h that instrumentality great harm could be inflicted on the
United States and at the same time England could be guarded against
a cotton famine. To accomplish these ends she negotiated what was
little less than a hostile treaty with an Insurgent Government.
This action was initiated before a single battle was fought, and
was evidently intended as encouragement and inspiration to the
Confederates to persist in their revolutionary proceedings against
the Government of the United States. Any reasonable man, looking
at the condition of affairs, could not doubt that the public
recognition of the independence of the Confederacy by England and
France, was a foregone and rapidly approaching conclusion.

With this condition of affairs leading necessarily to a more
pronounced unfriendliness, an incident occurred towards the close
of the year which seriously threatened a final breach of amicable
relations. On the 9th of November, 1861, Captain Wilkes of the
United-States steamer _San Jacinto_, seized the persons of James
M. Mason and John Slidell, ministers from the Southern Confederacy,
and their secretaries, on board the British mail-steamer _Trent_
on her way from Havana to Kingston. Messrs. Mason and Slidell were
accredited by the Executive of the Southern Confederacy to the
Governments of England and France. Their avowed object was to
obtain the recognition by those governments of the independence of
the new Southern Republic, and their success would have been a most
dangerous if not a fatal blow to the cause of the Union. But they
were not by any recognized principle of international law contraband
of war, and they were proceeding from a neutral port to a neutral
port in a neutral vessel. The action of the officer who seized
them was not authorized by any instructions, and the seizure was
itself in violation of those principles of maritime law for which
the United States had steadily and consistently contended from the
establishment of its national life. The difficulty of adjustment
lay not in the temper or conviction of either government, but in
the passionate and very natural excitement of popular feeling in
both countries. In the United States there was universal and
enthusiastic approval of the act of Captain Wilkes. In England
there was an equally vehement demand for immediate and signal
reparation.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL AND LORD LYONS.

Lord John Russell, after rec