after Lord Clarendon said we (Mr. Crampton and Sir Gaspard Le Marchant) had been ordered to stop it."

Mr. Crampton expressly refers, in his letter to Sir Gaspard, to Lord Clarendon's letter to Mr. Buchanan of the 16th of July. I suppose he alludes to that in the phrase quoted, "Lord Clarendon said we had been ordered." But Lord Clarendon does not say that. He says, (6 Instructions to that effect were sent out," but does not say when they were sent, nor that they were sent to Mr. Crampton and Sir Gaspard Le Marchant. [532] *Nothing particular was known by me in January, 1856, of those orders, nor to whom they were sent. Of course, I did not speak of them as having been addressed to Mr. Crampton and Sir Gaspard. No direct official knowledge of them came under my eye until they were referred to in Lord Clarendon's recent letter to Mr. Dallas, in which it is stated that the British government "sent out to Canada and to Nova Scotia, on the 22d of June, 1855, orders to discontinue all further proceedings in the matter of enlistment for the foreign legion." But here, again, it is not said that orders on the subject were sent to Mr. Crampton.

I previously knew, however, from other sources of information, that orders had issued to somebody under date of June 22, 1855; and if I ever said anything on that subject of the nature imputed by Mr. Crampton, it must have been that the recruitment continued long after it ought to have ceased in prompt or due execution of the orders described by Lord Clarendon. And the fact is so.

Orders to stop recruiting in the United States, dated in London, thé 22d of June, should have reached Halifax the 5th of July, and [533] Washington the 8th of July, by the Cunard mail-steamer, the

America.-(National Intelligencer, July 6, 1855.)

Now let us see how, when, and by whom the recruiting was actually stopped in the United States, Canada, and Nova Scotia.

Mr. Crampton expressly says in the letter before me, that he, not Sir Edmund Head, gave orders to stop the reception of recruits in Canada, by telegraph, dated "somewhere about," that is, not until after the 2d of August; he implies, but does not distinctly say, that at the same time he sent orders to the same effect to New York, and that he communicated with Sir Gaspard Le Marchant.

Thus, upon his own declaration, the recruiting was in fact continued by Mr. Crampton sereral weeks after it ought to have ceased, according to the intention of Lord Clarendon.

The matter stands yet worse on the declaration of Sir Gaspard Le Marchant, as it appears in a letter of his dated January 19, 1856, written in reply to Mr. Crampton's letter of the 13th. He says:

My instructions on the subject, the only instructions that I received from any source, were conveyed in two notes dated respectively the 5th and the 13th of 534] Angust last, both of which reached me about the same time, the first by the land-route, the second by the Cunard mail-steamer.—( Ut supra, p. 233.)

He afterward states, in the same letter, that the time when he received the notes was the 17th of August.

These two notes, it is implied by other parts of Sir Gaspard's letter, were from Mr. Crampton; and they were the only instructions, Sir Gaspard says, which he received from any source. That is to say, the whole business, both in Canada and in Nova Scotia, as well as the United States, was under the superintendence of Mr. Crampton alone; and the orders on the subject from the British government went to him, not to

Sir Edmund Head or to Sir Gaspard Le Marchant. This fact it will be material to remember in the sequel.

It is also proved that the date of Mr. Crampton's orders was the 5th of August; which corresponds with the fact that the latest art of recruiting proved on the trials was of the 5th of August.—(Mr. McKeon's letter to Mr. Cushing, Ex. Doe. Senate, 34th Congress, first sess., No. 35. p. 87.)

Thus far we proceed on the assumption that not only Sir Gaspard Le Marchant, but Mr. Crampton, never received any direct communication

of the order of June 22; that the only knowledge Sir Gaspard [535] had of it was through Mr. *Crampton; and that the only knowledge Mr. Crampton ever had of it was by the incidental reference to it in Lord Clarendon's letter to Mr. Buchanan of the 16th of July, a copy of which was received by Mr. Crampton, at Washington, on the 2d of August.

Is that possible? Can it be that the foreign office of the United Kingdom thus carries on its business? That Mr. Crampton was left by Lord Clarendon to discover the existence of such an order through the indirect channel of his own letter to Mr. Buchanan? It is not pos sible and is not the fact.

On the 22d of June, 1855, Lord Clarendon addressed to Mr. Crampton the following letter:

(Extract.]

FOREIGN OFFICE, June 22, 1-55.

I communicated to the war department Mr. Lumley's dispatch of the 21st ultimo. inclosing copies of his correspondence with Her Majesty's consul at Mobile, with regard to an offer made by a Pole, resident in that city, to enlist several of his countrymen for Her Majesty's foreign legion.

I have been informed by Lord Panmure in reply, that his lordship wishes all further proceedings in the matter of enlistment to be stayed, and the project to be definitively abandoned. [536] Corresponding instructions to the governor-*general of Canada, and to the lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, will be dispatched by this evening's mail.— (Papers, ut supra, No. 22, p. 16.)

Now comes the question, why were not these orders executed by Mr. Crampton? How did it happen that they never reached Sir Gaspard Le Marchant? That they never did reach him is clear, for the first and only instructions he ever received on the subject were from Mr. Crampton, under date of the 6th of August. But what became of Lord Clarendon's letter to Mr. Crampton of the 22d of June? That letter, as appears on its face, left England by the steamer of the 23d, the Ainerica. whose mail was in Washington the 8th of July. Of course Mr. Crampton persisted in the enlistment business for about one month after the receipt of express orders for its cessation directed personally to him by the Earl of Clarendon.

What became of the orders dispatched by the same mail to Sir Gaspard Le Marchant? Of that, no explanation appears. But the subject has another bearing, of deepest importance to the good understanding of the United States and of Great Britain.

Mr. Crampton left Washington on the 2d of May, 1855, to attend to the recruiting business in Canada and Nova Scotia.-(Et supra, [587] pp. 131, 132.) *He returned to Washington on the 2d of June.

and there he remained during the month of July.-(Et supra. pp. 22, 132.) Why did he not obey the orders of his government, as communicated in Lord Clarendon's letter of the 22d of June, and put a stop to recruiting at once on the 8th of July, instead of waiting until

the 5th of August? He was forced to act on the 5th of August, because the orders of June 22 had then come to the knowledge of this Government through Lord Clarendon's letter to Mr. Buchanan. Why did he not act sooner? It is not for me to answer that question. The answer may be inferred from the facts and circumstances exposed by the Secretary of State.

The important consideration here is, that the conduct of Mr. Crampton in regard to that letter of Lord Clarendon's is the proximate cause of all the serious controversy between the two governments on the subject of enlistment.

Mr. Marcy's second letter on the subject is dated July 15, 1855. He had called the attention of Mr. Buchanan to the subject by a previous letter of the 9th of June. You, sir, felt constrained to direct the Secretary of State to repeat the complaints of this Government so soon, and

without waiting for a reply to the first communication, in conse[538] quence of the apparently increased activity of the recruiting busi

ness in the interval, and especially in the month of July. If Mr. Crampton had obeyed the orders which he received on the Sth of July, by putting an instant stop to recruitments in the United States, it is probable that either no occasion would have arisen for the dispatch of Mr. Marcy's letter of the 15th of July, or at any rate it would have been different in tenor. And in the sequel, when Lord Clarendon's letter of the 16th of July arrived, the explanations contained in that letter, coupled with the fact of the actual cessation of the recruiting early in July, might have sufficed, in your opinion, to justify this Government in not pursuing the matter any further, and so have ended the question as between the two governments.

On the recent occasion of Mr. Crampton's omission to obey Lord Clarendon's instructions to communicate his letter of the 10th of November to Mr. Marcy, his act of non-compliance with instructions in that respect, negligence, misjudgment, or whatever else it may have been, was somewhat singular, especially in view of his own condition at that time as a minister under request of recall because of his being unacceptable to the United States. It was prejudicial to both countries, because it served to place this Government in a false position with respect to the subject-matter of the dispatch, the question of Central [539] America, and thus to cause Lord Palmerston and Lord Clarendon to go before Parliament in February, under incorrect impressions regarding the attitude of the United States. That was an evil, but a reparable one. In the present case the evil was irreparable, because of the new events which occurred to complicate the question.

On the 8th of July this Government had no knowledge, although it began to have suspicions of the deep complicity of Mr. Crampton in the systematie violation of the laws and the sovereign rights of the United States. Of course no steps had then been taken looking to the demand for his recall.

If, on receiving Lord Clarendon's letter of June 22, on the 8th of July, Mr. Crampton had gone immediately to Mr. Marcy, and shown him that letter, with proper assurances that orders had actually been given to stop all recruiting, would not the communication have produced in the mind of the latter such conviction of the loyalty of Lord Clarendon in the matter, as to have induced him not only to advise that what there had been of inconvenience in the action of the British government should be overlooked, but also to stifle his growing suspicions of Mr. Crampton? I cannot but think so. In which event the indications, [540] which were beginning to appear, of Mr. Crampton's prominent

participation in the enlistments would not have been followed up in July; the proofs of his complicity would not have come in to demand consideration in August; there would have ceased to be occasion for the demands made in Mr. Marcy's letter of July 15, and in that of September 5; the judicial proceedings of September and of October might have been dispensed with, and, in a word, all which there has been of irritat ing or embarrassing in the question could have been effectually saved both to Great Britain and to the United States.

In view of all which herein appears, I venture, sir, to express the hope that you will be satisfied that, if it happened to me in January last to say to Mr. Crampton or to anybody else that the recruitments did not cease so soon as, in reference to the directions of Lord Clarendon, they ought to have done, I said what is true, and is incontrovertibly established as fact by the declarations of Mr. Crampton and of Sir Gaspard Le Marchant, and, in addition to that, by consideration of Lord Clarendon's letter of the 22d of June, communicating the original order to Mr. Crampton.

I observe, also, in the same collection of "papers," a letter [541] from Lord Clarendon to Mr. Crampton, * of the 8th of February, 1856, which betrays the existence of erroneous impressions regard ing my relation to the judicial proceedings at Philadelphia.

He assumes, and then proceeds to draw inferences from the assumption, that my instructions of the 12th and 17th of September to the district attorney of Eastern Pennsylvania were published "a few days before the trial of Hertz, at Philadelphia, took place."—(Ut supra, p. 167.) That is an error. The letters were not published until after the trial.-(Papers, ut supra, p. 106.) Of course all the reflections, founded on the opposite supposition, fall to the ground.

The Earl of Clarendon proceeds to build up another series of reflections and imputations upon the suggestion that the instructions to the district attorney of Eastern Pennsylvania were my own individual act. That, of course, is an error. It need not be said to you, except for the purpose of thus fixing the truth of history, that neither the dispatch of the instructions in question nor any other important step in the busi ness was taken without express authority of the Secretary of State and the President.

In a word, those instructions were an act in the due course of domestic administration, as to which the only thing remarkable is that [542] they should have been made the subject of remark by a foreign government.

*

But any disposition which might otherwise be entertained by me to comment at more length on the letter of the Earl of Clarendon, is removed by perusal of the letters of Mr. Crampton in this collection of documents, and in the "correspondence with the United States respecting Central America," likewise recently presented to Parliament. My previous views of the action of the Earl of Clarendon, in matters affecting this country, have undergone material modification by the know!edge now acquired of the curiosa felicitas of the British minister in the perpetration of mistakes, and the very inexact representations which he habitually made regarding the conversations, opinions, and purposes of individuals in the executive and in the Congress of the United States. I have the honor to be, very respectfully, The PRESIDENT.

C. CUSHING.

*

[543] Message of the President of the United States, communicating to Congress information that he had ceased to hold intercourse with the envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland near this Government, with the considerations of public duty which have led to this measure, and the documents relating thereto.-(See Senate documents, 34th Congress, 1st session, Er. Doc. 80.)

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

I have ceased to hold intercourse with the envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, near this Government.

In making communication of this fact it has been deemed by me proper also to lay before Congress the considerations of indispensable public duty which have led to the adoption of a measure of so much importance. They appear in the documents herewith transmitted to both Houses.

WASHINGTON, May 29, 1856:

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

[544]

No. 8.j

* Mr. Dallas to Mr. Marcy.

[Extract.]

LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES,
London, May 1, 1856.

DEAR SIR: I sent my No. 7 to Liverpool, to go by the steamer Atlantic, on the morning of the 30th April, some hours before receiving the note, of which a copy is annexed, from Lord Clarendon, apologizing for not having been able to get his reply to your dispatch ready in time. Yesterday evening that reply, in form, addressed to me, was received at the legation. I have this morning acknowledged its reception by a note, the copy of which also accompanies this dispatch. And I now transmit to you, by the earliest opportunity, the steamer Asia, on the 3d instant, full and exact copies of that document and the papers attached to it. I am, &c.,

Hon. WM. L. MARCY,
Secretary of State.

G. M. DALLAS.

Mr. Dallas to Lord Clarendon.

LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES,
May 1, 1856.

The undersigned, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of the United States, has the honor to acknowledge the receipt yes[545] terday of a note, dated on * the 30th of April, 1856, from the Earl

of Clarendon, Her Majesty's principal secretary of state for foreign affairs. This note, purporting to be a reply to the statements, views, and arguments contained in the dispatch addressed by Mr. Marcy, the Secretary of State, to Mr. Buchanan, the predecessor of the undersigned,