John Russell, 1st Earl Russell to Charles Francis Adams, November 26, 1861

Earl Russell to Mr. Adams,.

The undersigned, her Majesty’s principal secretary of state for foreign affairs, has received, with much concern, the note which Mr. Adams, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of the United States at this court, addressed to him on the 21st instant, in which he announces the result of what Mr. Adams states to have been the calm and impartial deliberation by the United States government upon the question submitted for its decision the necessity which that government feels itself under to revoke the exequatur of Mr. Robert Bunch, her Majesty’s consul at Charleston.

In discussing this matter, the undersigned will put aside all allegations of the unknown letter-writer concerning Mr. Bunch’s supposed conversation referred to in a former communication of Mr. Adams; for it may now be affirmed that those allegations, unsupported as they are by any proof, were entirely unfounded.

Neither will the undersigned take any notice of the charge made against Mr. Bunch that his conduct has been that of a partisan of faction and disunion, because that charge is equally unsupported by any proof whatever, and is equally unfounded.

The withdrawal of Mr. Bunch’s exequatur does not, however, appear to rest upon these unfounded allegations, nor on these groundless charges. It is said to rest upon a law of the United States, of which it is said her Majesty’s government might pardonably have been ignorant, but which Mr. Bunch was bound to have brought to their notice.

This law, as Mr. Adams affirms, forbids, “under a heavy penalty, any person not specially appointed, or duly authorized by the President, whether citizen or denizen, privileged or unprivileged, from counselling, advising, aiding, or assisting in any political correspondence with the government of any foreign state whatever, with an intent to influence the measures of any foreign government, or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of their government.”

Taking Mr. Adams’s description of this statute as full and accurate, the undersigned has to remark that the statute seems to have been enacted for the purpose of preventing citizens or denizens of the United States from aiding or counselling foreign governments with regard to their disputes with the United States.

If this be so, Mr. Bunch, having no mission or instruction to aid or counsel a foreign state at enmity with the United States, and not having done so, would have no reason to suppose that a statute made “alio intuitu” could be so construed as to apply to his execution of the instructions he had received from her Majesty’s government; and therefore there could be no reason why he should have brought to the notice of her Majesty’s government an United States statute which had no bearing whatever upon anything which he was instructed to do.

The undersigned has further to remark that the United States government, by their quotation of the statute in question as the foundation on which they rest their complaint against Mr. Bunch, seem distinctly to admit that the government of the Confederate States at Richmond is, as regards the United States, “the government of a foreign state”—an admission which goes further than any acknowledgment with regard to those States which her Majesty’s government have hitherto made. But if the Confederate States are, as Mr. Adams’s note implies as regards the United States, a foreign state, then the President of the United States has no competence, one way or the other, with respect to the functions of the consuls of other governments in that foreign state, and the exequaturs of such consuls can be granted or withdrawn only by the government of such foreign state, for the Confederate States cannot be at one and the same time “a foreign state” and part of the territory of the United States.

But there is a further question raised by the United States government which is of deep and urgent importance. Mr. Adams is instructed to say that any communication to be addressed to the government of the so-called Confederate States respecting the goods of a belligerent on board of neutral ships, or the goods of a neutral on board of belligerent ships, should have been made by diplomatic and not by consular agents; and that the “only authority in the United States to which any diplomatic communication whatever can be made is the government of the United States itself.”

Mr. Adams must be aware that this assertion raises grave questions both of fact and of law. In the first place, when her Majesty’s government are gravely told that an application to the Confederate government for redress ought to be made through the President of the United States, they might well ask whether such a position is seriously laid down, and whether the President of the United States can affirm that in the present condition of things he has the power to give effect to any such application which might be made to him. For instance, a British subject at New Orleans or Galveston might be carried away by force to serve with the confederate troops; could the President of the United States set him free? might he not be killed in battle by a ball or a bullet from the United States army as the only release he could obtain from President Lincoln from his compulsory service? Again: the private debts due to a British subject in Louisiana or in Arkansas may be confiscated and paid into the public treasury of the State by a law or decree of the so-styled Confederate Congress; could the President or Secretary of State of the United States obtain the recovery of these sums; or could he secure immunity from confiscation for the landed property of British subjects in the eleven Confederate States?

If the President of the United States cannot do this, the course of proceeding suggested by Mr. Adams would be altogether illusory.

But next as to a question of international law. Her Majesty’s government hold it to be an undoubted principle of international law, that when the persons or the property of the subjects or citizens of a state are injured by a de facto government, the state so aggrieved has a right to claim from the de facto government redress and reparation; and also that in cases of apprehended losses or injury to their subjects, states may lawfully enter into communication with de facto governments to provide for the temporary security of the persons and property of their subjects.

Acting upon this last-mentioned principle, her Majesty’s government entered into concert with the government of the Emperor of the French in regard to certain articles of the declaration of Paris.

The result was an instruction which was to be carried into effect by the British and French consuls at Charleston, and they both executed their commission unostentatiously but effectively.

It may be necessary in future, for the protection of the interests of her Majesty’s subjects in the vast extent of country which resists the authority of the United States, to have further communications both with the central authority at Richmond and with the governors of the separate States, and in such cases such communications will continue to be made, but such communications will not imply any acknowledgment of the confederates as an independent state.

The undersigned has read with sincere pleasure the testimony voluntarily borne by the President of the United States to the care with which Lord Lyons has respected the sovereignty and the rights of the United States, and the undersigned feels it right to say that in very difficult circumstances the conduct of Mr. Adams, while upholding the authority and interests of his own government, has been such as to acquire the esteem and respect of the government of her Majesty and of the British nation.

The undersigned requests Mr. Adams to accept the assurance of his highest consideration.