“This celebrated case can be considered as having settled but one principle, and that had substantially ceased to be a disputed question: viz., that a public ship, though of a nation at war, cannot take persons out of a neutral vessel at sea, whatever may be the claim of her Government on those persons.”[25] Mr. Seward was, therefore, right, when, in his communication to Lord Lyons, he announced the settlement of the case “upon principles confessedly American.”[26] In similar spirit, Prince Gortschakoff, in behalf of the Russian Cabinet, congratulated our Republic upon “remaining faithful to the political principles which she has always maintained, even when those principles were turned against her, and abstaining from invoking in her turn the benefit of doctrines which she has always repudiated.”[27] And Baron Ricasoli, speaking for the Italian Cabinet, would not believe that the Government at Washington “desired to change its character all at once, and become the champion of theories which history has shown to be calamitous, and which public opinion has condemned forever.”[28] * * * * * The correspondence “in relation to the recent removal of certain citizens of the United States from the British mail-steamer Trent,” including the letter of Earl Russell and the reply of Mr. Seward, and also the letter of M. Thouvenel, Minister of Foreign Affairs in France, was communicated to the Senate January 6, 1862. Its reference to the Committee on Foreign Relations was, on motion of Mr. Sumner, made the special order for January 9th, at one o’clock, when he made his speech. January 7th, two days before Mr. Sumner’s speech, the subject was discussed in the House of Representatives, and strong speeches were made against the surrender. Mr. Vallandigham, of Ohio, a leading Democrat, said:-- “I avail myself of this, the earliest opportunity yet presented, to express my utter and strong condemnation, as one of the Representatives of the people, of the act of the Administration surrendering Mr. Mason and Mr. Slidell to the British Government.… In six days after the imperious and peremptory demand of Great Britain they were abjectly surrendered, upon the mere rumor of the approach of a hostile fleet; and thus, Sir, for the first time in our national history, have we strutted insolently into a quarrel without right and then basely crept out of it without honor; and thus, too, for the first time, has the American eagle been made to cower before the British lion.”[29] Then again the same Democratic Proslavery orator said:--