into_.
The duty of naval officers is limited to visiting ships and stopping
them, if need be, to carry them before a prize court. They cannot
exercise the office of judge. In substituting the arrest of individuals
for the seizure of ships, and a military act for a judicial decree,
Captain Wilkes has given ground for the well-founded protests of
England, at the same time that he has left the way open, thank God! for
measures of reparation to be adopted by the United States.

I know very well that there would have been no less indignation at
Liverpool and London in case that the _Trent_ had been stopped on her
way and carried before American courts. Perhaps, indeed, the regular and
correct procedure would have been more deeply wounding than that of
which England complains. We may be permitted to doubt with General
Scott that "the injury would have been less, had it been greater." But
this is not the practical question, the only one that now concerns us.
The point is to get out of embarrassment; and the error committed by the
commander of the _San Jacinto_ furnishes a reasonable ground for
consenting to the liberation of the prisoners.

Far from being a humiliation to the Government at Washington, this act
of wisdom would be one of its brightest titles to glory. It would prove
that it is not wanting in moral power, that men calumniate it in
representing it as the slave of a bad democracy, incapable of resisting
the clamor of the streets, and of accepting, for the safety of the
country, an hour of unpopularity.

Let it believe us, its true friends, that in arresting Messrs. Mason and
Slidell, it has done more for the cause of the South than Generals
Beauregard or Price would have done by winning two great victories on
the Potomac and in Missouri. Messrs. Mason and Slidell are a hundred
times more dangerous under the bolts of Fort Warren than in the streets
of Paris or London; what their diplomacy would not certainly have
obtained for them in many months, Captain Wilkes has procured for them
in an hour. See what rejoicing is taking place in the camps of the
Southern partisans! They were beginning to despair; recognition, that
only chance of the defenders of slavery, seemed farther off than ever;
the recent successes of the Federal army announced the commencement of a
great change in affairs. The war was carried from the suburbs of
Washington to the heart of South Carolina itself; the only resources of
consequence remainin