standard of maritime neutrality, there are numerous details in which the British statute is decidedly more comprehensive and wholesomely severe than our own, either as left by Hamilton, or as modified by the laws of 1797, 1817, and 1818. Some of these points of superiority relate to warlike preparations on land (on which subject English legislation had provided, to some extent, at a much earlier date than our own), and some to preparations by sea, and some again to preparations combining both land and marine operations. Under one or the other of these heads, I can name at least ten important points of superiority in the British statute over our own.

(1). In the first place, the British act is decidedly more comprehensive than the American, in denouncing unneutral enlistments, both in the land and naval service of a foreign government, by making it penal" to agree to enlist," or "to engage or contract to enlist," or to engage or attempt to engage another person to enlist, neither of which initiatory steps of raising foreign levies is forbidden by our statute. Our act (sec.

2) only punishes one who "enlists or enters himself, or hires or retains another person to enlist," &c. ; thus making a positive and complete enrolment or hiring on neutral soil a prerequisite to the offence..

The importance of this distinction will be appreciated, when it is remembered that not a Fenian recruit nor a Fenian recruiter has been prosecuted for violating American laws by recruiting on American soil during the late Fenian demonstration in the United States, though the engaging to enlist, or the attempting to engage others to enlist, have probably been as open as the day in all the Northern cities. It was even made a question by Governor Andrew, at the time of Sir John Crampton's dismissal in 1855, Mr. Andrew being then one of the counsel who defended a British recruiting agent, indicted for procuring British levies on American soil, whether our statute goes any farther than to forbid enlisting in the naval service, merely, of a foreign government; its words being, "to enlist," &c., "as a soldier, or as a marine or seaman, on board of any vessel of war," nothing being said about land service. Judge Sprague, of the United-States District Court, overruled the

point, doubtless quite correctly (United States v. Kazinski, 18 Law Rep., p. 255-7). Yet how much better in the British statute, not merely to distinguish between warlike operations "by land or by sea," "in land or sea service," &c., as by sec. 2, — but also to denounce the engaging, and attempting to engage, in the business of recruiting?

I need hardly add, that, with its anti-Fenian bearing, the imperfect phraseology of the British statute on this head finds no imitation in General Banks's new project.

(2). In the second place, the British act is more complete than our own, in prohibiting any hiring or retaining of any person whatsoever, by way of recruiting, for foreign war-ships transiently sojourning in British neutral waters, without excepting the subjects or citizens of the same nation as that to which such war-ships belong, as the American statute does, in sec. 2. The effect of the American exception is, that if the United States happens to be a neutral power, and England and France, for instance, are belligerents towards each other, England can lawfully recruit from among British subjects for her ships of war, transiently stopping in American ports; and France, in like manner, from French subjects under like circumstances. Hamilton incorporated this provision into his act of 1794, — doubtless suggested by Henfield's case, where Genet, with a show of justice, tried to neutralize Henfield's offence by claiming him for an adopted citizen of France; and the provision has retained its place on the American statute-book, down to the present day.

The superiority of the British statute, in omitting this exception, shows itself in considering the provision of British law applicable to the recruiting for the " Alabama” in Laird's shipyard, at the time of her original outfit. Had she then been a regularly commissioned Confederate ship-of-war, built and. equipped in the Confederate States, or elsewhere than in a British port, it would have been entirely lawful for Laird, had the American exception obtained in the British act, to have filled up the ship's crew with Confederate seamen, on her coming into Liverpool for a temporary stop. As it is, our complaint against the outfitters of the "Alabama" (on the score of enlisting her

seamen) is, not merely that she had not become a ship-of-war of a belligerent power, at the time of her quitting the Mersey, but that her crew were almost exclusively British subjects, and, to a large extent, recruited from among Her Majesty's enrolled Naval Reserves.

Sir Roundell Palmer, at the time of the "Alexandra" lawhearing (November, 1863), being then Attorney-General of England, and leading for the Crown, took occasion to call the attention of the Court of Exchequer to this superior completeness of the British statute, in the particular just noticed ("Alexandra" Law Hearing, p. 337); but I think the allusion an unfortunate one as an argument to help persuade Chief-Baron Pollock and Baron Bramwell to a strict enforcement of the British statute on other points, if it brought to their minds, as it naturally must have done, how little the penalties of the ForeignEnlistment Act, with all its superior completeness, had thus far been enforced in the instance of John Laird and the other getters-up of the "Alabama" expedition. The Chief Baron might well have interrupted the legal representative of the British Government, with demanding of him why he should expect the Court of Exchequer to give judgment against the "Alexandra," when as yet no prosecution had been instituted by the Crown against the much greater offenders of the "Alabama," though more than a year had elapsed since the scandal and reproach" of that transaction.

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In that connection, as a matter of legislative detail, the Attorney-General might very properly have called attention as he omitted to do, and as General Banks and his committee, for that matter, seem also to have failed to observe - to the superiority of the American statute in making the prohibition against enlisting simply (not against recruiting) on American neutral .soil, applicable to all persons whatsoever, and not merely to "natural-born subjects [of his Majesty]," as the British act does, by its terms. When the Attorney-General says, as he does, page 338, in his argument, -

"Of course, the penalty against serving ubicunque gentium must be limited to natural-born subjects, because we cannot legislate for other parts of the world,"

he seems to have forgotten that the United-States statute, to which he had just been referring, forbids "any person" (be he native or foreign) from enlisting in the land-service of a foreign power on American soil. And why should it not? May it not trouble the peace of the United States, and tend to endanger its foreign relations, to have Irish Fenians or any other foreign would-be belligerents enlist or enrol themselves for war within its territory? And was it "of course" that England should have no statute, and take no pains to pass one, during our late civil struggle, to prevent Laird's ship-yards and other such establishments from becoming Confederate enlisting stations? Englishmen -i.e., "natural-born subjects -were sufficiently prohibited from seeking such rendezvous, to enrol themselves; but not Confederate volunteers. I do not esteem the subjectmatter one of great consequence, considering the paucity of Confederate sailors in foreign parts; but I cannot quite agree to the Attorney-General's "of course.”

(3). On the other hand, in the third place, the superiority of the British act over the American is decided, in forbidding British subjects from enlisting or engaging in warlike operations anywhere whatsoever; while the prohibition of the UnitedStates law is limited to "any person within the territory or jurisdiction of the United States" (except in reference to fitting out ships abroad to prey upon American commerce, as already noticed in the criticism on the revision of the act of 1797, and which exception, as by § 4 of the act of 1818, is altogether abrogated in General Banks's new scheme). It would seem thus that citizens of the United States, under the laws of the United States as they now stand, may freely go abroad to enlist in a foreign service, in fact, may at home, on American soil, agree to enlist in such service (provided they do not take money and "enter themselves"), — without committing any offence against United-States laws (see United States v. Kazinski, ut sup.); but that both these descriptions of belligerent undertakings are denounced by the British statute. (4). In the fourth place, the British act is greatly superior to our own, as a preventive of infractions of neutrality, in authorizing (as by sec. 5) the detention of any vessel about leaving

the British dominions with persons on board "who have enlisted or engaged to enlist," &c., in any foreign belligerent service; thus authorizing the stopping of any warlike embarkation for foreign parts, which our laws, as they now stand, do not, unless the number of persons thus collectively embarking brings it under another head, of "setting on foot a military expedition." Sec. 6 of the British act follows up this preventive provision, by making it penal for any shipmaster to take on board his ship any such recruits, "enlisted or engaged to enlist" in a foreign belligerent service, under a penalty of fifty pounds per head for each passenger. It further subjects the ship itself to seizure and detention, until the fine incurred as above is paid, or satisfactory security given for its payment.

These provisions are entirely new in the British act, and find no exemplar in our own statutes. It is under them that we lay much of our case (at least, as a volunteer disputant, I have ventured to do so) against England, for permitting the final start of the "Alabama" expedition from Beaumaris Bay, after Consul Dudley had notified the British Customs' authorities that Captain Bullock was going down the Mersey in the steam-tug from Liverpool, with his twenty-five or thirty Confederate recruits to join the "Alabama," then lying in that bay, some forty miles below Liverpool, — recruits, who, according to their own confession to the Customs' Surveyor, "were going to join the gunboat as a part of her crew," but for whose detention, or the detention of the tug herself, the Surveyor never raised his finger. (Boston Daily Advertiser," Nov. 11, and Dec. 9, 1865.) Do General Banks and the House of Representatives mean to ignore this feature of the British neutral code, as unimportant to the final auditing of the "Alabama" claim? or must they admit again, in this instance, that "the scaling" is upwards, rather than downwards, in putting the United-States enactment on a level with the British?

I forget these provisions have attracted the attention of General Banks and his committee; but with what indifferent success they have attempted to model from their terms, for the benefit of their new project, I shall have occasion to, comment on hereafter.