LORD CAMPBELL, pursuant to Notice, inquired of the Secretary of State for War, Whether Her Majesty's Government proposed to send Commissioners to report on the military operations of the Confederacy, as well as to send Commissioners to report on the military operations of the Federal States. The noble Lord said, he understood that the Government had already sent out a Commissioner to the Northern States. It should, however, be observed, that the Northern army was composed of different elements as regarded nationalities, but the men were generally taken from the one class; whereas the Southern army were all Americans, but it was recruited from the various classes of which society in that country was formed. He 857 believed that Austria and Prussia had Commissioners in the Southern States.
EARL DE GREY AND RIPONMy noble Friend is not quite accurate in stating that Her Majesty's Government propose to send Commissioners to report on military operations in the Northern States of America. We do not propose to send any officers to the United States to fill the position of Commissioners in the proper sense of the word. We have from time to time sought information, in respect especially to the manufacture of guns and ammunition and the building of iron vessels, from Her Majesty's Minister at Washington. Lord Lyons has afforded as much information as he could obtain upon these points; but as the subject took a wider range, and the information which it was desirable to obtain became more minute and more technical, Lord Lyons stated that he did not feel that he had at his disposal the means to enable him to supply that information accurately, and he therefore recommended that some military officers should be sent to collect it, and to report professionally thereupon. In consequence of that recommendation, and with a view of obtaining information respecting the matériel of war, the iron-plated ships and Monitors, and the other kinds of vessels which are being built and used in that country, Her Majesty's Government have sent to the Northern States of America an Artillery and an Engineer officer and an officer of the Navy, who will not, however, act as Commissioners with the United States' army, and are not sent so much for the purpose of going about with that army, and of reporting on the military operations, as for the collection of facts bearing on the matériel of war and the practice of shipbuilding. Of course, in the Northern States of America the information to be obtained on these points is more important than it can be in the Southern States, because, with the resources which the Northern States possess, the inventions and the new systems which they have adopted are necessarily much more numerous than in the Southern States. On this account, and also for other obvious reasons, one of which. is the difficulty in which these officers would be placed in finding their way into the South, we do not think it advisable to send any officers to make similar inquiries into those States.
§ House adjourned at Six o'clock, till to-morrow, half past Ten o'clock.