English indignation has omitted one side of the affair, I mean the conduct of the packet Trent.  If, by chance, it should have violated the principles of neutrality, this question would wear quite a different aspect.  This, doubtless, would not prevent the demand for reparation from being well founded; it would prevent the negotiations relating to it from assuming an air of harshness, which would suffice to render their success doubtful.  Let us therefore examine the conduct of the Trent.

Some have thought to justify it, by observing that the vessel was going from America.  What does this matter?  Neutrals are bound to act as neutrals when they are going from a place as well as when they are coming towards it.  They might as easily take sides with one of the belligerents by carrying despatches, for instance, designed to secure to it aid, as by bringing it other despatches announcing that this aid was forthcoming.

Others have based their arguments on the fact that the Trent had quitted a neutral port to repair to a neutral port.  Again, a distinction which proclamations of neutrality have never admitted, and which no jurisprudence has endorsed to my knowledge.  What does plain good sense tell us, in fact?  That your departure from a neutral port and your destination to a neutral port do not hinder you in any way from serving the belligerent whose despatches you have received, especially if these despatches are on the way to solicit from a neutral country an alliance or supplies of munitions of war.

The rights of neutrals demand to be preserved, in my opinion, and France is interested in it more than any other nation.  But these rights, let us not fear to acknowledge, have for their fundamental condition, a real neutrality.  Now, you take it upon yourself, knowingly and willingly, to carry despatches destined for a country to which it is a notorious fact that one of the belligerents is looking for its only serious chances of success.  These despatches are drawn up, it may be, in this wise:  “Let vessels loaded with arms and ammunition leave Southampton or Liverpool as quickly as possible and come to Charleston, where the cruisers are now few in number; let expeditions be combined in such a manner as to force the blockade; we are in need of their arrival in order to push our army forward.”  Or else the despatches read:  “Buy up the newspapers and work on public opinion in the manufacturing districts.  Let maritime powers know that we will consent, if necessary, to cessions of territory or protectorates; that, in any case, we will grant them exceptional advantages if they protest against the blockade, if they disquiet our enemy, if they seek a quarrel with him and draw off his attention to fix it on, an eventual struggle with Europe.  At the first step of this kind, we will attempt an offensive movement.  The least menace against the blockade is worth as much to us as the despatch of an army.”  Is it not