An English Opinion of the blockade.
Through the kindness of a friend, we have been placed in possession of some of the landing English newspapers, which, though not so late so had seen received, certain, nevertheless, some interesting and important editorials not previously published in this country. One of them we subjoin:[From the London Standard, Feb. 6]
The side of fast.--Another month, and the proudest of our national industry will be entirely submerged beneath the destroying flood. Already the break-winners of some hundred thousand months are dependent for their own , and that of their belongings, upon the beauty doles of the relieving officer and the spasmodic charity of employers and shopkeepers, tortured themselves by the vision of impending bankruptcy. Such of their fellows as are still earning wages cannot conceal from themselves that their wages are but a form of charity.--it does not pay the mill-owner to work, but he shudders at the prospect of some thousand fellow-beings reduced to utter penury. This cannot last long. Even if the mill-owner is willing to go on working at a loss, he must stop, because the material in which he works is unattainable. When the pleasant month of May opens, and the world is invited to admire the products of English industry and intelligence, Lancashire and Yorkshire, which have contributed so large a part to the brilliant display, will be vast tracts of hopeless pauperism, and the country, which standing on the cogs of the precipice, seems utterly careless of the danger, will itself suffer is every part from the mortification of such important members.
And all this suffering and sorrow might be averted. If strong men are wasting, and weak women and children perishing from want of sufficient nourishment, it is from no one of those decrease of fare which men can only read and bend to. The elements have not warred with man and conquered him. Neither parching heat nor biting cold has destroyed the harvests upon which we reckoned Nature has been bountiful to man; but man has set himself to neutralize her bounties — In the Southern States of the North American continent there are stored some million of bales of that raw material for the want of which the mills of Lancashire are closed, and the "bands" who used to work them are starving. The owners would gladly sell what we want to any; but a Government whose yoke they have thrown off presumes to interfere and to prolong a revengeful struggle for a dominion irrevocably lost interdicts this life-spreading commerce. Hard as it would be that innocent neutrals should bear the burden of a struggle in which they have no interest, this interdiction must be submitted to without remonstrance if that law by which the relations of nations to each other are regulated allowed as legality. --Englishmen have an inborn respect for law-- Let it bear ever so hardly upon any section of them, they offer no resistance when once its determinations are authoritatively pronounced. If the American Government could have shown that international law justified the act of Capt. Wilkes we should have bowed to the rule and stomached the outrage. It the blockade of the Southern coast were legal we must bear it with resignation, although every hour of its prolongation offered new victims to the twin demons Femmine and . But the blockade of the South by the Federal Government in a fictitious one, entitled to no recognition on the part of other nations. It is a fraud upon neutrals, and their submission to it is a criminal complicity in a gross violation of the laws of nature and nations.
Of all the requisites which go to legitimat a blockade — and the want of any one of these requisites entirely destroys its validity — the first is that the squadron alloted for the purpose of its execution must be competent to cut off all communication with the interdicted place or port. The proper deficition of a blockaded place is one against which attack is actually directed by a sufficient force. The presence of that force is, in fact, the only proper by which the neutral can ascertain the existence of the blockade a very cross-grained expositor of international law whenever he deal with England, but undoubtedly a high authority, have laid it down in a very recent publication that "a blockade is nothing but the conquest by a belligerent of the naval territory of his enemy, round the place or port which he wish a to close to commerce. Master of that portion of his adversary's possessions, he lays down laws which all are bound in respect.-- involves taking possesion and permanent occupation and on this account it has been laid down that the blockade must be rest and effective" it is quite true that in its desperate struggle against Napoleon, openly supported then by the whole of Europe, and secretly favored by the United States, the British Government declared whole coasts in a state of blockade. But these measures, which were never up to, were called forth by those mad decrees of Berlin, Milan, and Fontaineblea , by which the French Emperor attempted to close Europe against our goods and to us annihilate our manufactured. But this precedent cannot be appealed to by the American Government, inasmuch as it protected repeatedly against those Orders in Council. It has always insisted that the presence of a competent force at the entrance of the post is necessary to make a blockade effective. We find this doctrine plainly enunciated in the ordinances of the Congress of the Confederate States, In the decisions of the prize courts of the United States, in the messages of its Presidents, the dispatches of its Foreign Ministers, the commentaries of the text writers. We fired, moreover, in its treaties, a definition which goes beyond all this, and adopts fully the oppression of Grotius, " obsession " In two treaties of commerce entered into between the United States and some South American republics, a blockaded place is defined us "one actually attacked by a belligerent force, capable of preventing the entry of the neutral." From this position the Federal Government cannot recede, and it is one which clearly stamps the fictitious character of its own blockade of the Southern Coast. There is no sufficient force off any one of the ports along that extent of coast. Even ports of consequence, as Charleston, New Orleans, and Mobile, are most imperfectly guarded. The Federal fleet is, in fact, employed for other services, and such few ships as are "detailed" for the blockade service cruise along the coast and pick up, just as would do, any vessel they may meet sailing to or from the coast which is sold to be blockaded. For the evil which results from the recognition by the English Government of the blockade. A ship which is found in the neighborhood of the interdicted coast may be seized and condemned. It is not very difficult to run the blockade from any one port; but no shipowner will risk the tender mercies of a Judge Betts, who would condemn a ship seized in New York neighbor if it could be suggested that she had been within the limit of the nominal blockade, or was at all likely to go there. And this is the answer to Sir. Bright, when he triumphantly says, ‘"the blockade of the Southern ports has been declared ineffective, and yet the effects of its effectiveness had been deplored."’ It is ineffective in the sense that it is quite deficient in those requisites which alone can make it effective or legal; it is effective enough in preventing commerce with the South, because ship owners will not inquire the risk of condemnation. Mr. Bright never scruples to make a false statement when he thinks it will serve, even for an instant, the cause he has at heart. Right and wrong are determined with him entirely by his passions. In calling the blockade of the Southern coast a legal one, he must have knowingly misrepresented undeniably facts. or could never have inquired into the inquisitors of a blockade.
By recognizing this blockade of the Southern coasts we are condemning thousands of Englishmen to starvation, and are giving a most unfair assistance to the Federal Government. The fleet which it to employ in the blockade it devotes to predatory on the enemy's territory. We are aiding to protect a barbarous war, and putting ourselves forward to pay its costs. The law of blockade is one which must be constructed strictly. which avails itself of a measure injurious is neutrals must fulfill every one of the conditions under which its exercise it permitted. If it makes default in one its right is lost. The Federal Government has made default in the most important requisite of a blockade. The default amounts, in the language of a great Federal authority, to an "entire defeasance of the measure."--It should be understood in Lancashire, that the distress which prevails, and the starvation which threatens, have no other cause than Earl Russell's sympathy with the North.
