This being so, what ought the commander of the packet Trent to have done?  I do not impugn his intentions, he may have acted very innocently; but if this excuse of ignorance of the rules of the law be valid for him, I think that it should also be so for Captain Wilkes, and that there would be little justice in treating with extreme rigor a first offence which evidently has taken every one by surprise, and has found nowhere a very complete understanding of the conditions of the right of search.

The commander of the Trent saw men come to him, whose quality as Southern Commissioners challenged his attention.  He knew what anxiety and trouble were pervading the North concerning their mission and despatches, the contents of which excited grave suspicions; there had even been talk, exaggerated, doubtless, of a proposition of a protectorate and other offers, designed to gain at any price the support of one or more maritime powers.  The enthusiastic welcome which the people of Havana, enemies of the United States, and ardent friends of slavery, had just given to Messrs. Mason and Slidell, permits no doubt of the especial gravity of the hostile mandate with which they were charged.  Then or never was the occasion to say that messengers and messages of this nature must travel under their own flag, and that neutrals were bound not to facilitate their mission in any manner.  In circumstances so grave, and with such a responsibility, commanders of packets could not take refuge behind their innocence, or argue that the consul of the United States had not taken pains to forewarn them.  I should like to know what reception a neutral would find in England, who should take it into his head to say to her:  “I thought myself at liberty to carry hostile despatches and those bearing them, because the English consul did not come to bind me to do nothing of the sort.”

Is it true, as has been maintained, that the fault was divided, the message having been carried by one packet and the messengers by another?  This appears doubtful, and matters little, moreover, in the eyes of impartial judges.  The fact is, that voluminous papers were seized on the Trent, at the same time with the rebel commissioners.

Now, and to have done with the question of right, shall I say a few words of what it is permissible to call the hackneyed rhetoric and declamation of the subject?

Men have talked, of course, of an insult to the flag; they have called to mind that the deck of an English vessel is the same as the soil of the country; they have invoked the rights of British hospitality, and demanded whether she could consent to see her guests taken from her by force.  So many phrases for effect, which unhappily never fail to arouse implacable passions!  But what is there behind these phrases?

The flag is not insulted when the search is exercised in conformity with the law of nations.  It is in vain that the deck of an English merchant vessel is the soil of the country; a belligerent is authorized to seize it, if it is carrying men employed in behalf of the enemy; officers, for example.  The rights of hospitality are bounded by the duties of neutrality, and the vessel which would claim to protect its guests at any price, when its guests serve the war, would simply be guilty of a culpable action.