Lord Lyons to Mr Seward..
SlR: Her Majesty’s government have again considered the correspondence on the subject of the restrictions imposed by the United States authorities upon the trade carried on between New York and the Bahama islands, and they have given their special attention to the note which was addressed to Mr. Stuart by the acting Secretary of State on the 26th of August last, in answer to the remonstrance made by me in execution of the orders of her Majesty’s government, in my note to you of the 3d of the same month.*
Her Majesty’s government are willing to hope that so far as the particular question of cancelling the bonds is concerned, that special grievance may be considered to be now redressed. But her Majesty’s government retaip their former opinion with respect to the original unlawfulness of requiring such bonds to be entered into by British merchants, and to the inconsistency of such a proceeding with the treaty obligations subsisting between Great Britain and the United States; and further, they continue to think that the real object and tendency of this measure is to innovate upon the established principles of international law, and to supply the deficiencies of an inadequate blockade by domestic legislation extended beyond the due limits, to the injury of the rights of neutrals under commercial treaties. Notwithstanding the disclaimers of the United States government as to this latter point, her Majesty’s government find it impossible, after reading the several reports of the collector at New York to the Secretary of the Treasury, as well as the note which you yourself did Mr. Stuart the honor to address to him on the 18th of August, 1862,† to doubt the direct connexion between this measure and the blockade.
Her Majesty’s government are unable to accept the last replies of the government of the United States as sufficient and satisfactory, because those replies express the determination of the government still to insist on exacting bonds, by which the carriers of goods on shipboard, for bona fide delivery to consignees at Nassau, are made responsible for any subsequent acts of those consignees with regard to such goods. Her Majesty’s government still conceive the exaction of such bonds to be a denial to British subjects concerned in the trade with the Bahamas of the rights secured to them by treaty, and they cannot consider that [Page 395] it is any justification to say that if the citizens of the United States were to en -gage in the same trade, similar bonds would be exacted from them also. Her Majesty’s government have deemed it to be unnecessary to repeat the arguments or enter again into the reasons for the opinion entertained on this subject by her Majesty’s government, which have already been fully made known to the government of the United States; but her Majesty’s government have instructed me to state to you that they consider that those arguments have not been refuted.
I have the honor to be, with the highest consideration, sir, your most obedient, humble servant,