Charles Francis Adams to Right Hon. Earl Russell, May 10, 1862

Mr. Adams to Earl Russell.

My Lord: I have the honor to acknowledge the reception of your lordship’s note of the 7th instant, touching the case of the British vessel Emily St. Pierre.

I do not understand from the terms of that note that her Majesty’s law advisers entertain a doubt of the correctness of the law as explained in my application of the 24th of April for the restoration of that vessel. Indeed, it would be difficult to find any doctrine more precisely laid down by the highest judicial authority of Great Britain than that which applies to this particular case. I pray your lordship’s attention to the language of the late Lord Stowell, famed all over the world for his exposition of international law. “If a neutral master attempts a rescue, he violates a duty which is imposed upon him by the law of nations to submit to come in for inquiry as to the property of the ship or cargo; and if he violates that obligation by a recurrence to force, the consequence will undoubtedly reach the property of his owner; and it would, I think, extend also to the confiscation of the whole cargo intrusted to his care, and thus fraudulently attempted to be withdrawn from the rights of war.”

If this be admitted to be a correct version of the law of the case, as recognized by Great Britain, then little room appears to be left for doubt that the neutral master of the Emily St. Pierre has brought himself within the scope of the condemnation expressed in these words of Lord Stowell, for the facts, as substantially presented by me, do not seem to be disputed.

But I further understand that the grounds upon which your lordship declines to interfere on behalf of the United States do not in any way touch the merits of the case. They are, so far as I can perceive, purely technical. Your lordship remarks that her Majesty’s government have no jurisdiction or legal power whatever to take or acquire possession of the vessel, or to interfere with her owners, in relation to their property in her. And, further, that “acts of forcible resistance to the rights of belligerents, when lawfully exercised over neutral merchant ships on the high seas, such, for instance, as rescue from capture, however cognizable or punishable as offences against international law in the prize courts of the captor administering such law, are not cognizable by the municipal law of England, and cannot, by that law, be punished either by confiscation of the ship or by any other penalty; and her Majesty’s government cannot raise, in an English court, the question of the validity of the capture of the Emily St. Pierre, or of the subsequent rescue and recapture of that vessel, for such recapture is not an offence against the municipal law of this country.”

I cannot restrain the expression of my profound regret to your lordship that by reason of the absence of a just and necessary power in her Majesty’s government this wrongdoer should thus have the opportunity of escaping with impunity from suffering the proper penalty for his fraudulent attempts. I am the more deeply sensible of my disappointment from the fact that I had been led to hope for an opposite result from the language of her Majesty’s proclamation issued on the 13th day of May last, and evidently intended to apply to precisely the class of cases to which this of the Emily St. Pierre appears to belong. The closing paragraph of that paper expressly warns all her Majesty’s subjects, and all persons whatsoever entitled to her protection, that if any of them shall presume, “in contempt of that, her royal proclamation, and of her high displeasure, to do any acts in derogation of their duty, as subjects of a neutral sovereign, in the said contest, or in violation or contravention of the law of nations in that behalf as, for example, * * * by breaking, or endeavoring to break, any blockade lawfully and actually established by or on behalf of either of the said contending parties, * * * all parties so offending will incur and be liable to the several penalties and penal consequences of the said statute, or by the law of nations in that behalf imposed or denounced.”

If it be not implied by the language to which I have taken the liberty to call your lordship’s attention that there is a jurisdiction existing in Great Britain capable of taking cognizance of cases arising under the law of nations, and beyond the range of the municipal law, then does it appear, at least to my judgment, that the proclamation has been most unfortunately worded, for it can scarcely be denied that the government of the United States, which it was certainly intended in part to protect, had a just right to infer from it the power as well as the will of her Majesty’s government to shelter it against such wrongful and fraudulent acts of her ill-intentioned subjects as have been committed in the case of the ship Emily St. Pierre.

Praying your lordship’s pardon for the trouble I have given you in this case, and trusting I may find justification for my very natural mistake, I beg to renew to your lordship the assurance of the highest consideration with which I have the honor to be, my lord, your most obedient servant,