the present moment had more than any thing else
contributed to the satisfactory settlement of the question."

In his reply Mr. Seward took the ground that we had the right to
detain the British vessel and to search for contraband persons and
dispatches, and moreover that the persons named and their dispatches
were contraband. But he found good reason for surrendering the
Confederate envoys in the fact that Captain Wilkes had neglected
to bring the _Trent_ into a Prize Court and to submit the whole
transaction to Judicial examination. Mr. Seward certainly strained
the argument of Mr. Madison as Secretary of State in 1804 to a most
extraordinary degree when he apparently made it cover the ground
that we would quietly have submitted to British right of search if
the "Floating Judgment-seat" could have been substituted by a
British Prize Court. The seizure of the _Trent_ would not have
been made more acceptable to the English Government by transferring
her to the jurisdiction of an American Prize-Court, unless indeed
that Court should have decided, as it most probably would have
decided, that the seizure was illegal. Measuring the English demand
not by the peremptory words of Lord John Russell but by the kindly
phrase in which Lord Lyons in a personal interview verbally
communicated them, Mr. Seward felt justified in saying that "the
claim of the British Government is not made in a discourteous
manner." Mr. Seward did not know that at the very moment he was
writing these conciliatory words, British troops were on their way
to the Dominion of Canada to menace the United States, and that
British cannon were shotted for our destruction.

Lord John Russell, however much he might differ from Mr. Seward's
argument, found ample satisfaction to the British Government in
his conclusion. He said in reply: "Her Majesty's Government having
carefully taken into their consideration the liberation of the
prisoners, the delivery of them into your hands, and the explanations
to which I have just referred, have arrived at the conclusion that
they constitute the reparation which Her Majesty and the British
nation had a right to expect." And thus, by the delivery of the
prisoners in the form and at the place least calculated to excite
or wound the susceptibilities of the American people, this dangerous
question was settled. It is only to be regretted that the spirit
and discretion exhibited by the eminent diplomatist who represented