stealthily escaping from the United States and landing on the shores of Cuba," but that it had escaped unnoticed by either the United States officers or, as he believed, by the agents of the Spanish government.1

A further expedition was subsequently dispatched from New Orleans in the ship Cespedes, or Lilian, in October, 1869, to Cedar Keys, Florida, where she was met by a body of from 300 to 350 armed men, under command of a Cuban named Goicurria, who had sailed from New York to join her in the steamer Alabama. The Lilian failed in landing the expedition on the Cuban coast, and was finally stopped and condemned for a breach of the British foreign-enlistment act at Nassau. [46] *A still more notorious vessel is the Hornet, or Cuba.

The

Hornet is an iron paddle-wheel steamer, originally a blockaderunner, of 820 tons. She was captured during the civil war, and taken into the United States Navy as a dispatch-boat, in which capac ity she carried eight guns. She was sold in June, 1869, to Señor Macias, and it is believed retained her port holes. After being refitted at Kensington, near Philadelphia, she cleared for Halifax, but was detained for inquiry as to her intended proceedings. At Halifax she was again detained on the assertion that she had heavy guns on board, but, this proving incorrect, she was released, and sailed along the United States coast. Coals, supplies, and arms are stated to have been shipped on board, and she then put in at Wilmington, North Carolina, flying the Cuban flag. Here she was arrested for violation of the neutrality laws, and her commander, a United States citizen, and twenty-three others tried, and the vessel herself taken possession of by the United States authorities.

The result of the trial was that the judge held that only two acts were shown to have been committed within the jurisdiction of the United States from which an intent to violate the neutrality laws could be inferred. These were the enlistment of a witness, D. D. Munro, and the reception of a cargo of coal in Long Island Sound. The commander and sixteen of the prisoners were discharged, and six others released on bail. It does not appear that any further proceedings were taken against them.

The vessel was then libeled in the admiralty court, but after some delay was returned to her former owner, Señor Macias, on bonds being given by Senator Chandler and General Butler that she would not be again used in violation of the neutrality laws. She, however, has since recommenced her career, and after taking in stores and, as is supposed, arms, at Aspinwall, succeeded in landing an expedition in Cuba in January, 1871. She then took refuge at St. Domingo, and in January of the present year was convoyed to Baltimore, under the protection of a United States ship of war. It remains to be seen whether any legal proceedings will be instituted against her, and, if so, what will be their result.

The views held by the United States Secretary of State with regard to the Cuban Junta, at New York, by whom these expeditions were concerted, were thus expressed in a dispatch to the United States minister at Madrid, in January, 1870:

"Had the Cuban Junta," he says, "expended their money and energy in sending to the insurgents arms and munitions of war, as they might have done consistently with our own statutes, and with the law of nations, instead of devoting them to deliberate

'Papers relating to Cuban affairs, presented to the House of Representatives, February 21, 1870, pp. 133-138.

United States rs. The officers of the steamship Cuba, reported in Wilmington Journal, October 31, 1869.

violation of the law of the United States, and had they, in lieu of illegally employing persons within the dominions of the United States to go in armed bands to Cuba, proceeded thither unarmed themselves to take personal part in the struggle for independence, it is possible that the result would have been different in Cuba, and it is certain that there would have been a more ardent feeling in the United States in favor of their cause, and more respect for their own sincerity and personal courage."1

And in a letter to Mr. Roberts, dated the 28th of December, Mr. Fish pressed upon Mr. Roberts the necessity of legal evidence being furnished, in order to enable the local authorities to act:

The undersigned takes the liberty to call the attention of Mr. Lopez Roberts to the fact that a district-attorney of the United States is an officer whose duties are regulated by law, and who, in the absence of executive warrant, has no right to detain the vessels of American citizens without legal process, founded not upon surmises, or upon the antecedent character of a vessel, or upon the belief or conviction of a consul, but upon proof submitted according to the forms required by law. 2

Her Majesty's government do not adduce these instances of recent violations of the neutrality laws of the United States, the facts of which are notorious, in any spirit of accusation or recrimination. But the attention of the arbitrators has been called to the long series of illegal expedi tions which have been organized and dispatched from the United States against the territories of friendly nations during the last twenty-two years, as instances of the flagrant manner with which the laws of the United States have been evaded, as shown by the messages of successive Presidents, in spite of what Her Majesty's government assumes to have been the intentions and efforts of the executive authorities. From these multiplied examples the arbitrators may be enabled to form an estimate of the measure of "due diligence" in executing laws for the prevention of such enterprises which the United States have considered sufficient in their own authorities, and could not, therefore, reasonably expect to be exceeded by the authorities of other countries.

Out of this retrospect, which has been rendered necessary by the statements introduced into the case of the United States, the ed to by the United following obsrvations arise:

Precedents appeal

States.

1. The argument of the United States, that a neutral government is not only bound to exert reasonable care for the purpose of preventing violations of its neutrality, but is bound to apply to the various duties which purport to be enumerated in the three Recapitulation. rules, pursued in their minutest details, and pushed even beyond the natural meaning of the words employed, a diligence the most energetic, vigilant, and exact, finds (whether it be true or not) no support in this history. However rigorously the United States may now be disposed to estimate the obligations of other powers, they have not so construed their own.

2. The argument that compensation is due, as of right, for any loss sustained in war by a belligerent, which may be traced to a relaxation of diligence on the part of neutral powers in preventing violations of neutrality, whether it be sound or not in itself, is not supported by any precedent adduced. The United States have never paid, nor have they ever admitted a liability to pay, such compensation.

3. Where compensation has been claimed in such cases, it has been

1 Papers relating to Cuban affairs, presented to the House of Representatives February 21, 1870, p. 69.

* Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, transmitted to Congress with the annual message of the President, December 4, 1871, p. 786.

limited to the values of ships and cargoes captured by vessels unlawfully fitted out and armed; and the claim has never been admitted, except when such prizes have been brought by the captors within the jurisdiction of the neutral power.

4. The position that a neutral government is under an obligation to seize and detain any armed ship entering its ports, even though commissioned as a public ship of war, which has received any equipment or any adaptation for war within the jurisdiction of the neutral, is equally unsupported. There is no trace of such an obligation. The American Government did indeed, in 1793, direct that privateers which had violated its neutrality should not have asylum in its ports. But even this (which is a very different thing) it acknowledged no obligation to do; and the exclusion (which does not appear to have been extended to public ships of war) seems to have been by no means steadily enforced. Finally, Her Majesty's government cannot forbear to remark that the history of this subject is from first to last a history of unlawful enter. prises originated either in the United States or by citizens of the United States in other countries. Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, the Central American Republics, Cuba, and Canada, have from time to time been harassed by privateers fitted out in the ports of the Union, or hostile expeditions organized and assembled within its territory. And when, in 1861, civil war broke out within the Union itself, it was by American citizens that the plan was formed to abuse, for the more effectual prosecution of that war, the soil and waters of a neutral and friendly nation. Baffled, in the great majority of cases, by the restraints of the law and the watchfulness of the Executive, they contrived, in a very few, to elude those restraints. They procured ships, transported them to distant seas, armed and manned them there, and employed them in cruising against their countrymen, not indeed for the sake of plunder or profit, but to assist the people of their own States in a struggle for independence. The Southern States have returned to their allegiance. They have been treated with clemency, and no attempt has been made to exact from them, by fines or forfeitures, pecuniary reparation for the losses which the Government and the rest of the people of the United States have sustained through their means. The acts which they directed and authorized, when in arms against the Union, are now, on behalf of the nation of which they form an important part, made the subject of complaints and demands against Great Britain. Her Majesty's government has been ready and willing to give the United States all reasonable satisfaction by submitting the question to the award of an impartial tribunal. But it is surely no unjust observation that, if ever there was a case in which a power, deeming itself aggrieved, might have been expected to state its complaints with moderation, and to make ample allowance for administrative difficulties and unavoidable deficiencies of proof, that occasion is the present and that power is the United States.

VARIOUS COMPLAINTS OF THE UNITED STATES AGAINST GREAT BRITAIN; TRAFFIC IN MUNITIONS OF WAR.

eus complaints of the United States against Great Britain.

Traffic in munitions of war.

The fourth part of the case of the United States contains a general PART IV-Vari and comprehensive statement of all the complaints which they conceive themselves to have against Great Britain. It will be found, on examination, that these complaints are of two classes. A small number of them have reference to the vessels enumerated at p. 320 of the case, or some of them, and charge or suggest against Great Britain certain failures of duty in respect of those vessels. A much larger number have no refer ence whatever to those vessels, and do not charge or suggest any failure of duty in respect of them or any of them. The former class are within the scope of the reference to arbitration; the latter are not within it.

In the case of the United States, however, these various complaints have been connected together in a narrative which draws no distinction between those which are and those which are not relevant to the questions at issue.

Analyzing the narrative, we find that it is in substance as follows: The government of the Confederate States sent to England, to Nassau, to Havana, and other places, agents instructed to purchase arms and munitions of war, with other things of which the Confederate States stood in need, and to procure ships suitable for warlike use. The persons sent to England on this errand were supplied with funds by remittances of specie and consignments of cotton, all necessary payments being made by drafts on a mercantile house in Liverpool, who were "depositories" of the funds. The whole Southern coast being blockaded, it was necessary for the agents to send their purchases in such a manner as to elude the blockade. The British islands of New Providence and Bermuda offered, from their geographical position, peculiar facilities for the purpose, and advantage was taken of these facilities, large quantities of goods being sent thither from England, and forwarded thence to different confederate ports. Some of the ships employed in this traffic were the property of the confederate government; some others were chartered by its agents. The colonial authorities, it is affirmed, encouraged the trade, and placed obstacles in the way of the United States cruisers which were endeavoring to suppress it. It is added that the difficulties thus created were enhanced by an order of the British government, which directed that vessels of war should not be admitted, unless in case of distress, to the ports of the Bahama Islands. Meanwhile the confederate agents contracted with ship-builders in England and Scotland for ships suitable for war to be built to order, and purchased some others in the market. Three or four of these vessels they succeeded in sending to sea; the remainder were stopped. They also purchased guns, munitions of war, and ships' stores, and dispatched them to various places-the Azores, the Madeira Islands,

one of the Bahamas, the coast waters of France-where they were put on board of the vessels. English seamen were induced to serve in them, and were paid their wages through the instrumentality of the Liverpool house. The British government required, before it would order the seizure of a suspected vessel, evidence which could be produced in a court of justice. It declined during the war to propose to Parliament any alteration of the law applicable to such cases, stating that the law was sufficient, and that where it had failed the deficiency had been in timely proof that the acts complained of were within the law.

This is the substance of the complaints of the United States, stated in simple terms. Some of them are true, some erroneous, and the greater part irrelevant to the questions referred to the tribunal.

It is the right of Great Britain to decline absolutely any discussion on the question whether, in taking no steps to prevent the conveyance of arms and munitions of war from British or colonial ports to the Confederate States, or in any matter whatever connected with that traffic, her government failed to discharge any international duty. But [49] that something should here be said on this subject may perhaps be convenient to the arbitrators.

In the case presented to the tribunal on the part of Great Britain, the following propositions were laid down as agreeable to the principles of international law and the practice of nations:

A neutral government is bound to exercise due diligence, to the intent that no place within its territory be made use of by either belligerent as a base or point of departure for a military or naval expedition, or for hostilities by land or sea.

A neutral government is not, by force of the above-mentioned obligation or otherwise, bound to prevent or restrain the sale within its territory, to a belligerent, of artieles contraband of war, or the manufacture within its territory of such articles to the order of a belligerent, or the delivery thereof within its territory to a belligerent purchaser, or the exportation of such articles from its territory for sale to, or for the use of, a belligerent.

Her Majesty's government has hitherto believed that, on this subject, no difference of opinion existed between Great Britain and the United States. By no power has the principle been asserted so strongly, unreservedly, and consistently as by the United States, and no nation has more freely acted upon it.1

It can hardly be necessary to cite examples. The emphatic enunciation of this doctrine in Mr. Jefferson's letter to Mr. Hammond (15th May, 1793) has been often referred to:

"The purchase of arms and military accouterments by an agent of the French government in this country, with an intent to export them to France, is the subject of another of the memorials; of this fact we are equally uninformed as of the former. Our citizens have been always free to make, vend, and export arms. It is the constant Occupation and livelihood of some of them. To suppress their callings, the only means perhaps of their subsistence, because a war exists in foreign and distant countries, in which we have no concern, would scarcely be expected. It would be hard in principle and impossible in practice. The law of nations, therefore, respecting the rights of those at peace, does not require from them such an internal derangement in their occupations. It is satisfied with the external penalty pronounced in the President's proclamation, that of confiscation of such portion of these arms as shall fall into the hands of any of the belligerent powers on their way to the ports of their enemies. To this penalty our citizens are warned that they will be abandoned, and that even private contraventions may work no inequality between the parties at war, the benefit of them will be left equally free and open to all.”—(Appendix to British case, vol. v, p. 242.)

It will be observed that this was subsequent to a proclamation issued by the President, in which conveyance of contraband to a belligerent was specified as among the acts involving a liability to "punishment or forfeiture under the law of nations," and notice was given that prosecutions would be instituted against all persons who should, within the cognizance of the courts of the United States, "violate the law of nations with respect to the powers at war or any of them." It was written in answer to a representation by the British minister to the effect that he had "received informa