any such apparently insufficient basis did not avoid the mortification
of the surrender; it only deprived us of the fuller credit and
advantage which we might have secured from the act. It is to be
regretted that we did not place the restoration of the prisoners
upon franker and truer ground, viz., that their seizure was in
violation of the principles which we had steadily and resolutely
maintained--principles which we would not abandon either for a
temporary advantage or to save the wounding of our National pride.

The luminous speech of Mr. Sumner, when the papers in the _Trent_
case were submitted to Congress, stated the ground for which the
United States had always contended with admirable precision. We
could not have refused to surrender Mason and Slidell without
trampling upon our own principles and disregarding the many precedents
we had sought to establish. But it must not be forgotten that the
sword of precedent cut both ways. It was as absolutely against
the peremptory demand of England for the surrender of the prisoners
as it was against the United States for the seizure of them.
Whatever wrong was inflicted on the British Flag by the action of
Captain Wilkes, had been time and again inflicted on the American
flag by officers of the English Navy,--without cause, without
redress, without apology. Hundreds and thousands of American
citizens had in time of peace been taken by British cruisers from
the decks of American vessels and violently impressed into the
naval service of that country.

Lord Castlereagh practically confessed in Parliament that this
offense against the liberty of American citizens had been repeated
thirty-five hundred times. According to the records of our own
department of State as Mr. Sumner alleges "the quarter-deck of a
British man-of-war had been made a floating judgment-seat six
thousand times and upwards, and each time some citizen or other
person was taken from the protection of our national flag without
any form of trial whatever." So insolent and oppressive had British
aggression become before the war of 1812, that Mr. Jefferson in
his somewhat celebrated letter to Madame de Stael-Holstein of May
24, 1813, said, "No American could safely cross the ocean or venture
to pass by sea from one to another of our own ports. _It is not
long since they impressed at sea two nephews of General Washington
returning from Europe, and put them, as common seamen, under the
ordinary disci