The Sun.
London, England, 1861-12-03 00:00:00

protest against their arrest and delivered it to Cap
_ _

tain Wilkes for his Government, The Trent then
resumed her voyage, taking:with her Mrs. Slidell,
her daughters and sons, and Mrs. Eustis and her
two children. The husband of the latter lady was
member of Congress for Louisiana, and is an able
and amiable man ; he is in delicate health, and was
proceeding to Europe as much to enjoy quiet and
procure medical treatment as to engage in politics.
His wife is the only child, I believe, of Mr. Corco-
ran, the opulent banker of Washington. Of Mr.
Mason and Mr. Slidell and of their mission enough
has been said already. They are now in Fort
Warren, and the whole country rings with joy at
the news that enemies so skilful, so energetic, so
accomplished should by this unexpected stroke of
daring be placed in the power of the United States
when it seemed that their mission must inevitably
have prospered. But they have ceased to be "rebels."
Their forms expand in their dungeon. Instead of
being the disloyal citizens of the rebelliousprovinces
of the United States, which they were when they

entered the British packet, they are the recognised
"ambassadors of a belligerent and independent na-
tionality !" For this is the violence avenged, and
thus, at the very moment of its commission, are the
authors of the outrage hoisted by their own petard.
Joy at the news, then astonishment, then a general
inquiry, " What will England say ?" Then a few
more began to think and count the cost of Slidell
and Mason. Some said," It's all right ; we'll make an
apology, but we can't give up the prisoners." Others
wondered what Lord Lyons would do or Mr. Seward
would say. Others abused Englond in anticipation
as a safe measure under all circumstances; a few
threatened terrible things—like a writer, an officer
of the Congress, who this morning invites all the
Monarchs of Europe generally to come on if they
like and join the South, in the Jefferson Brick
style. The streets buzzed with the talk, and the
hotel roared with it, and the bar rooms were full of
it. Among the crowd all was delight and excite-
ment. But the Cabinet Council which was held im-
mediately was not so radiant. Visits were ex•
changed among the foreign Ministers; they all
called on Lord Lyons. The domestic Ministers, the
Frer ch Princes, the Generals were also greatly
moved, and some there were who did not conceal
their dread of the consequence of an act so violent
and so strange. There was a question continually

arising, " What will the people say in England ?
How will they take this, I wonder ?" But Sunday
intervened, and time was given to the Government
to take up a definite line, and to suggest to their
organs some form of vindication. The consequence
was that all the papers began to speak of it as the
most natural and ordinary thing in the world to
board a mail steamer and take " ambassadors" out

of her. Then Slidell and Mason became at once
" ambassadors" of a" belligerent Power" on board
a neutral vessel; or sometimes curiously enough,

they were made " contraband of war." Wheaton
was consulted ; there was a great rush after Vattel

and our old friends Puffendorf and Grotius ; bu
these honest gentlemen could not throw much Ugh
on the matter, as an act of that sort never entered
into their heads. De llautefeuille and Wheaton
were in men's mouths and hands, and a very extra-
ordinary farrago of law and nonsense was
the result, as may be seen by looking
into most of the American papers which refer to the
matter. The base of the argument in justification
is to
be f'3"4(l in an article of the National Intelli-
gences of Monday,eearnd that article is founded on a
misconception
passages in Wheaton and
ignorance or supprtn
this singular result from the
others. But there is
good for anything, 11, tjjeaasnning—that, if it is
ofetheStates acknowledges
the belligerent character Confederate States,
and has formally declared that
~tastr)s. Slidell and
Mason are ambassadors.
"Rebels" t
of
the juris-
diction of the State against which thtey r
but political offenders, entitled to the protection
the neutral flag under which they sail as fully and
indisputably as they are entitled to the protection of
the laws and of the flag of England or of the United
States in one of their streets. It is singular enough,
too, that the Americans above all people should be
the first to offer such an outrage upon that principle,
and to inflict such a wound on their own Constitu-
tion at the same time. If there were any nations
in the world which could accept this new doctrine
with advantage, it would be England and France,
for they would have the undisputed police of the
seas, and the United States would be estopped from
any objection. But we are too old for these new
teachings. Dr. Phillimore will be astonished to
find that he is quoted as an authority to justify the
act, inasmuch as he says "It is indeed competent
to a belligerent to stop the ambassador of his enemy
in his passage," and further observes the carriage
of military persons in the employ of a belligerent or
of (Allele.' communications leads to the confiscation
let the
and whereby, say the Arne-
ful thPapers,
at the i the English nation be very thank-
York, Trent was not seized, towed to New
and confiscated.
I apprehend, however, that

Dr. Phillimore may easily show he never meant
anything of the kind, and that his remarks and
dicta apply to cases where neutral vessels are espe-
cially engaged in the employ of the belligi rent, or
are employed ad hoc so as to destroy their neu-
trality. Now, it will be observed that Wheaton
(ed. 1855, p. 570) expressly states that mail vessels
and vessels engaged in the postal service are exempted
from the operation of the penal code which applies to
other neutral vessels, and that, even admitting, with
the United States, that Messrs. Slidell and Mason
are " ambassadors " of the " Confederate States,"
though we have not recognised them yet, and that
they are not political offenders, it is beyond all show
of contradiction that they should have been perfectly
inviolate on board the Royal Mail steamer Trent,
and that they were and are entitled to the protec-
tion of the British flag. Although the United States
refuses the right of search in times of peace, it
claims it now. On what grounds ! " Because," says
the Intelligencer, "itis a belligerent right." But
the United States is not engaged in a war with a
belligerent Power; it is engaged suppressing, as it
asserts, a mere domestic rebellion. Thus the States
are caught in their own net. They cannot, in the
face of the world, blow hot and cold as they list.
The second point of law stated in the organ of the
Cabinet is settled by the very words of Wheaton,
as well as by the practice of all civilised nations.
The third lands Slidell and Mason as ambassadors
of the Confederate States—now recognised and
placed as a belligerent Power—in a prison.
Wheaton, it will be observed, relies on the judgment
of Sir W. Scott in the case of the Maria; but any
one who remembers that case will see at once it had
no relation, earthly or otherwise, to the present
seizure. With the ward " fraudulently" staring
the writer in the face in reference to the carrying
of despatches:by a neutral, and the plain context of
the passage that the vessel was engaged for that
purpose in a fraudulent way, it required no small
amount of coolness or crassness to put it as a case
in point in the desperate effort of the United States
writer to turn the rebels Slidell and Mason into
the ambassadors of the Confederation. It surpasses
comprehension that in their blind anger the jour-
nalists should gravely maintain that in effect any
neutral mail vessel sailing from one neutral port to
another neutral port, which contains in its ordinary
mail a despatch from a belligerent, can be seized
and confiscated by the vessels of the other bellige-
rent. The carrying of despatches of an enemy re-
sident in a neutral country is no offence whatever
by the neutral. and Sir W. Scott distinctly points out
in that very judgment that it is not a legal trans-
port of persons or things belonging to a belligerent
from one neutral port to another to which he alludes,
but being " engaged in the transport service of the
enemy, or in the conveyance of military persons in
his employ, or the carrying of despatches ;" these
are acts of hostility which subject the vessel to con-
fiscation. The New Tor h Times is, if possible, still
weaker in its law and more unhappy in its argu-
ments, when it kindly states that the Royal West
India Mail Steam Packet Company ought to be very
"grateful to the commander of the San Jacinto for
his leniency in not bringing their vessel into a
United States' port, where she might have been con-
demned and sold as a lawful prize for the flagrant
breach of neutrality of which she has been guilty."
It is equally well for us that we are allowed to fly
our flag at all. The Sumter might afford some very
curious commentaries on these doctrines if she were
but to stop one of our ships and take Mr, Thurlow
Weed or Mr. Everett out of her. Mr. Adams had
better not venture to cross from Dover to Calais in
the mail steamer if the Sumter be near, and Mr.
Dadley Man must now take good head to his marine
excursions if there be a United States steamer in

the way.
If we could afford to make such a precedent as
this, the submission would be taken here as an evi-
dence of the right of the United States to do as it
pleased in making international law, and we should
be told to be very grateful that it was no worse.
Heaven forbid tbat I or any one should say one
word to increase the irritation and the difficulties
which must arise out of this most untoward and
unfortunate transaction. Let the case rest as it
stands until wo hoar what view is taken of it in
England. There will be scarcely any view but one
adopted by foreign nations. Arbitration may save
us from the horrors of a quasi civile bellum with
the United States, but it is scarcely creditable for
an ancient people to submit to such an adjustment
of one of the privileges for which they have spent
so much of their best blood on the plains and
oceans of the world. I will say more, and I say
it with sorrow. In the present temper of the Ame-
rican people no concession can avert serious com-
plications very long, or the surrender of all the
boasted privileges of the Civis _Romanus. I append
my diary, written before this news was known, and
therefore containing matters of less importance, but
brought up also to this date, and not destitute, per-
haps, of a little interest in a quieter time :
TUESDAY, Nov. 12,
Any man who expects that the acts of Great Bri.
tain will not be misconstrued and her intentions
misrepresented, either wilfully or maliciously, by a
large portion of the people of the United States,
who are under the influence of the press or of their
passions and traditions, will be certainly disap-
pointed. But I should be sorry to think there was
not—indeed, I know there is—a larger body still of
the population of Anglo-Saxon origin and sympa-
thies who are desirous of maintaining friendly rela-
tions with the old country, and whose power is
rarely felt till the moment of imminent danger of
rupture arrives in consequence of the acts of the
politicians or violent passions of the multitude.
Great Britain should nevertheless look the fact in
the face—it is to my mind incontrovertible that the
most certain way of achieving distinction or success
in politics in the United States is by directing popu-
lar animosity against the British Government and
what, in their quaint ignorance of the country, they
style the cotton aristocracy of England. Far be it
from me to say a word to add to the national
estrangement, which is the work of Americans, not
our own, and which is in effect probably wider at the
surface than it is beneath ; but in the interests of
truth I feel compelled to state the convictions of my
mind, that there are elements of danger to friendly
relations in the state of feeling which has been
aroused by the falsehoods and incessant outrages on
decency of some organs of the press and by the
leaders of the many-headed. Already success, such
as it is, begins to turn men's minds to the future of
this vast aggregation of men in arms, and there are
hints that they may be employed to illuminate the
close of their career by some brilliant campaign
against a foreign enemy. Although there is a ten-
dency to braggadocio among the people, there is no
use in closing our eyes to the existence of the spirit
of which such mouthful threats and causeless menaces
are the unmistakable manifestations. The papers
contain the intelligence that Mr. Charles Green, one
of the first merchants in Savannah, has been arrested
on a charge of buying munitions of war for the Con-
federates during his recent visit to England. Mr.
Green is an English subject long resident in Savan-
nah, and, as I was his guest during my stay in that
city, I can testify to the moderation of his senti-
ments, as all who know him can testify to the worth
and excellence of his private character. One of the
most serious charges which can be adduced against
this system of arbitrary arrests is that the friends
of the accused cannot exert themselves to investi-
gate the accusations, and that without proof, per-
force, they must
affect the homnor.urciaraneeedncy,
h atrhaecyt e
raorfe
mtrue
of
twhenhehi thheey
syt
been arrested, and hisswpiafrettner, Mr. Lowe, has also
position.
been forwarded here
in a custody. This gentleman is
ma natu;alised
Scotebman, and I
doubt
has
Statesor
everbeco
declared his inten-
tionni veryof the much
United if
te he e
citizen
of becoming one.
The most recent letters from New Orleans state
that great irritation prevails among the populace
against British subjects, because her Majesty's Go-
cernment has not recognised the Confederate States
Or forced the blockade ; and it is urgently demanded
that a raan-of•war be sent to protect the lives and
property of the subjects of the Crown. These ap-
prehensions may not be well founded, but it could
not do any harm to let the Union Jack be seen in
the Mississippi now and then • At this moment
they gaol in tbe
there are three British sailors lyi
Are men of
city, for no offence except that