s
Government. It was matter of surprise, therefore, to find subsequently
that the engagement of persons within the United States to proceed to
Halifax, in the British Province of Nova Scotia, and there enlist in the
service of Great Britain, was going on extensively, with little or no
disguise. Ordinary legal steps were immediately taken to arrest and
punish parties concerned, and so put an end to acts infringing the
municipal law and derogatory to our sovereignty. Meanwhile suitable
representations on the subject were addressed to the British Government.

Thereupon it became known, by the admission of the British Government
itself, that the attempt to draw recruits from this country originated
with it, or at least had its approval and sanction; but it also appeared
that the public agents engaged in it had "stringent instructions" not to
violate the municipal law of the United States.

It is difficult to understand how it should have been supposed that
troops could be raised here by Great Britain without violation of the
municipal law. The unmistakable object of the law was to prevent every
such act which if performed must be either in violation of the law or in
studied evasion of it, and in either alternative the act done would be
alike injurious to the sovereignty of the United States.

In the meantime the matter acquired additional importance by the
recruitments in the United States not being discontinued, and the
disclosure of the fact that they were prosecuted upon a systematic plan
devised by official authority; that recruiting rendezvous had been
opened in our principal cities and depots for the reception of recruits
established on our frontier, and the whole business conducted under the
supervision and by the regular cooperation of British officers, civil
and military, some in the North American Provinces and some in the
United States. The complicity of those officers in an undertaking which
could only be accomplished by defying our laws, throwing suspicion over
our attitude of neutrality, and disregarding our territorial rights is
conclusively proved by the evidence elicited on the trial of such of
their agents as have been apprehended and convicted. Some of the
officers thus implicated are of high official position, and many of them
beyond our jurisdiction, so that legal proceedings could not reach the
source of the mischief.

These considerations, and the fact that the cause of complaint was not a
mere ca