Am I to understand from the action of your officers at St.Pierre that you have withdrawn the implied assent given me on Saturday last, and that France, through your agency, adopts a different and less friendly, rule?
Will France drive a vessel of war of the Confederate States from one of her islands to a British island to procure coal?
And if she does this, on what principle will she do it?
It is a well-settled rule of international law, that belligerent cruisers have the right to enter freely into neutral ports for the purpose of replenishing their stores of provisions, or replacing a lost mast or spar; and why should not they be equally permitted to receive on board coal?
Coal is no more necessary to the locomotion of a steamer than is a mast or spar to a sail-ship; it is no more necessary to a cruiser than provisions.

Without a mast or without provisions a sail-ship could not continue her cruise against the enemy; and yet the neutral permitted her to supply herself with these articles.

Nor can such supplies as these be placed on the ground of humanity.

It would be inhuman, it is true, to permit the crew of a belligerent cruiser to perish in your ports by debarring from access to your markets, from day to day; but it does not follow that it would be inhuman to prevent her from laying in a stock of provisions to enable her to proceed to sea, and continue her cruise against the enemy.

It is not humanity to supply a vessel with a lost mast or a spar, and yet no one doubts that this may be done.