The Sun.
London, England, 1861-11-29 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 29, 1861.

THE AMERICAN OU7RAGE ON OUR

FLAG.

MANCHESTER, Nov. 28.

On the news reaching here yesterday afternoon
that the Americans had stopped an English mail
steamer and taken the Confederate Commissioners
from on board there was a strong feeling of indig-
nation expressed, especially among gentlemen meet-
ing on the Exchange. This feeling had not under-
gone much abatement this morning; but a calmer
feeling took possession of the public mind as the day
wore on, and after the question had been discussed
with the light thrown on it by the press. There are
a great many reckless men who would at once urge
on a war to redress the alleged insult to the British
flag ; but this is by no means the general feeling, and
among some of the leading merchants the first ebul-
lition of anger is giving place to anxiety lest the
Government should too precipitately be disposed in
favour of a resort to arms.

(From the Times.)

Wherever two or three men met together yester..
day the single topic of conversation was the recent
outrage that has been offered by the Federal Go-
vernment of America to the British flag. That it
was au outrage all must admit. The manner was
one of unusual insult. The shotted guns, the
swarming boats' crews, the violence, the refusal to
afford any reason for the seizure of the passengers
taken away, were all unusual, and, as we believe,
unprecedented in cases of the exercise of that right
of search which undoubtedly belongs to a belli-
gerent nation. However clear the right may be to
search neutral merchant ships in time of war, this
is a right always odious in its exercise, and which
has always been jealously watched by those who
have been the subjects of it. It has its limits,
which have been clearly defined in a hundred
Treaties. With what formalities it shall be done,
at what distance it shall be effected, and what
shall be deemed contraband, have often formed
the occasion of war, have constantly been the
subject of conventions, and have made the staple
of debates wherein our greatest statesmen and
jurists have exhausted all the learning of the text_
writers, and have cited all the precedents which
history can afford. It has always been a point of
honour with every high-spirited nation to confine
this obnoxious interference within the very closest
limits, and to resent any departure from the strictest
observance of those rules within which an inter-
ference of the national flag brings no disgrace.
Nine-tenths of the public who read yesterday of
the attack of the American frigate upon our mail
steamer, were perhaps less startled by the fact
itself than they were by the subsequent intelligence
which it was our duty to afford, that there was a
prima facie belligerent right in the Federal Govern-
ment which might justify the act of visit and of
search.

In commenting, however, upon the facts of thie
case yesterday, we expressed strong doubts whether
the circumstances of the seizure did not put it
beyond the pale of international law. Admitting,
as we must most fully admit, the absolute right of
a belligerent ship of war to visit and search a neu-
tral merchant ship, the question still occurred—
whether, after such visit and search had been made,
the belligerent had a right to treat the neutral as
having violated her neutrality and to take out of her
such persons and things as he might see fit to adjudge
to be contraband ? Even if this proposition could
have found advocates, a further question still re-
mained—whether, without discovering any mer-
chandise or despatches contraband of war, passen-
gers having no belligerent character could be held
to be liable to capture in a neutral ship on the high
seas ? Cautiously abstaining from hazarding any
opinion upon questions of such great import, we
were content to indicate the difficulties and to wait
for some authoritative solution. We are now in a
position to state that the depositions of the officers
on board the Trent have been submitted to the law
officers of the Crown, and that their opinion has
been given to the effect that the proceedings of the
American frigate are not to be justified by the law
of nations. It is, we understand, the opinion of these
jurists that the right of the Federal Government,
acting by its officers, was confined to visiting and
searching the mail packet ; that, if any men or
things believed to be contraband of war had been
found on board of her, the proper course was to take
her into a port and submit the question to a prize
court, which would have heard evidence and argu-
ments on both sides, and would have decided
the case according to precedents and authorities.
It is not our province to enforce or modify a de-
claration which comes from the recognised source,
and by which the Government must in all cases of
this kind be bound ; but we may say that the pro-
position snms so clear that it requires only to be
stated to obtain universal assent. If this be not so,
for what reason have we prize courts, and Admi-
ralty judges, and codes of law and libraries of Ad-
miralty decisions ? If the lieutenant of a frigate or
the coxswain of a boat's crew is to decide while in
forcible possession of a neutral ship what he will
take as contraband, and what ho will leave; if an
officer while his armed men are swarming round
him upon the deck of his prize is to determine
whom he will take away prisoner, and to whom he
will please to grant leave to proceed, what need
have we for those careful institutions by which we
erect tribunals which are, so to say, denationalised,
and which are bound to decide, without favour or
partiality, between the Queen's cruisers and the
meanest foreigner who complains of injustice ? The
choice of learned and independent Admiralty judges
has been a stipulation inserted in very early trea-
ties, and a suspicion of partiality to his own coun-
trymen would touch the honour of one of our prize
court judges as nearly as a charge of corruption.
Of what use is all this if any valorous lieutenant,
with his drawn cutlass, is to stand upon a ship's
deck and decide all questions of contraband and
nationality offhand ? If such a rule could pre-
vail, or if such outrages could be submitted to,
there would be an end for ever to the freedom
of the soas, or to the safety of neutrals. Every
trumpery belligerent Power, although possessing
perhaps only a fleet which could be annihilated in
a week, would be able to plunder the commerce of
the world. Many insolent pretensions have been
made by belligerents over neutrals, and none have
been at times more insolent than ourselves; but
in our most haughty days, when Selden was assert-
ing our absolute dominion over our surrounding
seas, or when the Northern Powers were banding
together for protection against our exactions, we
never ventured to put forward such a doctrine as
this, or to insist that our naval officers should per-
form in a summary way the functions of Admiralty
Judges. Upon this point alone the seizure of the
Trent was an unjustifiable outrage. We are inclined
ourselves to favour the opinion, which has many
supporters, that even if the legal course had been
pursued, and if the Trent had been taken into port
and submitted to the arbitrament of a Prize Court,
she must have been dismissed, with compensation for
the detention. Even if despatches had been found
in her, which was not the case, it has never yet
been decided that the despatches which pass be-
tween an enemy and a neutral Government are
contraband of war ; nor has it ever been claimed
as a belligerent right to cut off neutral Powers
from all diplomatic intercourse with an enemy.
Such a claim could not stand examination upon
the grounds of principle or public policy. We are
content, however, that the question should rest
upon the more narrow, but indisputable ground, on
which our Law Officers put it, that it is contrary
to International Law for the officer of an armed
cruiser to make himself a judge at sea.

Such being the legal bearings of this outrageous
proceedinE, the question remains—what steps we
must take to remove the stain which has been cast
upon our flag. When in former days the British
chip of war Leopard unlawfully Kind &micro on

board the Chesapeake, the British Government, on
complaint being made, disavowed the act, recalled
the Admiral from the station, and expressed regret
for the bloofished which had been occasioned. On
a more recent occasion, when the Prince de Join-
ville forcibly took a pilot out of a British ship,
the King of the French felt so acutely the
wrong which had been dono in his name that
he disavowed the deed, and, we believe,
wrote an autograph letter expressing his regret.
Among civilized nations, and in countries where
a high sense of honour rules, the men who
hold the government in their hands think it is
as essential to their own fame as to that of
those whom they have offended that reparation
should be swift and ample. What the Government
of the Federal States will do remains to be seen.
The Cabinet meets to-day to consider what action
shall be taken upon the opinion of the Law Officers.
We do not wish to speculate as to what steps they
may consider necessary. If, however, it, shall ap-
pear to them so clear as it appears tons that Messrs.
Mason and Slidell were wrongfully taken when
under the protection of the British flag, there would
seem to be but one reparation which is adequate to
the affront. They must be restored with a sufficient
apology.

of being lawfully stopped, ransacked, rifled, and
perhaps made prize of war ? It is certain, after
what has happened, that this point will be investi-
gated with a fulness of anxiety and minuteness of
research extremely likely to correct any hasty im-
pressions which may be formed with regard to it
by unlearned persons. But, whatever may be the
result of this inquiry, the law officers of the Crown,
though they should say without contradi3tion that
the proceeding which we have narrated is strictly
according to law, will have extreme difficulty in
inducing the English people to acquiesce in it. In
the first place, the practical annoyance of the thing
is intolerable. If the belligerents stand, as we pro-
fess, on an equal footing as to. claim on our assist-
ance, there is clearly nothing to prevent the Sumter,
the Nashville, or some other Confederate ship of
war, from stopping and overhauling the Cunard
steamers on every inward or outward voyage, inas-
much as it may always be assumed that couriers, or
more important officials, are on their way by that
line to or from the Government of Washington.
But again, by what Government is it that the right
of search, supposing it to be capable of extension to
these unprecedented instances, is so rigorously
upheld ? By that Power which has always refused
to admit it, even in eases allowed by the practice
of all civilised nations; that Government which
went to war with us in 1812 rather than recognise
in us the slightest title to inquire for deserters
from the British navy who had taken refuge on
board their ships ; and that people who tumultu-
ously approved the conduct of one of their naval
officers who, in 1850, resisted, by open force, the
attempt of an Austrian frigate to get possession of
a Hungarian who had placed himself under the
American flag in the harbour of Smyrna. We can-
not misunderstand the meaning of such provocation
as we now receive from a country thus committed
to the widest interpretation of the rights of neu-
trality. Whatever may be the immediate result to
which it is designed to lead, it is deliberately irri-
tating and insulting. Such experiments are very
dangerous. They touch us on two points on which
we are particulary sensitive—our freedom of action
on the seas, and our reputation for political hospi-
tality. These feelings are so perilous to meddle
with that the United States cannot be too strongly
warned against abusing the occasional licence for
impertinence conferred on them by their present
weakness and distress.

(From the Birmingham Daily Post.)

Hitherto American vapourings as to the getting-up
of a war with England, or with some other European
Power, as a wholesome remedy for disunion, have
been held as mere ravings, or as empty threats em-
ployed to gain a week's popularity. A New York
mob was agreeably titillated by the idea of "lick-
ing the Britishers " without being called upon
for the men and money necessary for that some-
what hazardous attempt. We certainly never cre-
dited Messrs. Lincoln and Seward with such a de-
plorable amount of audacious folly as to suppose
that they would sanction or command an outrage
on the high seas upon a British mail steamer, car-
rying, though not actually commanded by, a cap-
tain of the navy holding a responsible position on
board, and sailing from a neutral port—an out-
rage which any nation would be justified in con-
sidering as a casus belli, if not tantamount to a
declaration of war. Yet this is precisely what has
been done, not on the spur of the moment by some
vehement Yankee captain, ignorant of the com-
monest rudiments of the law of nations—not in
some out-of-the-way creek or bay on the Southern
coast, but advisedly and deliberately ; and, to make
matters worse, as far as we can learn at present,
the indignity was offered to the British flag in our
own waters.

It remains to be seen how this will be endured
by the British Government. A strong pressure
will be brought to bear, for Englishmen can put
up with bluster, but not with blows. A meeting
was at once called in Liverpool, and perhaps
to-morrow will witness many more, insisting that
Government should at once take the matter up and
vindicate the insulted dignity of England. This can
only be done by the dismissal of the aggressor and
the liberation of the prisoners ; and we doubt
whether the popular frenzy will allow Mr. Seward
to do so, even were he inclined. A challenge has
therefore been deliberately thrown down to this
country, and if it should come to an issue the con-
flict will be remembered when the United States
are but a tradition of the past.