Excerpt from International Law: Case of the Trent, Capture and Surrender of Mason and Slidell

States had made a. Seizure on board the Trent of that de scription.

In the mean time no principles of international law have been settled in relation to the rights of belligerents and neu trals. The demand is couched in the most general terms, ignoring all the particular circumstances upon which the seiz ure was made, and which were supposed by Captain Wilkes to justify it. It is acceded to with a substantial declaration that the act was justifiable but for the neglect to bring the vessel in for adjudication, and the surrender is made on account of this omission, or because the United States long ago con tended for certain doctrines in relation to neutral rights, which Great Britain strenuously resisted, but which she is supposed to sustain by this demand - it does not appear to be quite certain upon which ground it is placed. At the same time it is declared, that, if the safety of the Union required the detention of the captured persons, it would be the right and duty of the government to detain them, but the effectual check and waning proportions of the existing insurrection, as well as the comparative unimportance of the captured persons themselves, happily forbid a resort to that defence.

Earl Russell replies to this, that the neglect to send in the Trent was by no means the sole ground of the demand, he does not admit that Great Britain has abandoned any of her ancient doctrines, and he informs Mr. Seward that Great Britain could not have submitted to the perpetration of that wrong, however ¿ourishing might have been the insurrection in the South, and however important the persons captured might have been.

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