e to look at this Act,
Mr. Elaine seems to have examined it so cursorily, and with such slight
attention, that he overlooked a provision made in it, under which, had
its true force and meaning been perceived by him, the State Department
of the United States might, in the early summer of 1881, have secured
for American citizens in Ireland the consideration due to them as the
citizens of a friendly State. A curious despatch from Mr. Sackville
West, the British Minister at Washington, to Earl Granville, published
in a British Blue-book now in my possession, plainly intimates that in
the summer of 1881 the American Secretary of State had given the British
Minister to understand that no representations made to him or to his
Government by the Government of the United States touching
American-Irish "suspects" need be taken at all seriously. The whole
diplomatic correspondence on this subject which went on between the two
Governments while Mr. Blaine was Secretary of State, from the 4th of
March 1881 to the 20th of December 1881, was of a sort to lull the
British Government into the belief that "suspects" might be freely and
safely arrested and locked up all over Ireland, with no more question of
their nationality than of any evidence to establish their guilt or their
innocence. During the whole of that time the State Department at
Washington seems to have substantially remained content with the
declaration of Earl Granville, in a letter sent to the American Legation
on the 8th of July 1881, four months after the Coercion Act went into
effect, that "no distinction could be made in the circumstances between
foreigners and British subjects, and that in the case of British
subjects the only information given was that contained in the warrant."

No fault can be found with the British Government for standing by this
declaration so long as it thus seemed to command the assent of the
Government of the United States.

But when Mr. Frelinghuysen was called into the State Department by
President Arthur in December 1881, to overhaul the condition into which
our foreign relations had been brought by his predecessor, he found that
in no single instance had Mr. Blaine succeeded in inducing the British
Government, either to release any American citizen arrested under a
general warrant without specific charges of criminal conduct, and on
"suspicion" in Ireland, or to order the examination of any such citizen.
The one case in which an American