France
are bound so to hold and declare. But what then? Should they have
ordered their men of war to cruise against these rebel cruisers or to
capture every one which they might chance to encounter, and to send them
home for trial? We may think they were bound in vindication of public
law to do so; but could we make their not doing so a matter of formal
complaint and a cause of war? There are a number of things to be well
considered before any one should permit himself to quarrel with our
Government for not quarrelling with Great Britain and France on this
matter.

BRITISH VIOLATION OF NEUTRAL OBLIGATIONS.

But the conduct of the British Government in allowing her ports to be
made the basis of these nefarious operations--in permitting vessels of
whose character and purpose there could be no doubt to be built in her
ports--not to be delivered in any Confederate port, but in effect armed
and manned from her ports to go immediately to cruise against our
commerce on the high seas--is an outrageous violation of the obligations
of neutrals, for which that Government may justly be held responsible.
It is a responsibility which no technical pleading about the
insufficiency of British laws, either in matter of prohibition or rules
of evidence, can avoid. Great Britain is bound to have laws and rules of
evidence which will enable her effectually to discharge her neutral
obligations; whether she has or not, does not alter her responsibility
to us. Her conduct may rightfully be made a matter of official
complaint, and of war too--if satisfaction and reparation be refused. It
is a case in which our rights and dignity are concerned; and it is to be
presumed that our Government will not fail to vindicate them.[1]

LEGISLATION--THE CONFISCATION LAW.

The action of _Congress_ has in everything been nobly patriotic in
spirit, and in nearly everything it has wisely and adequately met the
exigencies of the crisis.

But we are compelled to hold the Confiscation Act, in the form in which
it was passed, as a mistake.[2] If the clause of the Constitution
prohibiting 'attainder of treason to work forfeiture except during the
life of the person attainted,' be necessarily applicable to the
Confiscation Act, it seems to us impossible to avoid the conclusion that
the act is unconstitutional. So far as the language of the prohibition
is decisive of anything, it must be taken to include all sorts of
property, real as well as personal--the t