The conflict of the English mail ship Trent with the North 
American warship San Jacinto in the narrow passage of the Old 
Bahama Channel is the lion among the events of the day. In the 
afternoon of November 27 the mail ship La Plata brought the 
news of the incident to Southampton, whence the electric 
telegraph at once flashed it to all parts of Great Britain. The same 
evening the London Stock Exchange was the stage of stormy 
scenes similar to those at the time of the announcement of the 
Italian war. Quotations for government stock sank °*/, to 1 per 
cent. The wildest rumours circulated in London. The American 
Ambassador, Adams, was said to have been given his passports, an 
embargo to have been imposed on all American ships in the 
Thames, etc. At the same time a protest meeting of merchants was 
held at the Stock Exchange in Liverpool, to demand measures 
from the British Government for the satisfaction of the violated 
honour of the British flag. Every sound-minded Englishman went 
to bed with the conviction that he would go to sleep in a state of 
peace but wake up in a state of war. 

Nevertheless, the fact is well-nigh categorically established that 
the conflict between the Trent and the San Jacinto brings no war 
in its train. The semi-official press, like The Times and The 
Morning Post, strikes a peaceful note and pours juridically cool 
deductions on the flickerings of passion.* Papers like the Daily 
Telegraph, which at the faintest mot d’ordre roar for the British 

lion, are true models of moderation. Only the Tory opposition 
press, The Morning Herald and The Standard, hits out. These facts 
force every expert to conclude that the ministry has already 
decided not to make a casus belli out of the “untoward event”’.* 

It must be added that the event, if not the details of its 
enactment, was anticipated. On October 12, Messrs. Slidell, 
Confederacy emissary to France, and Mason, Confederacy emis- 
sary to England, together with their secretaries Eustis and 
MacFarland, had run the blockade of Charleston on the steamship 
Theodora and sailed for Havana, there to seek the opportunity of a 
passage to Europe under the British flag. In England their arrival 
was expected daily. North American warships had set out from 
Liverpool to intercept the gentlemen, with their dispatches, on this 
side of the Atlantic Ocean. The British ministry had already 
submitted the question whether the North Americans were 
entitled to take such a step to its official jurisconsults for their 
opinion. Their answer is said to have been in the affirmative. 

The legal question turns in a narrow circle. Since the foundation 
of the United States, North America has adopted British maritime 
law in all its rigour. A major principle of this maritime law is that 
all neutral merchantmen are subject to search by the belligerent 
parties. 

“This right,” said Lord Stowell in a judgment which has become famous, 

The greatest American authority, Kent, states in the same sense: 

“The right of self-preservation gives belligerent nations this right. The doctrine 
of the English admiralty on the right of visitation and search ... has been 
recognised in its fullest extent by the courts of justice in this country.” ¢ 

It was not opposition to the right of search, as is sometimes 
erroneously suggested, that brought about the Anglo-American 
War of 1812 to 1814.'°’ Rather, America declared war because 
England unlawfully presumed to search even American warships, 
on the pretext of catching deserters from the British Navy. 

The San Jacinto, therefore, had the right to search the Trent 
and to confiscate any contraband stowed aboard her. That 
dispatches in the possession of Mason, Slidell and Co. come under 

No. 24102, November 28, 1861.— Ed. 

the category of contraband even The Times, The Morning Post, etc., 
admit. There remains the question whether Messrs. Mason, Slidell 
and Co. were themselves contraband and might consequently be 
confiscated! The point is a ticklish one and differences of opinion 
prevail among the doctors of law. Pratt, the most distinguished 
British authority on “Contraband”, in the section “Quasi- 
Contraband— Dispatches, Passengers” specifically refers to “com- 
munication of information and orders from a belligerent govern- 
ment to its officers abroad, or the conveyance of military 
passengers’’.* Messrs. Mason and Slidell, if not officers, were just 
as little ambassadors, since their governments are recognised 
neither by Britain nor by France. What are they, then? In 
justification of the very broad conceptions of contraband asserted 
by Britain in the Anglo-French wars,'” Jefferson already remarks 
in his memoirs that contraband, by its nature, precludes any 
exhaustive definition and necessarily leaves great scope for 
arbitrariness.” In any event, however, one sees that from the 
standpoint of English law the legal question dwindles to a Duns 
Scotus controversy,’ the explosive force of which will not go 
beyond exchange of diplomatic notes. 

The political aspect of the North American procedure was 
estimated quite correctly by The Times in these words: 

“Even Mr. Seward himself must know that the voices of the Southern 
commissioners, sounding from their captivity, are a thousand times more eloquent 

in London and in Paris than they would have been if they had been heard in St. 
James’s and the Tuileries.” ¢ 

And is not the Confederacy already represented in London by 
Messrs. Yancey and Mann? 

We regard this latest operation of Mr. Seward as a characteristic 
act of tactlessness by self-conscious weakness simulating strength. 
If the naval incident hastens Seward’s removal from the Washing- 
ton Cabinet, the United States will have no reason to record it as 
an “untoward event” in the annals of its Civil War. 

December 2, 1861