exercise not a disturbing but a harmonizing influence on human society, for it would not only desire peace itself but to some extent become a bond of peace amongst others.

In offering these views to the Government of Great Britain you will be able to say with truth that you present a case precisely and entirely within the principles upon which it has acted since 1821 -principles so well stated by Lord John Russell in his dispatches upon the Italian question that they cannot be better defined than in his own words. In his letter to Lord Cowley on the 15th of November, 1859, after adverting to the action of Great Britain in 1821 in regard to the declarations of the congresses of Troppan and Laybach; in 1823 in regard to the congress of Verona, and in 1825, 1827 and 1830 in the cases of the South American Republics; of Greece and Belgium, he says:

Thus in these five instances the policy of Great Britain appears to have been directed by a consistent principle. She uniformly withheld her consent to acts of intervention by force to alter the internal government of other nations; she uniformly gave her countenance and if necessary her aid to consolidate the de facto governments which arose in Europe or America.

To recognize the Confederate States as an independent power would be to give her countenance to consolidate a de facto government in America which is already supported by a force strong enough to defend it against all probable assualts. To withhold that recognition would certainly encourage the armed intervention of a Government now foreign to us for the purpose of altering the interanl government of the Confederate States of America. In his letter of December 3, 1859, to Lord A. Loftus in regard to the controversy between Austria and her Provinces he says:

We at least are convinced that an authority restored by force of arms constantly opposed by the national wishes would afford no solid and durable basis for the pacification and welfare of Italy.

Is not this sentiment still more applicable to the contest now being waged between the United States and the Confederate States? Again in his dispatch of November 26, 1859, to Earl Cowley he declared that -

It would be an invidious task to discuss the reasons which in the view of the people of central Italy justified their acts. It will be sufficient to say that since the peace of 1815 Her Majesty's predecessors have recognized the separation of the Spanish colonies in South America from Spain, of Greece from the dominion of the Sultan and of Belgium from Holland. In the opinion of Her Majesty's Government the reasons adduced in favor of these separations were not stronger than those which have been alleged at Florence, Modena and Bologna in justification of the course the people of those States have pursued.

Were the reasons alleged in the States of Florence, Parma, Modena and Bologna whose people are thus assumed to be the judges in a matter so nearly touching their happiness as their internal government at all stronger than those alleged by the people of the eleven sovereign States now confederated together for withdrawing from a Union formed by a voluntary compact upon conditions which were persistently violated and with covenants assential to their domestic repose openly threatened to be broken? But appended to this letter of instructions you will find more extended extracts* from the letters here referred to for your special reference.

There is yet another question of great practical importance to us and to the world which you will present on the first proper occasion to Her Britannic Majesty's Government. It was declared by the five great powers at the Conference of Paris that "blockades to be binding must be effectual" - a principle long since sanctioned by leading publicists

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*Not found.

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