Mr. Blaine, who had succeeded Mr. Evarts as Secretary of State, on being advised of Lowell’s action in this case, wrote that it received “the entire commendation of the Department as discreet and proper.” And a few weeks later, as the case became somewhat more involved, he wrote again: “The prudence you have shown in dealing with ----’s claim to citizenship is commendable, and the statements as to the law in his case, made in your letters to him, are in full accord with the interpretation of this Department.” Mr. Blaine then laid down instructions to meet certain hypothetical cases, and not long after had occasion to call Lowell’s attention to another apparent act of injustice in the arrest of a naturalized American citizen. The friends of the man in America had besieged Mr. Blaine in his behalf, and Mr. Blaine wrote an eloquent despatch to Lowell, in which he said: “If American citizens while within British jurisdiction offend against British laws, this government will not seek to shield them from the legal consequences of their acts, but it must insist upon the application to their cases of those common principles of criminal jurisprudence which in the United States secure to every man who offends against its laws, whether he be an American citizen or a foreign subject, those incidents to a criminal prosecution which afford the best safeguard to personal liberty and the strongest protection against oppression under the forms of law, which might otherwise be practised through excessive zeal.”