e of the ocean's
tributaries. Vessels belonging to America, and captured by the
Confederacy's privateers in the Mediterranean, could be taken into
Gibraltar, into Valetta, and into Corfu, all of which are English ports.
Those captured in the Mexican Gulf and the Caribbean could be sent into
any one of the many ports that belong to England in the West Indies.
If captured in the North Atlantic, or the Baltic, or any other of the
waters of Northern Europe, they could be sent into the ports of England,
Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. In the South Atlantic are St. Helena and
Cape Town, which would afford shelter to Mr. Davis's privateers and
their prizes. In the East Indies British ports are numerous, from Aden
to the last places wrested from the Chinese, and they would be all open
to the enterprise of the Confederacy's cruisers. In the Pacific are
the English harbors on the Northwest Coast; and in Australia there are
British ports that ought, considering their origin, to be particularly
friendly to men who should enter the navy of the Secessionists. England
has in advance provided places for the transaction of all the business
that shall be necessary to render privateering profitable to the
"lawless brood" of the whole world. Into all of her thousand seaports
could the lucky Confederates go, and dispose of their captures, just as
the old Buccaneers used to sell their prizes in the ports of the English
colonies. Nor could all the efforts of all the navies of the world
prevent privateers from preying upon our commerce, as they are to be
commissioned in foreign countries, and will sail from the ports of those
countries. The East Indian seas, the Levant, and the Caribbean are the
old homes and haunts of pirates; and under the encouragement which
England is disposed to afford to piracy, for the especial benefit
of Slavery, the buccaneering business could not fail to flourish
exceedingly. True, our Government would not allow privateers to be
fitted out in our ports, during the Russian War, to prey upon the
commerce of France and England; but what of that? One good turn does
_not_ deserve another, according to the public morality of nations so
orderly and pious as are England and France.

According to the Royal Proclamation, the blockade of any one of the
Northern ports by one of the ships of the Secessionists would be as
lawful an act as the blockade of Charleston by a dozen of the Union's
cruisers; and England allows that a privat