your Lordship's information. It was
surely an odd way of proceeding to furnish at once the warning in time
to provide against its execution!

* * * * *

_Mr. Adams_. I deeply regret a painful necessity which compels me to
make a representation touching the conduct of Consul Bunch at
Charleston. A private and opened letter, intercepted on the person of a
naturalized American citizen and colonel in the confederate
army,--Robert Mure, bearer of dispatches to Great Britain,--disclosed
these words: 'Mr. Bunch, on oath of secrecy, communicated to me that the
first step to recognition was taken. _So prepare for active business_ BY
THE FIRST OF JANUARY.'

_Lord Russell_. I will without hesitation state to you _that, in
pursuance of an agreement between the British and French governments,
Mr. Bunch was instructed to communicate to the persons exercising
authority in the so-called confederate States, the desire of those
governments that certain articles of the declaration of Paris should be
observed by them in their hostilities(!)_ But regarding the other
statement, I as frankly say, Her Majesty's government have not
recognized, and are not prepared to recognize, the so-called confederate
States as a separate and independent power.

_Mr. Seward (aside to Mr. Adams)_. The President revokes the exequatur
of Consul Bunch, who has not only been the bearer of communications
between the insurgents and a foreign government in violation of our
laws, but has abused equally the confidence of the two governments by
reporting, without the authority of his government, and in violation of
their own policy, as well as of our national rights, that the proceeding
in which he was engaged was in the nature of a treaty with the
insurgents, and the first step toward a recognition by Great Britain of
their sovereignty. His whole conduct has been, not that of a friend to
this government, nor of a neutral even, but of a partisan of faction and
disunion.

* * * * *

_Lord Lyons_. My government are concerned to find that two British
subjects, Mr. Patrick and Mr. Rahming, have been subjected to arbitrary
arrest.

_Mr. Seward_. At the time of arrest it was not known they were British
subjects. They have been released.

_Lord Lyons_. They applied for habeas corpus, and its exercise was
refused. Congress has not suspended the writ. Our law officers say that
the authority of Congress is