This view of the subject will doubtless be acquiesced in by the British Government. The prompt restoration of the captured property, and the earnest desire expressed by the Canadian authorities to identify and bring to punishment the guilty parties, warrant the assurance that all reasonable measures will be adopted to maintain their neutrality. The unusual congregation of large numbers of persons on the frontier without any visible occupation, persons known to belong to the insurgent States, furnishes in itself evidence of hostile purposes, and the Canadian authorities owe it to themselves and to the duties of neutrality to take care that their purposes do not ripen into open acts of aggression. May we not, moreover, demand that these emissaries of the rebel authorities at Richmond shall be sent out of Canada, or, at all events, that they shall not be permitted to hang about the frontier, and especially the Detroit and other rivers, which are narrow boundaries between the United States and Great Britain, and where predatory enterprises can readily be set on foot against us? Unless some such efficient measures are taken to prevent a violation of the Canadian territory by the insurgents, no matter whether their enterprises be piratical or assumed to be acts of war, I am satisfied that peace between the United States and Great Britain cannot be much longer preserved, and that collisions between the inhabitants of the frontier towns will take place in spite of any effort on the part of the Government to prevent them. That it is one of the chief purposes of the insurgents to advance their own cause by bringing about a rupture between the two countries through their agents and officers in Canada, there can be no doubt.

There has been form the commencement of the rebellion a strong feeling of dissatisfaction on the part of our citizens arising out of the recognition on the part of our citizens arising out of the recognition of the insurgents as belligerent. It has been converted into a feeling of exasperation by the failure of Great Britain to prevent the arming in her ports of insurgent cruisers by which millions of our property have been destroyed on the ocean, and if, after thus trying our patience, hostile expeditions are organized on her frontiers to attack us, she cannot fail to see that it may lead to the most serious consequences. Even if the Government shall from considerations arising out of the distracted condition of the country deem it wise to postpone a vigorous assertion of our right to redress till we are better prepared to enforce it, those who are injured in their property and outraged in their persons will be less considerate, and will be very likely to retaliate by incursions into the Canadian territory in pursuit of the depredators; and when there they will still be more likely to indemnify themselves by taking any property they may find without stopping to inquire whether it belongs to those who have injured them or those who have given the wrongdoers shelter and protection. I am disposed to press these considerations the more earnestly because I should regard a disturbance of our friendly relations with Great Britain at any time, and especially at the present, as an unmixed calamity, and should the strong representations which the occasion calls for fail to produce their proper effect and insure us against a predatory war, where we have a right to demand security and peace, I recommend that a proper naval and military force be organized on those portions of our frontier, not only for the purpose of preventing such unauthorized acts of retaliation on the part of our own citizens, but that we may, unless effectual measures be taken for arresting hostile incursions within our jurisdiction, be prepared to pursue the depredators into the Canadian territory in the heat of the