The London times on the Mason-Slidell seizure.
It requires a strong effort of self-restraint to discuss with coolness the intelligence we publish to-day. An English mail steamer sailing under the British flag and carrying letters and passengers from a Spanish port to England, has been stopped on the high seas and overhauled. Four of the passengers have been taken out and carried off as prisoners, claiming and vainly claiming as they were being forced away, the protection of the flag of Great Britain. These are the naked facts. ********It is then true that every officer of the American navy can stop and overhaul our ships wherever they may be found, and can take out of them any persons whom he may claim to be citizens of the United States or officer of the Confederate Government? If we were to admit the Federal view of their own position it would be plain that no such right exists.
They tell us that they are not at war, but are only putting down a rebellion. They say, or said, that they are not blockading their own ports, but are simply enforcing a law which has closed the Southern ports as ports of entry. They insist upon putting their quarrel upon the same ground as if the Queen of England were putting down a rebellion in the Isle of Wight Now, if this were so, it is clear that the Federal States of America have, in stopping our mail steamer, been guilty of an act of aggression which could only be properly punished by laying an embargo on every American ship in British ports, and sweeping their little navy from the sea.
They would according to that point of view not be at war, and would have none of the rights of belligerents over neutrals. They would no more be belligerents than England was after the celebrated Smith O'Brien battle in the cabbage garden, and they would have no more right to stop our ships and carry off our passengers than we should have had to stop a French ship, and take Mr. Smith O'Brien cut of her. But this assumption of the Federal Government has been disallowed.
The world generally has refused to see in this disruption, and reconstitution of the North American Republic a more rebellion. They have regarded both republics as belligerent States. We declare neutrality between them as two warring powers. We note out a precise degree of equal consideration for the ships of war of each. In every thing but our supremacy we bear ourselves exactly equal between them. Whenever the Southern States shall have given proof of such stability, as may make it sure that they can sustain their independence, we shall doubtless recognize them, diplomatically, as we already do de facto
Unwelcome as the truth may be, it is nevertheless a truth that we have ourselves established a system of international law which now tells against us. In a high-handed and almost despotic manner, we have in former days claimed privileges over neutrals, which have at different times banded all the maritime powers of the world against us. We have insisted upon stopping the ships of war of neutral nations, and taking British subjects out of them; and an instance is given by Jefferson in his memoirs, in which two nephews of Washington were impressed by our cruisers, as they were returning from Europe, and placed as common seamen under the discipline of ships of war.
We have always been the strenuous asserters of the right of belligerents over neutrals, and the decisions of our Courts of law as they must now be cited by our law officers, have been in confirmation of these unreasonable claims which have called into being Confederates and armed neutralities against us, and which have always been modified in practice when we were not supreme in our dominion at sea. Owing to these facts, the authorities which may be cited on this question are too numerous and too uniform as to the right of search by belligerent ships-of war over neutral merchant vessels to be disputed. ‘"The only security that nothing is to be found inconsistent with amity and the law of nations, known to the law of nations,"’ said Lord Stowell, in the celebrated case of Maria, ‘"is the right of personal visitation and search to be exercised by those who have an interest in making it."’
Again, Lord Stowell, who is the storehouse of all the English law on this subject, says: ‘"Be the ships, the cargoes, and the destination what they may, the right of visit and search are the incontestable right of the bruisers of a belligerent nation. Until they are visited and searched, it does not appear what the ships or the destination are, and it is for the purpose of ascertaining these points that the necessity of this right of visitation and search exists.’
‘"This right is so clear in principle that no man can deny it who admit the right of maritime capture; because, if you are not at liberty to ascertain by sufficient inquiry whether there is property that can be legally captured, it is impossible to capture. The Navy European treaties, which refer to this right, refer to it as pre existing, and merely regulate the necessity of it. All writers upon the law of nations unanimously acknowledge it."’
