Page:Australian views of England.djvu/40

  Four or five days more, and the "answer from across the sea" will reach the widowed Queen of England in her secluded sorrow, and there is scarcely room for hope that her first act in her widowhood will not be to sign a message which will make thousands of her countrywomen widows. Yet, if men reasoned honestly on their proper part in these momentous transactions of life and death, we might still hope for the union of honour and peace. Contraband of war in no sense could the Southern Commissioners be. If an issue of international law be raised, all authorities appear to agree, and the agreement is in accord with the natural reason of the thing, that nothing carried by a neutral ship, between one neutral port and another, can be deemed "contraband of war." Such precisely was the case of the Trent and her passengers. On the other hand, if Messrs. Slidell and Mason are pursued as rebels, they cannot be followed upon English soil without violating the right of asylum, and the deck of an English ship is part of the soil in national law. All legal ailments and State doctrines bring us back to these two issues, and in either case the verdict of civilised nations must be against America.