The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-16 00:00:00

THE SUN. LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, OCIMER 16, 1853.

POLICE INTELLIGENCE—This Day.

The Attorney-General on International Law,

On Wednesday Sir Roundell Palmer addressed the
electors of Richmond, in the Town Hall. He touched
on various topics, and especially on the relations of
Englan3 to the American war. After alluding to
the different opinions held in this country on the
war, and remarking that sympathy with the South
was not incompatible with a friendly feeling towards
the North, he came to the part which our Govern-
ment had taken in the matter. Our Government
had felt itself bound, in the first place, to recognise
facts, and, in the second place, to do nothing to ad-
vance them. We heard a great many people say,
" The Government have recognised the South as
belligerents"—that is, as States carrying on lawful
war---`‘ why not go on and recognise their inde-
pendence ?" Now he said those who asked such a
question were totally ignorant of the principle on
which the Government did recognise the South as
belligerents, and at the same time ignore their in-
dependence. There was no doubt that the Southern
States were States exercising government for them-
selves and in themselves for the time being, and
that they were carrying on war on their own and
sole account. Our Government recognised these
things as facts established, but be it remembered
that they recognised the South as belligerents in so
far only that they had no control over the events
that had led the South to assume that position, and
the Government were shaping their conduct in the
best manner they could according to the laws of their
own country and according to the laws of nations.
They gave them no privileges as such, they wished
to God they were not belligerents, but being so, they
did not refuse to take notice of the fact. The Ame-
ricans themselves, the Northerners, who complained
sometimes that we had given the South a premature
recognition as belligerents, forgot that unless the
South were belligerents, they could not have main-
tained
the blockade against the South, nor against
ships, guns, powder, awl. all that was known as the
munition of war. Therefore, it was as necessary for
their purposes, as for the purposes of the South,
and above all for our purposes, that our position
should be understood, and not be of an equivocal
character. There was nothing more important than
that we should regard the laws, rules, and regula-
tions of war as applicable between the parties and
ourselves as a neutral nation taking no part in their
quarrels. As to our recognising the independence
of the South, we should ask ourselves, " Have they
established finally their independence 9" While there
is this furious war raging, whilst battles are being
fought from day to day, whilst we see one great city
of the South, the city of New Orleans, in the pos-
sion of the Northerners, and Charleston every day
threatening to fall into their hands, when no person
can really predict either the duration or the result
of the contest, to say that we are to recognise the
independence of the South was to say " You must
pronounce judgment beforehand," that we are really
to take sides and not to wait and see whether these
states can establish their independence or not—(ap-
plause)—without waiting for the event, we deter-
mine that they will and shall be, and consequently
call them independent before they are. Those who
demand we should do it, had we done it, would have
gone on to say, " What is the use of us calling them
independent unless you go on and make them so."
(Cheers.) How, in what way should we be better
for that ? Should we get more cotton ? Should we
break the blockade ? Would the dreadful carnage
cease ? Giving them words was not what was
wanted ; the wanted action ; they wanted to stop
the war. If we gave recognition in words merely,
without altering out conduct in other respects, we
should be holding ourselves up to the scorn of Eu-
rope, doing very little real benefit to the Southerners,
and at the same time giving just offence to the
Northerners, against whom we should be pro,
nouncing a verdict prematurely. If the course of
events should really establish their independence,
if the hostile armies of the North be with-
drawn from their soil, if they should ever get
into that situation which our American
colonies found themselves in when they formed
the United States, of course we should
then recognise them. But we wanted the fact to
be settled first. To recognise their indepen-
dence before that settled fact was to say we wished
to bring about that which has not taken pace, and
while pretending to be neutral we should be plainly
demonstrating that we did not mean to be bound by
the conditions of neutrality. The feeling which it
was thought existed in this country towards the
South was explainable in this way—it was the
fashion of Englishmen to sympathise with the brave
without troubling themselves very much about close
inquiry into politics, especially when the brave were
seen to be contending against great odds for liberty
and independence. It might be recollected that
there was a case in point a few years ago. The Go-
vernment of Hungary was in the hands of insurgents.
In many great battles those insurgents prevailed
over the armies of Austria amid almost the universal
sympathies of Europe. It was not until another
great power, violating the neutrality it had pre-
viously maintained, threw its sword into the scale,
that the cause of Hungary was defeated. Did any-
body ask that we should recognise the independence
of Hungary whilst the contest was raging? What-
ever were our sympathies Hungary could not be
independent until it acquired independence, which
it never did. And yet, actually, while the contest
was raging, the United States sent an ambassador
over to Pesth with offers of recognition, and that
ambassador had the mortification of finding himself
just too late, Hungary in the meantime having be-
come entirely subjugated. Was this a dignified
situation for a great nation ? Was that a situation
in which England ought to place herself? No, un-
questionably not; we must wait patiently, praying
that the devoutly contest in America may soon
terminate. And, let who will abuse us, whatever
pressure may be put upon us, we must be deter-
mined to do this, and nothing but this, which we
believe our duty, applying the best and fairest test
to the case—consider what we should like to be
done to ourselves if we were in similar circumstances.
(Hear.) Now, our Government had, up to this
point, acted upon that principle. Our Government
acted upon this principle when the question arose
regarding the assertion of maritime rights,
the rights of war by the vessels of the United States
against the shipping of this country. We would
not for a moment endure that they should invent
new powers, that they should transgress the laws
of nations, and violate the hospitality of England
by attacking, upon the wide seas, our ships which
happened to have on board persons supposed to be
on an expedition hostile to the interests of the
North. The whole country was prepared, much as
we deplored the necessity of it, instantly to vindicate
its honour, and to go to war rather than tolerate
such a proceeding. They were bound to obey ; and,
when it had come to a question of submitting, on
our part, to the established laws of war, ship after
ship in attempting to run the blockade having been
taken from us, and about which all sorts of stories
ware told in the papers, though in many cases there
might be a real doubt about thejustice of the seizure,
we had always said " We will boar for America
what America bore for us under the same circam-
stances,—we must have this matter investigated by
prize courts according to the laws of nations, and if
these courts decide against us, we must submit to it,
unless we can prove some gross and manifest injus-
tice done by them to us which we would not have
practised ourselves." He was bound to say in jus-
tice to the United States that our Government had
not as yet been able to find any such gross or mani-
fest injustice. He believed they had asserted the
laws of war about as strictly as we did, and not
more strictly, and we had therefore submitted in
good faith. Some of the decisious might seem to
us harsh, when compared with what was done
in England with regard to the ships of neutrals
when war was carried on by ourselves, and what
to administer again if un-
we may be obliged
happily war should occur again. It would be
statesmen of America do
Nt,eortyseseu surprising if
acted
theete din
good faith and in honour
towards them, for on their account, as well as for
the sake of our own nation, Government had
endured some obloquy from powerful and wealthy
citizens who had an interest in carrying
on 'trade with the Southern States, and who
endeavoured in many instances to carry it on with-
out for ene moment considering the trouble and
anxiety they cause the Government, or the peril in

which they put the nation. He believed he might
venture to state, however, that the Government
would rather venture to endure the obloquy, or even
relinquish office, than fritter away the nation's time
and strength in an endeavour to put aside the
blockade which unhappily causes so much serious
inconvenience and loss to this country, inasmuch as
by so doing we should be abrogating the very course
we ourselves had adopted, when in the position of
belligerents, and when to the uttermost we took
advantage of those rights of war which some people
would deny to the North. There was one other
subject on which the conduct of our Government
also deserved a remark. We know very well that
it is perfectly lawful for the citizens of a neutral
country to trade with both parties if they can. It
is also lawful to sell anything which either party
would take in the way of merchandise, powder,
shot, guns, or any other things; and we had on
both sides had customers, and sold a great many
articles of that description. But there was, on the
other hand, a limit to all that, and it was not con-
sistent with the duty of a neutral nation to supply
the means of carrying on war as a Government to
either party, or to promote warlike expeditions in
its harbours, or send ships of war from its shores;
and in ender to prevent such things from being
done—which undoubtedly we should have reason to
protest against if done to us, and which could hardly
be carried on by any nation on a large scale pro-
fessing neutrality without involving it in war—we
bad got a law which may or may not be easy to con-
strue, but which certainly was intended to prevent
these things. We all knew as a matter of fact that
the Confederate States, had endeavoured to make this
country the basis of their maritime operations. Our
Government in perfect good faith said this, "We
will not permit anything to be done which can
be shown to be a violation of our own laws or of
the laws of nations ; we cannot go beyond our laws
or the laws of nations, but we will do all we can
to prevent the evasion of either one or the
other, not caring whether one party or the other
benefits by it, not balancing the relative strength or
trying to alter it, or permitting it to be altered, but
simply performing our obligations according to what
is dictated by our own domestic legal enactments,
end according to the received laws of nations."
(1-lear, hear.) The Americans had complained of the
escape from this country of the well known Alabama,
which, as we know, had committed great ravages
upon their commerce, and of other ships, said also
to have left England for the same purpose. They
spoke as though it was a very easy thing for the
Government to prevent that sort of thing being done,
whereas it was a most difficult thing ; and it was re-
markable that although their Government in former
wars had not shown any want of will to prevent the
same thing occurring, he was not aware that they
had ever succeeded in preventing it in one single
instance, because, although several cases were
brought into their courts of law of ships which had
gone out of their harbour commissioned by other
belligerent Powers, and taken prizes on the seas,
they were taken notice of only because they had the
boldness to come with their prizes into the ports out
of which they had in the first instance sailed. There-
fore, it would not be reasonable for them to hold our
Government responsible for every evasion of our
laws to their disadvantage. On the other hand, he
hoped and believed that the people of the country at
large would not be inclined to identify themselves in
feeling with those merchants of ours, who seemed to
think they were bound by no obligation to our laws
at ail, and it was perfectly fair for them, if they
chose, to carry on a trade with a belligerent Power,
while at the same time they knew that Government
were anxious for the sake of the nation to preserve
a strict neutrality. (Hear, hear.) He did not think
that
W laws,and the pert of patriotic Englishmen, loyal to
their
having a true view of the interests
of the country. Though perfectly conscious of the
great difficulties of bringing the laws to bear by
complete and conclusive evidence in cases of this
kind, where every artifice is used for the pur-
poseaaWs
of disguise and evasion, he had every confi-
dence that the people of this country would
approve the Government in the measures they had
teljPkernavtao make it clear and plain that those proceed-
ings were perpetrated without the will, connivance,
or consent of those who are responsible for the go-
vernment of the country. (Hear.) Let him, in con-
casia, remind them of the two great things which,
blythaecourse the foreign policy our Government
had hitherto pursued in this American war they
hoped to secure—two things, which brought to
them
inestimable blessings it' they go together—
peace
and honour. They desired to maintain peace,
but of course only upon honourable terms. (Cheers.)
He thought that those who had had the advantage
of serving under Lord Russell and Lord Palmerston
at this most momentous crisis may look back with
satisfaction, if not with pride, upon the manner in
which the foreign affairs of this country had, on the
whole, been administered. They had ever been for-
ward in maintaining the cause of freedom through-
out the world, preferring to do so not less by moral
influence than by non-intervention, believing it
possible to recognise peace at home with honour
abroad,
but that it was only possible to do so by a
polioperfectly disinterested, perfectly self-deny-
y
g
• Perfectly upright, straightforward, and hon-
ourable.
la
They had no by-object, no end or aim of
their own to serve. All they wished to do was their
duty, and to preserve the peace of their country and
the peace of the world. If they could do this, and
do it with consistency and honour in these difficult
times—it had been done hitherto, and he believed it
could be done yet by persevering in the same course
—he was sure we should owe a deep debt of grati-
tude, whether we acknowledged it or not, to the
Government, and he believed this debt of gratitude
was felt and acknowledged by the people at large.