But the cheers of the House of Commons prevail in her Majesty’s Government. Municipal Law is violated, while International Law, in its most solemn obligation to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, is treated as the merest nullity. Eminent British functionaries, in Court and Parliament, vindicate the _naval expeditions_ which in the name of Slavery are unleashed against a friendly power. Taking advantage of an admitted principle, that, after the concession of belligerent rights, “munitions of war” may be supplied, the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer tells us that “ships of war” may be supplied also. Lord Palmerston echoes Lord Chief Baron. Each vouches American authority. But they are mistaken. The steel which they strive to “impel” cannot be feathered from our sides. Since the earliest stage of its existence, the National Government has asserted a distinction between the two cases; and so has the Supreme Court, although there are words of Story latterly quoted to the contrary. The authority of the Supreme Court is positive on the two points into which the British apology is divided. The first is, that, even if a “ship of war” cannot be furnished, the offence is incomplete until the armament is put aboard, so that, where the ship, though fitted out and equipped in a British port, awaits an armament at sea, she is not liable to arrest. Such apology is an insult to the understanding and to common sense,--as if it were not obvious that the offence begins with the laying of the keel for the hostile ship, _knowing it to be such_:[25] and in this spirit the Supreme Court has decided that it is not necessary to find that a ship on leaving port was armed, or in a condition to commit hostilities; for citizens are restrained from such acts as are calculated to involve the country in war.[26] The second apology assumes, that, even if the armament were aboard, so that the “ship of war” is complete at all points, still the expedition would be lawful, if the fiction of a sale were adroitly managed. On this point, the Supreme Court, speaking by Chief-Justice Marshall, has left no doubt of its deliberate and most authoritative judgment. In the case before the Court the armament was aboard, but cleared as cargo; the men, too, were aboard, but enlisted for a commercial voyage; the ship, though fitted out to cruise against a nation with which we were at peace, was not commissioned as a privateer, and did not attempt to act as such, until she reached the river La Plata, _where a commission was obtained and the crew reënlisted_; yet, in the face of these extenuating circumstances, it was declared by the whole Court, that the neutrality of the United States had been violated, so that the guilty ship could not afterwards be recognized as a legitimate cruiser. All the disguises were to no purpose. The Court penetrated them every one, saying, that, if such a ship could lawfully sail, there would be on our part “a