War, instead of negotiation, mediation, or arbitration; war, at the first word, for a question which has been submitted to legal advisers, and which offers facilities assuredly for several equally sincere interpretations; war at, any price does not belong to our times.

What I say here, others will make it their business to say on the other side of the channel; there have been, there will be, liberal and Christian voices there, who will not fear to protest against the incitements of passion.  We have heard little yet except the bells of the manufactories; other sounds will soon make themselves heard; the great party which, in abolishing slavery and combating the slave trade, has won the chief title of honor in England—­this great party, I think, is not dead.  It is time for it to give signs of life.

As to America, its friends are awaiting its final resolutions with an anxiety which I scarcely dare depict.  Never was graver question placed before a government.  The whole future is contained in it.  If she be sufficiently mistress of herself to grant what is asked and to admit a reparation, even though it be excessive, of the fault evidently committed in her name, she will have the approbation and esteem of all true hearts.  Her ship—­the ship which brings, back the Commissioners —­will be welcomed with acclamations to our shores, and it will be plainly seen that the United States in yielding much is neither weakened nor humiliated.

Ah! the affair would he so easily arranged, if both sides desired it!  On both sides are men so worthy to effect a reconciliation for the glory of our times and the happiness of humanity!  On both sides are nations so well fitted to understand and to love each other!  Must we despair then of the progress of the spirit of peace?  Must we look with our own eyes upon English vessels employed in ensuring the success of the champions of slavery?  Must we veil our head with our mantle?

A. DE GASPARIN.

VALLEYRES, (SWITZERLAND,) December 5, 1861.

P.S.—­I wish to add here a single observation:  I have not pretended to exhaust, in this rapid study, the decisions which might be borrowed from English authors, and which would be of a kind to be appealed to by America.  Sir William Scott, for example, (see C. Robinson, p. 467,) says in express terms:  “You may stop the ambassador of your enemy." I have been careful not to draw the conclusion from this, on my part, that Captain Wilkes was right in acting as he did; I simply infer from it that the case is by no means a hanging one, and that in stopping the Commissioners and their papers without stopping the ship and turning her from her course, he yielded perhaps (let us be just to all) to the desire of not exposing the packet and passengers to serious inconveniences.  Let us say that he was unfortunate, since his courtesy on this point seems to have become the blackest of his misdeeds.  In truth, to see in the affair