Who would believe that under these words of commonplace was concealed the unsettled difference which has already so deeply stirred the American people, and is destined, until finally adjusted, to occupy the attention of the civilized world?

Nothing here gives notice of the real question.

The moral sense is disturbed by such a process at any stage of the trial; nor is it satisfied by the subsequent provision for the selection of a sovereign or head of a friendly state as arbitrator.

The treaty not merely makes no provision for the determination of the great question, but it seems to provide expressly that it shall never hereafter be presented.

Whatever the treaty may say in terms, there is no settlement in fact; and until this is made, there will be constant menace of discord.

While doing so little for us, the treaty makes ample provision for all known claims on the British side.

It cannot be imagined, or divined, or invented; it must exist as a “fact” within the knowledge of the world, or at least as a “fact” susceptible of proof.

From the beginning, when “God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas,” the two have been separate, and power over one has not necessarily implied power over the other.

But, whatever power the Rebels possessed on the land, they were always without power on the ocean.

Admitting that they were belligerents on the land, they were never belligerents on the ocean.

Unfriendly in the precipitancy with which it was launched, this concession was more unfriendly in substance.

Had it not been made, no Rebel ship could have been built in England: every step in her building would have been piracy.

Nor could any munitions of war have been furnished: not a blockade-runner, laden with supplies, could have left the English shores, except under a kindred penalty.

The direct consequence of this concession was to place the Rebels on an equality with ourselves in all British markets, whether of ships or munitions of war.

There can be no reason why the life of our Republic should be less sacred than the life of an Emperor, or should enjoy less protection from British law.

It is sufficient that in a great case like the present, where the correlative duties of a friendly power are in question, an act fraught with such portentous evil cannot be vindicated on a technicality.

We must look at the substance, and find a reason in nothing short of overruling necessity.

Such a concession, like war itself, must be at the peril of the nation making it.

The British assumption, besides being offensive from mere technicality, is inconsistent with the Proclamation of the President, taken as a whole, which, while appointing a blockade, is careful to reserve the rights of sovereignty, thus…

If they cannot stand together, then it is the “blockade” which must be modified by the national sovereignty, and not the national sovereignty by the blockade.

Had he used any other word, the concession of belligerency would have been without justification, even such as is now imagined.

It was this word which, with magical might, opened the gates to all those bountiful supplies by which hostile expeditions were equipped against the United States: it opened the gates of war.

Most appalling is it to think that one little word, unconsciously used by a trusting President, could be caught up by a friendly power and made to play such a part.

It was a proclamation of equality between the National Government on the one side and Rebels on the other, and no plausible word can obscure this distinctive character.

Here, beyond all question, was negligence, or, according to the language of Lord Brougham on another occasion, “crass negligence,” making England justly responsible for all that ensued.