The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I | Page 4

needs of the people for it as an instrument of
exchange--would, for all home uses, possess in full perfection the
nature, functions, and powers of money. It is a subject we do not
propose to discuss. It is enough now to say that the notes of the United
States, fundable in national six per cent. bonds, and drawing interest as
they do semi-annually in gold, must be admitted by everybody to be as
safe a currency as the banks as a whole have ever supplied, and to
possess other advantages which make them incomparably a better
currency than that of local banks.
The high price to which gold has been carried by gambling speculators,
is not to be taken as indicating a proportionate want of confidence in
the success of the national cause and in the intrinsic value of the
national securities. It indicates nothing of the sort--at any rate, whatever
it may be taken to indicate, it is none the less true that United States six
per cent. bonds were from the first eagerly sought for and taken as
investments at the rate of a million a day--faster indeed than the
Government could at first supply them; with a constantly augmenting
demand, until in the last week of October thirty-six millions were
disposed of--leaving only one hundred and fifty millions unsold, which
will doubtless all be taken before this paper is published. Comment on
this is entirely needless.
OUR FOREIGN RELATIONS.
In the conduct of our foreign relations, certain official declarations in
the early part of the war on the policy and purpose of Government in
carrying it on, are to be regretted as gratuitous and unfortunate. It is to
be regretted also that the capture of the Trent and the seizure of Mason
and Slidell was not at once disavowed as being contrary to our doctrine
on neutral rights, and the rebel emissaries surrendered without waiting
for reclamation on the part of the British Government; or, if it was
thought best to await that reclamation as containing a virtual
concession of our doctrine, it would have been better--more dignified

and effective--if the reply had been limited to a simple statement that
the surrender was necessitated by the principles always maintained by
our Government, and not by a reclamation which the British
Government, by its own construction of public law and by its own
practice, was not entitled to make, but which being made, might now, it
was to be hoped, be taken as an abandonment in the future of the
ground heretofore maintained by that Government.
CONCESSION OF BELLIGERENT RIGHTS TO THE REBELS.
There has been some dissatisfaction with the conduct of our official
communications with Great Britain and France respecting the question
on belligerent rights and neutral obligations which the rebellion has
raised. But there are points of no inconsiderable difficulty and delicacy
involved in these questions, which a great many people, in their natural
displeasure against the English and French, have failed to consider. Our
Government deserves the credit of having consulted the interests
without compromising the dignity of the nation. Admitting the conduct
of the British and French Governments in recognizing the rebels as
belligerents to be as unfriendly and as unrequired by the obligations of
public law as it is generally held to be among us, that would not make it
right or wise for our Government to depart from the tone of moderation.
We can no more make it a matter for official complaint and demand
against these Governments, than we could the unfriendly tone of many
of their newspapers and Parliamentary orators. We might say to them:
We take it as unkindly in you to do as you have done; but if they will
continue to do so, we have nothing for it but to submit. Even if we
could have afforded it, we could not rightly have gone to war with them
for doing what we ourselves--through the necessity of our
circumstances--have been compelled in effect to do, and what they,
though not forced by any such necessity, had yet a right--and in their
own opinion were obliged--by public law to do. We could not have
made it a cause of war, and therefore it would have been worse than
idle to indulge in a style of official representation which means war if it
means anything.
THE REBEL CRUISERS.

The question of the rebel cruisers on the high seas is a question by itself.
The anger excited among us by the injuries we have suffered from
these vessels is not strange; nor is it strange that our anger should beget
a disposition to quarrel with Great Britain and France for conceding the
rights of lawful belligerents to the perpetrators of such atrocities. The
rebels have no courts of admiralty, carry their prizes to