American ship of war, all of which had been too often done by British ships of war with innocent American vessels at sea. It will be observed that Earl Russell uses the most general language, without specification; but the contemporaneous press dwelt on the single point taken by the law officers. One of these is quoted in Mr. Sumner’s speech. In France, the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ wrote, as if instructed from Downing Street:-- “England _confines herself_ to denying that an officer can erect himself into a judge in such a cause, the decision of which should belong only to a Court of Admiralty. Captain Wilkes, _substituting himself arbitrarily for the judicial authority_, alone competent to give a legal character to his prize, England can see in the act which he committed on the Trent only an act of violence, an outrage perpetrated against the British flag.”[24] This single point found sudden favor in England. Nassau W. Senior, the eminent economist, in close relations with the British Cabinet, wrote to Mr. Sumner, under date of December 10: “We think that Captain Wilkes _could not make himself judge in his own cause_; that the utmost he could have done legally would have been to take the Trent into an Admiralty Court.” Here the able Englishman simply echoes the early and constant doctrine of our country; but others among his countrymen did the same. The intimate relations of Mr. Sumner with Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, already existing, were quickened during this anxious period, when these eminent English statesmen wrote constantly, full of friendship for our country and anxious always for peace. The perfect freedom of these communications may be judged by a passage in a letter of Mr. Cobden. “I write to you, of course, in confidence; and I write to you what I would not write to any other American,--nay, what it would be perhaps improper for any other Englishman than myself to utter to any other American but yourself. But we are, I think, both more of Christians and cosmopolitans than British or Yankee.” Intervening time and death have removed the seal of confidence, opening what passed between them to the observation of history.