10 ENGLISH NEUTRALITY. order got down to Liverpool she was gone.” It is not pretended that any expedition was used by the parties who came to the rescue of the government when Sir John D. Harding’s “ malady ” assumed international importance, or that any attempt was made to delay the gunboat temporarily, until a decision could be arrived at; or thaf the telegraph or any extra-expeditious means of communication with Liverpool was made use of when this decision was “at last” obtained.* It should be stated, injustice to Earl Russell, however, that he declared his intention to send to Nassau to have the vessel intercepted; but in that connection let it also be remembered that he did not send; or at least that he did not send to the British squadron to seize her elsewhere in that neighborhood, and that the Alabama has avoided that point with as much shrewdness as if her captain were possessed in advance of the intention of the British cabinet; that, although she has been cruising in British West Indian waters for months, and has been for six days of the latter portion of the time lying in the British port of Kingston, to be refitted, no attempt has been made to seize or detain her, and that no prosecutions have been instituted against any of the many parties in England who infringed the Foreign Enlistment Act and the law of nations, by conniving at her escape and perfecting her armament afterwards in Terceira.f * It may be remarked in passing, as a fair illustration of the fact, that a change in Lord Russell’s stand point of observation sometimes affects a change in his views of a subject; that while Great Britain was thus violating every legal, moral, and honorable obligation to us, she was insisting with pertinacity and almost imperiousness against those wholesome restrictions on trade between New York and Nassau, which the collector of this port found it necessary to adopt in order to prevent the sending of supplies to the rebels (Dip. Cor., 145, 304), and that the inadvertent act of a prize-master, the ludicrous character of which the following note will exp ain, was magnified into an insult to the English nation, fit to become a subject for diplomatic correspondence (Dip. Cor. 244). “ New York, Jan. 3, 1862. “ Sir:—I received your order to-day, stating for me to make a written statement “ and explain the reason for hoisting the English flag under the American Commo- “ dore ; not being acquainted with the custom of bringing in prizes, I was under the “'impression that I was right. My intention was to do right, but it was not done “forany bad purpose or intention to insult the English flag in any way whatever. “ I was wrong for so doing, and truly hope the department will forgive me. “JOHN BAKER, “ Commodore Paulding.” “ Acting Master, U. S. N. It appears by a letter from Commodore Wilkes to the Secretary of the Navy (Dip. Cor., p. 229), that the British gun-boat Bull Dog knowingly gave passage to rebel naval officers, on their way to England to take charge of the Alabama and other vessels of her character. j- As these sheets are going to press, I have received, through the courtesy of Mr. Grant, librarian of the Mercantile Library, a pamphlet just published in London, entitled, “ The Alabama,” from which the following extract is made: “ The ‘ 290/ as she was then called, sailed, as we have seen, from Liverpool on the
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