It would appear that the Tuscaloosa is a barque of 500 tons, captured by the Alabama, off the coast of Brazil, on the 21st of June last, and brought into Simon’s Bay on or before the 7th of August, with her original cargo of wool (itself, as well as the vessel, prize) still on board, and with nothing to give her a warlike character (so far as is stated in the papers before me), except the circumstances already noticed.

Whether, in the case of a vessel duly commissioned as a ship of war, after being made prize by a belligerent Government, without being first brought infra praesidia, or condemned by a court of prize, the character of prize, within the meaning of Her Majesty’s orders, would or would not be merged in that of a national ship of war, I am not called upon to explain.  It is enough to say that the citation from Mr. Wheaton’s book by your attorney-general does not appear to me to have any direct bearing upon the question.

Connected with this subject is the question as to the cargoes of captured vessels, which is alluded to at the end of your despatch.  On this point I have to instruct you that Her Majesty’s orders apply as much to prize cargoes of every kind which may be brought by any armed ships or privateers of either belligerent into British waters as to the captured vessels themselves.  They do not, however, apply to any articles which may have formed part of any such cargoes, if brought within British jurisdiction, not by armed ships or privateers of either belligerent, but by other persons who may have acquired or may claim property in them by reason of any dealings with the captors.

I think it right to observe that the third reason alleged by the attorney-general for his opinion assumes (though the fact had not been made the subject of any inquiry) that “no means existed for determining whether the ship had or had not been judicially condemned in a court of competent jurisdiction,” and the proposition that, “admitting her to have been captured by a ship of war of the Confederate States, she was entitled to refer Her Majesty’s Government, in case of any dispute, to the court of her States in order to satisfy it as to her real character.”  This assumption, however, is not consistent with Her Majesty’s undoubted right to determine within her own territory whether her own orders, made in vindication of her own neutrality, have been violated or not.

The question remains what course ought to have been taken by the authorities of the Cape—­

1st.  In order to ascertain whether this vessel was, as alleged by the United States Consul, an uncondemned prize brought within British waters in violation of Her Majesty’s neutrality; and

2dly.  What ought to have been done if such had appeared to be really the fact.