It appears that when that war was at its height “the colonial government despatched as ambassador to Holland, then a neutral power, Henry Laurens, a former President in the Congress of the country, vested with power to secure from that Government a recognition of the United Colonies as an independent nation--to conclude a treaty, and to negotiate a loan. In 1780 he left Charleston, on board the brigantine _Adriana_, bound to Martinique. From thence he took passage in a Dutch packet, the _Mercury_, for Holland, and thus was on board a neutral vessel, sailing between neutral ports. “When three days out from Martinique, the _Mercury_ was overhauled by the British frigate _Vestal_, Mr. Laurens, with his secretary, was forcibly removed from on board the _Mercury_; his papers were seized; they were taken in the _Vestal_ to St. Johns, Newfoundland, and thence, by an order of the British admiralty, he, with his secretary, was taken to England, and he was committed, as a prisoner, to the Tower of London, on a charge of high treason. The British reverse at Yorktown soon changed the character of his confinement to that of a prisoner of war, and he was, not long thereafter, released, in exchange for Lieutenant-general Lord Cornwallis.” The quotation is from Upton’s “Maritime Warfare and Prize.” No one familiar with this work will accuse Mr. Upton of lack of patriotism. The fact is that the case of Laurens, from a legal point of view, was precisely the case of Mason and Slidell. If the British were wrong in taking the American from a Dutch ship and treating him as a criminal in 1780, the Americans were wrong in taking the Confederate envoys from the British ship in 1861 and treating them as criminals. [Illustration: William H. Seward. _From a photograph._] But that is by no means the end of the story of the _Trent_ affair. The demand of Great Britain was officially communicated to Secretary of State Seward on December 19th. On December 26th Mr. Seward delivered to Lord Lyons a reply reviewing the entire case. The important points of this reply are as follows: