The question of the rebel cruisers on the high seas is a question by itself. The anger excited among us by the injuries we have suffered from these vessels is not strange; nor is it strange that our anger should beget a disposition to quarrel with Great Britain and France for conceding the rights of lawful belligerents to the perpetrators of such atrocities. The rebels have no courts of admiralty, carry their prizes to no ports, submit them to no lawful adjudication--but capture, plunder, and burn private vessels in mid ocean. Such proceedings by the laws of nations are undoubtedly piratical in their nature. We have a right so to hold and declare. We may think that Great Britain and France are bound so to hold and declare. But what then? Should they have ordered their men of war to cruise against these rebel cruisers or to capture every one which they might chance to encounter, and to send them home for trial? We may think they were bound in vindication of public law to do so; but could we make their not doing so a matter of formal complaint and a cause of war? There are a number of things to be well considered before any one should permit himself to quarrel with our Government for not quarrelling with Great Britain and France on this matter. BRITISH VIOLATION OF NEUTRAL OBLIGATIONS. But the conduct of the British Government in allowing her ports to be made the basis of these nefarious operations--in permitting vessels of whose character and purpose there could be no doubt to be built in her ports--not to be delivered in any Confederate port, but in effect armed and manned from her ports to go immediately to cruise against our commerce on the high seas--is an outrageous violation of the obligations of neutrals, for which that Government may justly be held responsible. It is a responsibility which no technical pleading about the insufficiency of British laws, either in matter of prohibition or rules of evidence, can avoid. Great Britain is bound to have laws and rules of evidence which will enable her effectually to discharge her neutral obligations; whether she has or not, does not alter her responsibility to us. Her conduct may rightfully be made a matter of official complaint, and of war too--if satisfaction and reparation be refused. It is a case in which our rights and dignity are concerned; and it is to be presumed that our Government will not fail to vindicate them.[1] LEGISLATION--THE CONFISCATION LAW. The action of _Congress_ has in everything been nobly patriotic in spirit, and in nearly everything it has wisely and adequately met the exigencies of the crisis.