Another operation of the adoption of Mr Seward’s fiction is seen in the case of the British Consul at Charleston. The British and French Governments agreed that it was expedient to communicate to the persons exercising authority in the Confederate States the desire of those Governments that certain articles of the Declaration of Paris should be observed by them in the prosecution of hostilities. Mr Seward remarks thereupon— “It is enough to say that in our view the proper agents of the British Government to make known its interest here, are the diplomatic, not the consular agents of her Majesty; and that the only authority in this country to which any diplomatic communication whatever can be made is the Government of the United States itself.” The articles to which France and England desired to call attention were those which relate to the capture of the property of neutrals at sea. It was very necessary to the protection of our commerce that they should be made known, and to do so was not in any way contrary to any of the pretensions of the Federal Government. Yet because the Powers had chosen the English Consul as their medium, instead of the Federal authorities, who did not acknowledge or maintain communications with the Southern Government, the Consul’s exequatur was withdrawn. The case of the Trent is too well known, and that of the Alabama is too recent, to need recapitulation here. It is only necessary to remind the reader that in the late debate in Parliament it was shown that Mr Seward’s demands could only be complied with by passing a special law, having for its exclusive object to aid the Federal Government by stopping vessels, not on evidence, but on suspicion, that they were intended to become Confederate ships of war. In the case of the Emily St Pierre he expressly tells us his views. That vessel had been captured in attempting to run the blockade, and had then been recaptured from the prize-crew and brought into Liverpool. Whereupon the Federal authorities demanded that she should be restored to them by the British Government. Lord Russell replied that “neutral nations are not bound to punish their subjects for offences committed only against the laws of war as enforced by belligerents, nor to restore property rescued by their subjects from foreign captors.” When our Government communicated its decision declining to restore her, Mr Seward remarked— “I think it proper to observe at present that the reasons seem to be limited to a want of power vested in the Government to restore, and do not bear at all on the justice or legality of the demand. Under such circumstances this Government has in more than one instance admitted the claim, _and appealed to legislative authority for the power to satisfy it_, and it has been promptly conferred and exercised.”