necessary to justify this arrest and
imprisonment.

_Mr. Seward (with suavity, but profound dignity, as if the nation
spoke)_. I have to regret that, after so long an official intercourse
between the governments of the United States and Great Britain, it
should be necessary now to inform her Majesty's ministers that _all_
executive proceedings are of the President. Congress has no executive
power or responsibility. The President constitutionally exercises the
right of suspending the writ of habeas corpus. This government does not
question the learning of the legal advisers of the British Crown, or the
justice of the deference which her Majesty's government pays to them;
nevertheless, the British government will hardly expect that the
President will accept _their_ explanation of the Constitution of the
United States!

* * * * *

Are not the following inferences legitimately to be made from a close
and calm study of the published dispatches respecting our foreign
relations with Great Britain, and in connection with much that has
transpired since their congressional publication?--

1. The British government officers were in some way prepared to expect
that the election of Mr. Lincoln would result in an attempted disruption
of the Union. The arrival of Governor Pickens in England just before the
presidential election, and his arrival in New York, and immediate
journey to South Carolina, on the day of that election, may be cited as
one of many coincidences--showing that the spirit of Cobb, Floyd, and
Thompson, if not their doings and plans, were parodied on the other side
of the Atlantic.

2. The British government were not averse to disunion from the outset,
and seized every pretext of tariff, or of inaction respecting the
rebellion, that it might quibble with the United States authority.

3. The tone of the press, ministry and people was early heard, and
echoed by Mr. Dallas to our government. Mr. Seward therefore, at the
outset, knew his position, and most opportunely and dignifiedly
maintained a bearing all the more noble because it proceeded from a
government which had taken arms against a sea of troubles.

4. The British government waited _only_ so long as international decency
technically warranted before proclaiming an acknowledgment of _civil_
war in the United States, and accepting the government of Mr. Davis as
an equal belligerent with that of Mr. Lincoln. This was a matured