VII. The preceding observations leave the affirmative statement of the obligations resting upon Great Britain to secure the fulfilment of this international duty to the United States, free from difficulty.

(a) These obligations required that all SEASONABLE, APPROPRIATE and ADEQUATE means to the accomplishment of the end proposed, should be applied and kept in operation by Great Britain, from the first occasion for their exhibition until the necessity was over.

(b) As the situation calling for the discharge of these obligations on the part of Great Britain, was not sprung upon it unawares, but was created by the Queen's Proclamation, (a measure of state adopted after deliberation in its own Government, and upon conference with another great European power), the means to meet the duties of the proclaimed neutrality should, at once, have been found at the service of the Government, or promptly prepared, if deficient, that no space might intervene between the deliberate assumption of these duties by the Government, and a complete accession of power to fulfil them.

(c) The dangers and difficulties that would attend and embarrass the Government in the fulfilment of these duties, from the actual disposition of its own people, and the urgent needs of the Rebel belligerents, constituted necessary elements in the estimate of the actual duties the Government must be prepared to fulfil, and in the forecast of the means to meet and cope with such dangers and difficulties. The immense temptation to British interests to absorb the share of the commerce of the world, which its great competitor possessed, the immense temptation to the Rebel belligerents to allure these

interests of the British people to an actual complicity in the preparation and maintenance of maritime hostilities, and, finally, to drag the British Government into formal war against the United States, were within the immediate field of observation to Her Majesty's Ministers, and made a principal feature of the situation they had produced, and were required to control. The British Case and Counter-Case have given prominence to these considerations, in deprecation of the judgment of this Tribunal against Great Britain for the actual incompetency with which it met the duties of the situation. They tend rather to a condemnation, in advance, for negligence of Great Britain, thus advised of the duty imposed upon it, and failing to meet it successfully.

(d) The aptitude or sufficiency of the system or staff of public officers at the command of the Government for the required service of this international duty to the United States; the possession of Executive power to conduct the duties of the situation of neutrality which it had been competent to create, or the need of recourse to Parliament to impart it; the force and value of the punitive or repressive legislation designed to deter the subjects from complicity in the Rebel hostilities, in violation of the Government's duties to prevent such complicity all these were to be dealt with as practical elements in the demands upon the Government in fulfilment of its duties, and were to be met by well-contrived and well-applied resources of competent scope and vigor.

In view, then, of all these considerations, from the issue of the Queen's Proclamation to the close of the Rebellion, the Rules of the Treaty of Washington exact

from Great Britain the preparation and the application, in prevention of the injuries of which the United States now complain, of seasonable, appropriate, and adequate means to accomplish that result.

The Means of fulfilling International Duty possessed by Great Britain.

I. That Great Britain possessed all the means which belong to sovereignty, in their nature, and, in a measure of energy and efficacy, suitable to her proud position among the great Powers of the world, to accomplish whatever the will of the Government should decree, has never been doubted by any other Power, friendly or hostile. The pages of the British Case and CounterCase devoted to suggestions to the contrary, will not disturb this opinion of the world, and Great Britain, for the purposes of this Arbitration and the judgment of the Tribunal, must remain the powerful Nation which it is, with the admirable Government which it possesses, in all other relations. Whatever infirmity shall have shown itself in the conduct of the Government, in the premises of this inquiry, it is attributable solely to debility of purpose or administration, not to defect of

power.

II. The whole body of the powers suitable to the regulation and maintenance of the relations of Great Britain, ad extra, to other nations, is lodged in the Prerogative of

the Crown.

The intercourse of peace, the declaration and prosecution of war, the proclamation and observance of neutrality, (which last is but a division of the general subject of international relations in time of war), are all, under the British Constitution, administered by the Royal Prerogative. Whether, or to what extent, the common or the statute law of England may or should punish, by fines or forfeitures, or personal inflictions, acts of the subjects that thwart or embarrass the conduct by the Crown of these external relations of the nation, are questions which belong to domestic policy. Foreign nations have a right to require that the relations of Great Britain with them shall be suitably administered, and defective domestic laws, or their defective execution, are not accepted, by the law of nations, as an answer for violations. of international duty.

We refer to the debates in Parliament upon the Foreign Enlistment Bill in 1819, and on the proposition to repeal the Act in 1823, and to the debate upon the Foreign Enlistment Bill of 1870, (as cited in Note B of the Appendix to this Argument), as a clear exhibition of this doctrine of the British Constitution, in the distinction between the executive power to prevent violations of international duty by the Nation, through the acts of individuals, and the punitive legislation in aid of such power, which needed to proceed from Parliament.

We refer, also, to the actual exercise of this Executive power by the Government of Great Britain, without any enabling act of Parliament to that end, in various public acts in the course of the transactions now in judgment before the Tribunal.

1. The Queen's Proclamation of Neutrality, May 13th, 1861.'

2. The regulations issued by the Government of Her Britannic Majesty in regard to the reception of cruisers and their prizes in the ports of the Empire, June 1st, 1861-June 2nd, 1865.*

3. The Executive orders to detain the Alabama at Queenstown and Nassau, August 2, 1862.3

4. The Executive orders to detain the Florida at Nassau, August 2, 1862.*

5. The Executive orders to detain the rams at Liverpool, October 7, 1863.*

6. The debate and vote in Parliament justifying the detention of the rams by the Government "on their own responsibility," February 23rd, 1862."

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7. The final decision of Her Majesty's Government in regard to the Tuscaloosa, as expressed by the Duke of Newcastle to Governor Woodhouse, in the following words: "If the result of these inquiries had been to "to prove that the vessel was really an uncondemned prize, brought into British waters in violation of Her Majesty's orders made for the purpose of maintaining "her neutrality, I consider that the mode of proceeding "in such circumstances most consistent with Her Ma"jesty's dignity, and most proper for the vindication of "her territorial rights, would have been to prohibit the

1 Brit. App., vol. III, p 17.

2 Ibid., pp. 17—22; ibid., vol. V, pp. 125–131.

9 Ibid., vol. I, p. 203.

Ibid., p. 29; ibid., vol. V, p. 55.

Ibid., vol. II, p. 384, et seq.

6 Am. App., vo'. V, pp. 472—500.