§ LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEYasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, By what right under the Law of Nations persons have been arrested by Her Majesty's Forces on board the mail steamer "Khedivieh" at Alexandria, when no war or blockade has 1681 been declared? The noble Lord observed that it would be in the recollection of their Lordships that on the 8th of November, 1861, at the commencement of the war between the Northern and Southern portions of the United States, the United States man-of-war San Jacinto stopped the British mail steamer Trent in the Bahama Canal, and forcibly took out of her Messrs. Mason, Slidell, and two other Americans. On the 30th of November Lord Russell, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, wrote to Lord Lyons to claim the liberation of those four gentlemen and their delivery to him, with a suitable apology for the aggression which had been committed. On the 6th of January, 1862, Lord Lyons reported that the four Americans taken out of the Trent had been delivered over by the United States authorities to the commander of Her Majesty's ship Rinaldo. He ventured to remind the noble Earl the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of this event, and of the Correspondence which had ensued, in order to prevent his reply to the Question of which he had given Notice being, from inadvertence, in contradiction to what the Foreign Office had held in 1861 on a similar occasion.
§ EARL GRANVILLEIn answer to the noble Lord's Question, I have to say that, probably, this person was arrested by the authority of the Khedive, and that I know the matter is now under the cognizance of the Native tribunal appointed by the Khedive.