transport or storeship, or with intent to cruise
or commit hostilities . . . . . or shall issue or
deliver any commission for any ship or vessel"
with like intent, such offender shall be deemed
guilty of a misdemeanour, he shall be punished
with fine and imprisonment, and the vessel, with
whatever may belong to, or be on board of it,
shall be forfeited. And it shall be lawful for any
officer of his Majesty's customs or excise, or any
officer of his Majesty's navy, empowered to make
seizure under existing laws of trade and navigation,
to make seizure accordingly. Neither the
American nor the English acts were founded on
allegation of the selling and building of vessels.
Neither act, therefore, contained words that forbid
the commerce of building and selling, if a
trader really can build and sell without having
equipped, furnished, fitted out, or armed for
purposes of war. Here is the place in the act
through which the coach and four goes.

Hitherto no conviction has been sustained
under our own Foreign Enlistment Act, although
of late it has become necessary that the English
government should seek to enforce all its provisions,
and a case has arisen, that of the
Alexandra, in which a hard battle at law has been
fought. It is argued on behalf of the pocket of
the English shipbuilder, that he may take orders
of any belligerent without any regard for the use
to which his goods are to be put, and leave only
the belligerent answerable for his hostile intent.
It is argued that the Americans, under their
own act, established a convenient precedent in
the case of the Santissima Trinidad. This
vessel was first built at Baltimore as a privateer
against England, when England and America
were at war. In eighteen 'sixteen she was
owned by American citizens, who sent her from
Baltimore, with a cargo of munitions of war and
twelve guns, ostensibly to the north-west coast,
but really to help Buenos Ayres, then in revolt
against Spain. Arrived at Buenos Ayres, she
was sold nominally to the captain who took her
out, who thereafter commanded her as a ship of
war belonging to the government of Buenos
Ayres, of which republic this commander—
Captain Chayter—announced to the crew that
he had become a citizen. Here there was a ship
of war carrying from an American port guns,
munitions of war, an American captain and a
crew prepared to become themselves implements
of war in the service of a foreign people in
conflict with a state at peace with the American
government. But the judgment of the American
Supreme Court, as delivered by Mr.Justice Story,
was, that "although equipped as a vessel of
war, the Santissima Trinidad was sent to
Buenos Ayres on a commercial adventure . . .
If captured by a Spanish ship of war during
the voyage she would have been justly
condemned as a good prize for being engaged in a
traffic punishable by the law of nations. But
there is nothing in our laws, or in the law of
nations, which forbids our citizens from sending
armed vessels, as well as munitions of war, to
foreign ports for sale."

Again, there was a yet more explicit American
decision in the case of the Bolivar, which, in the
year 'thirty-two, left Baltimore for the island of
St. Thomas, the owner and equipper averring
that he left Baltimore to look for funds to arm
and equip her for a privateering cruise.

"The law," said this decision, "does not
prohibit armed vessels belonging to citizens
of the United States from sailing out of our
ports; it only requires owners to give
security (as was done in the present case) that
such vessels shall not be employed by them to
commit hostilities against foreign powers at
peace with the United States. The collectors
are not authorised to detain vessels, although
manifestly built for warlike purposes, and about
to depart from the United States, unless
circumstances shall render it probable that such
vessels are intended to be employed by the
owners to commit hostilities against some foreign
power at peace with the United States. All the
latitude, therefore, necessary for commercial
purposes is given to our citizens, and they are
restrained only from such acts as are calculated
to involve the country in war." This is all in
direct defiance to the spirit of the law, but the
way to such interpretation of its letter, say the
English builders of the Alabama and the Alexandra,
was shown to them in America. They only
followed it.

The Alabama was built by the Messrs. Laird,
of Birkenhead, under the name of No. 290, for
use as a Confederate vessel of war, and cost,
including provisions enough for a four months'
voyage, in U. S. money, two hundred and fifty-
five thousand dollars. She is a barque-rigged
wooden propeller of rather more than a thousand
tons register, about two hundred and twenty
feet long, and seventeen deep, with two
horizontal engines of three hundred horse-power,
and stowage for three hundred and fifty tons of
coal. The main-deck is pierced for twelve guns,
and the berth-deck able to accommodate a
hundred and twenty men. Intelligence having been
received that on a certain morning the custom-
house officers would be prepared to board and
detain this vessel under the provisions of the
Foreign Enlistment Act, on the same morning,
the twenty-ninth of July, eighteen 'sixty-two,
before the custom-house officers were ready for
their seizure, the vessel, starting three or four
days before its appointed time, steamed out
with some half-dozen ladies on board, including
two daughters of the builder, and some gentlemen
of Liverpool, who were taken as a blind,
ostensibly upon a trial trip. But in Moelfra
Bay the holiday party was transferred to a
steam-tug, and there the vessel remained shipping
hands as bound to Nassau of the Bahamas.
No guns had been placed on board at Liverpool.
The new war steamer went first to the island of
Terceira, in the Azores, where she awaited the
arrival of her armament. First came the Agripina
of London, with four thirty-two pounder
broadside guns, and two pivot guns, a sixty-eight
pounder solid-shot gun, and a hundred-pounder
rifle gun, besides gunpowder, Enfield
rifles, two cases of pistols, shot, shell, and other