the bishop's servant with his appearance, that not knowing
what to make of it, end carrying off but a confused nodal
of hie title, he announced him thus : My lord, hate is the
Kings of Trumps." I know that Garter King of Arms 1.
not a king at all, that his crown and his sceptre are th°
merest gewgaws, and that he is an estimable old gentlereo
who got his birth from the Duke of Norfolk, and derives 11
comfortable income from fees paid into his office on Benet'siv
hill, Doctors'-commons. I know that if I choose to bevel:4
" arms found." . . . And, finally, I cannot shut 039
eyes to the fact that the " King of Trumps" panoply--tr,
firework tabard, or san benito, all scrawled over with coat'
of arms, is an absurd and egregious one, and is when taltel
in c.)njunction with the pantaloons and patent leathers °
ordinary life, utterly ridiculous and preposterous. I l"1°a
that the last time the heralds were seen in the open air al'a
at Charing•cross, mounted on dobbins from Astley's, arils
pretending to blow trumpets they couldn't extract so
as a whistle from, the little boys hooted them, and the
Times newspaper laughed them to scorn. Why am I lei
ty
pressed now, by Garter and Norroy, Clarencieux and Roil;
Dragon, Portcullis and Blue Mantle r—kickens's ".4111
riqr Rom',