CH. XVII.] THE ALABAMA 87 vessel, the latter would have justified her immediate seizure." 1 This criticism is unanswerable. To require from Dudley direct proof which he must procure in a hostile community, with the quiet opposition probably of an unsympathetic and technical bureaucracy, was unfriendly and exasperating. Three weeks had passed since the customs officials at Liverpool and London had been enjoined to find out the truth, but had they actually conspired to suppress it, they would hardly have acted differently. They showed no disposition. to search for proof, and carped at the evidence offered them." July 17 Adams wrote Dudley to employ a solicitor and secure affidavits to submit to the collector. Four days later Dudley and his solicitor brought to the collector direct proof. Six persons deposed to the character and destination of the vessel; five of whom showed it to be reasonably probable that the Alabama was destined for the Southern Confederacy, while the sixth, a mariner of Birkenhead, swore that "it is well known by the hands on board that the vessel is going out as a privateer for the Confederate government to act against the United States under a commission from Mr. Jefferson Davis."8 We cannot detain the vessel, says the collector. Insufficient evidence, says the solicitor of customs. You are both right, say the commissioners. The work of getting the Alabama ready went on with swiftness and zeal, while the Circumlocution Office moved with the pace of a snail. The papers went to the Lords of the Treasury. Meanwhile Adams had retained a Queen's Counsel of eminence, R. P. Collier, to whom the six depositions and two additional ones were submitted. Collier's opinion is in no uncertain tone. "I am of opinion," he wrote, "that the collector of customs would be justified in detaining the vessel. Indeed, I should think it his duty to detain her. . . . It appears difficult to make out a stronger case of infringement of the Foreign Enlistment act, which, if not enforced on this occasion, is little better than a dead letter. It well deserves 1 Part ii. p. 184. 2 Adams, part i. p. 37. Part ii. p. 185. 1 consideration, whether, if the vessel be allowed to escape, the Federal government would not have serious grounds of remonstrance." This opinion went to the customs authorities at Liverpool. "It was the duty of the collector of customs at Liverpool," declares Cockburn, "as early as the 22d of July to detain this vessel."2 The collector would not act, and referred the matter to his superiors, the Commissioners of Customs. Insufficient evidence is still the word of the assistant solicitor of customs, who adds, I cannot concur in Collier's views. At this stage of the proceedings, writes Cockburn, "it became in my opinion the duty of the Commissioners of Customs at once to direct the seizure to be made. Misled by advice which they ought to have rejected as palpably erroneous, they unfortunately refused to cause the vessel to be seized." 3 In the mean time Adams had sent the affidavits, the opinion of Collier, and many other papers relating to the case to Earl Russell. "I ought to have been satisfied with the opinion of Sir Robert Collier," wrote Russell in after years, with a candor which does him honor, "and to have given orders to detain the Alabama at Birkenhead." 4 Now ensues a scene which, useful as it would have been to the writer of an opera-bouffe libretto, or to Dickens for his account of the Circumlocution Office, completely baffles the descriptive pen of the historian. The papers received from the Commissioners of Customs and those which Adams had sent Russell were submitted to the law officers of the Crown, one set reaching them July 23, the other July 26; that is to say, they reached the senior officer, the Queen's Advocate, on those days. Sir John Harding, who was then the Queen's Advocate, had been ill and incapacitated for business since the latter part of June; in fact, his excitable nerves and weak constitution had succumbed to the strain of work, and he was now verging on insanity. At his private house these papers 1 Diplomatic Correspondence, 1862, p. 152. * Part ii. p. 190. 2 Part ii. p. 190. • Recollections and Suggestions, Earl Russell, p. 235, see, also, p. 332. CH. XVII.] THE ALABAMA 89 lay for five days. Work on the Alabama went on briskly, and everybody in the kingdom was satisfied with having done his duty. The collector had referred the matter to the Commissioners; the Commissioners had referred it to the Lords of the Treasury; the Lords and Earl Russell had referred it to the law officers of the Crown. The papers on which perhaps depended war or peace between two great nations either received no notice whatever, or were examined only by a lawyer who was going mad.1 Finally, on July 28, the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General got hold of the papers. Their report was conclusive. "We recommend," they said, July 29, "that without loss of time the vessel be seized by the proper authorities."2 It was too late. The Alabama had left port that morning, and under pretence of a trial trip had gone out to sea. Yet she was still on the Welsh coast, only fifty miles from Liverpool, where the most ordinary energy on the part of the London and Liverpool authorities would have been sufficient to effect her apprehension before she started on the career which was to do so much in driving the American merchant marine from the high seas.3 1 Part ii.; Mozley's Reminiscences, chap. xcii. vol. ii.; Lord Selborne's account in Reid's Life of Lord John Russell, p. 313; Sir H. James's statement in the House of Commons, March 17, 1893; Lord Selborne's letter in reply, Sir H. James's answer, and Selborne's rejoinder, Times, March 24, 1893. 2 Part ii, p. 188. 3 "You have been,” said Cobden, May 13, 1864, “carrying on hostilities from these shores against the people of the United States, and have been inflicting an amount of damage on that country greater than would be produced by many ordinary wars. It is estimated that the loss sustained by the capture and burning of American vessels has been about $15,000,000, or nearly £3,000,000 sterling. But that is a small part of the injury which has been inflicted on the American marine. We have rendered the rest of her vast mercantile property for the present valueless." "There could not," said William E. Forster, May 13, 1864, "be a stronger illustration of the damage which had been done to the American trade by these cruisers than the fact, that, so completely was the American flag driven from the ocean, the Georgia, on her second cruise, did not meet a single American vessel in six weeks, though she saw no less than seventy vessels in a very few days," Hansard, quoted in Sumner's speech on the Johnson-Clarendon treaty, Sumner's Works, vol. xiii. pp. 77, 78. As nothing in the way of negligence could have been so unfriendly, and nothing could have been more derogatory to honest neutrality than the action of the British authorities and government in this case, it is little wonder that an English writer of standing has asserted that every cabinet minister rejoiced at the escape of the Alabama,2 and that before the end of 1862 the gossip about London ran that Earl Russell himself had given warning to the Alabama to go before the order to stop her could be sent.3 Again, it has been stated frequently by American writers that the English government - meaning the ministry - connived at the escape of the Confederate privateer. All these statements are untrue. It is certain that at least four cabinet ministers - the Duke of Argyll, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Milner Gibson, and Earl Russell-regretted deeply the escape of the Alabama. Touching the first three, no evidence need be adduced, and no charge further than negligence and indecision at an im 1 "The Government of Great Britain neglected to use due diligence for the fulfilment of its duties as a neutral." - Baron d'Itajubá, part i. p. 41. "The example of the Oreto made it the duty of the British authorities to be on their guard against acts of this kind. They, nevertheless, did not in any way take the initiative, on the representations of Dudley and Adams, with the view of inquiring into the true state of affairs, although they had given an assurance that the authorities should take the matter up. After sufficient evidence had been furnished, the examination of it was so much procrastinated, and the measures taken to arrest the vessel were so defective, that she was enabled to escape just before the order for her seizure was given.”. M. Staempfli, part i. p. 48. "The neutrality of Great Britain was gravely compromised by the vessel named the Alabama."- Count Sclopis, p. 55. Most of my facts have been drawn from the dissenting opinion of Chief Justice Cockburn. Since writing this, vol. ii. of the Memorials, Family and Personal, of the Earl of Selborne (who at the time was Solicitor-General) has appeared. I have read carefully his statement and argument. I see no reason to modify any expression I have used. I have added to my account that Selborne (then Roundell Palmer) and the Attorney-General gave Russell an opinion June 30. Ante, p. 86. 2 "There was not one of her Majesty's ministers who was not ready to jump out of his skin for joy when he heard of the escape of the Alabama.” - Mozley's Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 141. "Mozley, then, I believe, a regular writer for the Times." - Selborne Memorials, vol. ii. p. 428. 8 Russell's statement to Adams, Diary, entry Nov. 15. CH. XVII.] EARL RUSSELL AND THE ALABAMA 91 portant juncture can be brought against Earl Russell. Cobden wrote Sumner: "Earl Russell was bona fide in his desire to prevent the Alabama from leaving, but he was tricked and was angry at the escape of the vessel." 1 The most intelligent and decisive appreciation of the Foreign Secretary's attitude was expressed by Charles Francis Adams before the Tribunal of Arbitration at Geneva, in words honorable to both men, who had contended as ardently in conversation and letter as the courtesy of diplomatic usage would permit. "I am far from drawing any inferences," he said, "to the effect that he [Earl Russell] was actuated in any way by motives of ill-will to the United States, or, indeed, by unworthy motives of any kind. If I were permitted to judge from a calm comparison of the relative weight of his various opinions with his action in different contingencies, I should be led rather to infer a balance of good-will than of hostility to the United States." 2 That ship-builders and ship-owners of Liverpool and other ports exulted in the escape of the Alabama, is doubtless true; that the prospect that she would destroy the shipping of England's greatest rival on the sea at the outbreak of the war occurred to them and gave them joy, is more than prob able; that there were members of the House of Commons. who shared these feelings, cannot be gainsaid; and that the same ideas may have entered the minds of some members of the cabinet, it would be impossible to deny: but I should be loath to believe, since indeed there is no evidence of it, that they affected the official action of any minister. Lord Palmerston's hand is not apparent in any part of the proceedings, although as First Lord of the Treasury he probably ought to have been acquainted with the progress of the case. His spirit seems to have run through every department of the 1 May 2, 1863, Morley's Cobden, p. 584. Spencer Walpole, on the authority of a letter from the Duke of Argyll of Dec. 5, 1872, makes the statement that Russell in cabinet meeting proposed that the Alabama be detained in the event that she entered any British port, and actually drafted a despatch directing this. He was supported in this by no one but the Duke of Argyll, and the design was abandoned. — Life of Russell, vol. ii. p. 355. 2 Part i. p. 24. |