ess organized in Europe.

Can it be that mail packets have the singular privilege of facilitating
such operations without failing in the duties of neutrality? If this be
true, it is worth while to have it understood, and so long as it is not
understood, we must make some allowance for belligerents who do not
consider it self-evident. It is clear that when the exercise of the
right of search was defined by precedents and treaties, mail packets did
not exist. Perhaps it would be well to lay down special regulations
concerning them. This agreement might be profitably negotiated at
present between the United States and the maritime powers of Europe. Why
should not the conflict which occupies our attention, instead of ending
in war, result in a useful negotiation? I have no doubt that the noble
overtures, the initiative of which has just been taken by General
Scott, would be approved by Mr. Lincoln. To enlarge the scope of the
present question, by causing an international progress, an emancipation
of the commerce of the world to grow out of it, would be somewhat
better, it seems to me, than to cut each other's throats and to ensure
the triumph in the middle of the nineteenth century of the most shameful
revolt that has ever broken out on earth--a revolt in favor of slavery.
England and America, these two great countries, are worthy of giving to
the world the spectacle of a generous and fruitful mutual understanding
in which a deplorable disagreement shall be swallowed up, as it were,
and disappear. Who does not see that, combined with the promulgation of
a more liberal regulation of the right of search, the satisfaction
demanded of the United States would assume a new character, and would
have many more chances of being accorded?

It is the less difficult for the English to take this ground, since the
act of the _San Jacinto_, in which the design of offending England in
particular might at first have been suspected, appears to-day under a
very different aspect. In proportion as we learn all the exploits of
this terrible vessel, its impartiality becomes less dubious. French,
Danish, and other vessels were visited by it within a few days; it is
certain that if the French instead of the English mail packet had been
carrying the commissioners and their papers, the former would have been
boarded by Captain Wilkes.

His mode of procedure was rough, and on this point apologies ought to be
made. Not indeed that England, who has ju