1858. June 6.—Constant employment on the questions pending with the Foreign Office has prevented me from making memoranda. The conduct of the British naval cruisers is intolerable, and creates great anxiety as to the relations of the two countries. The cases of the Cortes, the A. A. Chapman, the Mobile, the Tropic Bird, and the comprehensive visitation of all our merchantmen in Sagua la Grande, connected with an arrogant general surveillance, make out a story of national outrage worse than anything heretofore experienced. I regard the emergency as justifying, nay, requiring, instructions to the United States Minister at this Court to demand peremptory orders to British naval officers on every station to cease visiting American vessels, and if not given in a fortnight, to ask his passports and quit the kingdom. My conviction is that such a course would be successful, and that our relations of amity would at once be restored and strengthened. I am afraid we are not prepared for so resolute a proceeding, and that we might suffer much at first; but we should soon rise to the proper national elevation and strength, and be advanced a century in dignity and character. The people at large never have faltered, and never will falter, in sustaining those who assert the independence and rights of their country.
A few days ago Sir E. B. Lytton accepted the Colonial Office, and Lord Stanley is transferred to the Presidency of the India Board of Control. The Ministry is becoming firmer and abler. It has a trump card in the American embroglio, which, if promptly and frankly played, will bind the Radicals permanently to them.
