In the conduct of our _foreign relations_, certain official declarations in the early part of the war on the policy and purpose of Government in carrying it on, are to be regretted as gratuitous and unfortunate. It is to be regretted also that the capture of the _Trent_ and the seizure of Mason and Slidell was not at once disavowed as being contrary to our doctrine on neutral rights, and the rebel emissaries surrendered without waiting for reclamation on the part of the British Government; or, if it was thought best to await that reclamation as containing a virtual concession of our doctrine, it would have been better--more dignified and effective--if the reply had been limited to a simple statement that the surrender was necessitated by the principles always maintained by our Government, and not by a reclamation which the British Government, by its own construction of public law and by its own practice, was not entitled to make, but which being made, might now, it was to be hoped, be taken as an abandonment in the future of the ground heretofore maintained by that Government. CONCESSION OF BELLIGERENT RIGHTS TO THE REBELS. There has been some dissatisfaction with the conduct of our official communications with Great Britain and France respecting the question on belligerent rights and neutral obligations which the rebellion has raised. But there are points of no inconsiderable difficulty and delicacy involved in these questions, which a great many people, in their natural displeasure against the English and French, have failed to consider. Our Government deserves the credit of having consulted the interests without compromising the dignity of the nation. Admitting the conduct of the British and French Governments in recognizing the rebels as belligerents to be as unfriendly and as unrequired by the obligations of public law as it is generally held to be among us, that would not make it right or wise for our Government to depart from the tone of moderation. We can no more make it a matter for official complaint and demand against these Governments, than we could the unfriendly tone of many of their newspapers and Parliamentary orators. We might say to them: We take it as unkindly in you to do as you have done; but if they will continue to do so, we have nothing for it but to submit. Even if we could have afforded it, we could not rightly have gone to war with them for doing what we ourselves--through the necessity of our circumstances--have been compelled in effect to do, and what they, though not forced by any such necessity, had yet a right--and in their own opinion were obliged--by public law to do. We could not have made it a cause of war, and therefore it would have been worse than idle to indulge in a style of official representation which means war if it means anything. THE REBEL CRUISERS.