in Table Bay. From that time until the
sixteenth of September last year, when the journal
ends, the Alabama was cruising in those seas
as a Confederate spider on the watch for American
flies that passed the Cape. Seizure was
made at the Cape of the Tuscaloosa, but as she
had been fitted out on the high seas, certainly
beyond British jurisdiction, the English government
could have no power to detain her, and she
was released.

Here, certainly, is record enough of the
powers of mischief in a single privateer. But
the English government has shown its desire to
test the utmost powers of the Foreign Enlistment
Act, and to enforce them all. It sought
to bring the letter of the law into acknowledged
accord with its spirit by the prosecution following
the seizure of the Alexandra. But at the
trial the Lord Chief Baron followed in his
summing up the American precedents already
referred to. He ruled to the jury: " If you think
that the object really was to build a ship in
obedience to an order, in compliance with a contract,
leaving those who bought it to make what
use of it they thought fit, it appears to me that
the Foreign Enlistment Act has not been broken.
But if you think that the object was to furnish,
fit out, equip, and arm that vessel at Liverpool,
that is a different matter." And the jury found
that there was no breach of the law. The
motion for a new trial failed narrowly as everybody
knows, but the crown has yet a right of
appeal.

The English government has also another
trial of this issue pending in the prosecution
that is yet to follow seizure of the steam-rams
built in the yard of Messrs. Laird Brothers
of Birkenhead, professedly upon the order of
M. Bravay, a merchant of Paris, given on behalf
of the Pasha of Egypt, the rams being named,
in accordance with this statement, El Tousson
and El Monassia. The Federal government believing
these rams to be destined for the use of
the Confederates, made, on the eleventh of last
July, strong representations to the English
government upon the subject. The English
government required evidence, and on the first
of September last it was still debarred from
action beyond active inquiry, and, in the mean
time, friendly effort to secure the rams by itself
becoming their purchaser. For, until then,
there was no evidence beyond hearsay to show
that the rams were not being really built for a
French merchant in Paris, and the responsible
agent of the customs at Liverpool affirmed his
belief that the vessels were not built for the
Confederate States. But between the first and
the fourth of September evidence yet
undisclosed came into possession of the government,
and after that date orders were given to detain
the rams. The Egyptian government had
declared that it was not, as alleged, their
purchaser; and since their seizure the Confederate
government, in the report of the secretary to
the Confederate navy, has acknowledged that
they are, in fact, two of eight iron-clad rams,
designed expressly to break the blockade of
such ports as were not blockaded with the
iron-clad Monitors of the enemy, of which rams five
were contracted for in England and three in
France. " Due precautions," says the Confederate
navy report, " were taken against contravening
the laws of England in the construction
and equipment of these vessels. Three have
been completed; but owing to the unfriendly
construction of her neutrality laws, the government
of England stationed several war vessels
at the mouth of the Mersey, and prevented their
departure from England. Subsequently they
were seized by the British government."

Practically, then, there is no doubt as to the
purpose for which these seized vessels were
built. But the extent to which it is possible to
enforce legally the intentions of the Foreign
Enlistment Act will have again to be tested in
the case of these two rams. If the issue of the
trial be assurance that the terms of the act as
it now stands are insufficient, and that it can
lawfully be evaded, to all practical purposes, in
every particular, the bringing in of an amended
act will be the next thing we must look for.

               NEW WORK BY MR. DICKENS,
In Monthly Parts, uniform with the Original Editions of
                 "Pickwick," " Copperfleld," &c.
On APRIL 30th will be published, PART 1., price 1s., of
         A NEW WORK BY CHARLES DICKENS
                IN TWENTY MONTHLY PARTS.
           With Illustrations by MARCUS STONE.
     London: CHAPMAN and HALL, 193, Piccadilly.

          Now ready, bound in cloth, price 5s. 6d.,
                       THE TENTH VOLUME.