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 emissary 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,
“offers the sole security that no contraband is carried on neutral ships.” >

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

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 “QuasiContraband— Dispatches, Passengers” specifically refers to “com-
munication of information and orders from a belligerent government 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 Washington Cabinet, the United States will have no reason to record it as
an “untoward event” in the annals of its Civil War.