Lyons to John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, February 1, 1864

Lord Lyons to Earl Russell.—(Received February 16.)

I have the honor to transmit to your lordship further papers relative to the affair of the Chesapeake.

The first of them is a letter from Mr. Seward, stating the impression produced by the papers which (as I had the honor to report to your lordship in my despatch of the 18th ultimo) I placed in his hands on the 16th instant. Your lordship will observe that Mr. Seward, while acknowledging that the proceedings of Major General Doyle, the administrator of the government of Nova Scotia, seem to have been conducted in good faith, affirms that his excellency “ought to have relinquished to the agents of this government the stolen vessel, and the pirates found on board of her, subject to the express engagement of this government to answer to the British government any claim that it might have either upon the ship or the men.”

Mr. Seward seems to forget the flagrant violation of her Majesty’s territorial jurisdiction committed by the United States officers, and the necessity it imposed on the administrator of the government to be more than usually careful to make it apparent that her Majesty’s rights had been vindicated. It may be observed, also, that there were no persons found on board the Chesapeake to whom the description of “pirates” can well be applied. The two men who were on board and who were seized and put in irons by the United States officers, when they took possession of the vessel in the British harbor, appear to have been British subjects who had gone on board the Chesapeake after her arrival at Nova Scotia, and who had no connexion with the previous seizure of that vessel by the passengers. The only man taken by the United States officers who was implicated in that act of the passengers was Wade, who was not taken on board the Chesapeake, but was violently seized by those officers on board a British ship in a British harbor.

I have thought it right to communicate a copy of Mr. Seward’s letter to Major General Doyle.

I have to-day placed in Mr. Seward’s hands copies of the letter of the attorney-general of Nova Scotia, and of the report of the proceedings against the persons concerned in preventing the arrest of Wade at Halifax, which form the fourth and fifth enclosures in the present despatch.

The remaining enclosures relate principally to the demands on the govern ments of Canada and New Brunswick for the extradition of men concerned in the seizure of the Chesapeake at sea.

[Enclosure 1 in No. 21, Mr. Seward to Lord Lyons, dated January 18, 1864, printed elsewhere in this volume.]

[For enclosure 3 in No. 21, Major General Doyle to Lord Lyons, January 20, 1864, see enclosure 2 in No. 20.]

[For enclosure 4 in No. 21, Mr. Johnston to Major General Doyle, January 13, 1864, see enclosure 1 in No. 20.]

[For enclosure 5 in No. 21, supplement to the Halifax Reporter, dated January 19, 1864, see enclosure 3 in No. 20.]