Your Grace intimates that the citation from this authority by the Acting
Attorney-General does not appear to have any direct bearing upon the
question.
You will assuredly believe that it is not from any want of respect for
your opinion, but solely from a desire to avoid future error, that I
confess my inability to understand this intimation, or, in the absence
of instructions on that head, to see in what direction I am to look for
the law bearing on the subject.
The paragraph cited made no distinction between a vessel with cargo and
a vessel without cargo; and your Grace leaves me in ignorance whether
her character would have been changed if Captain Semmes had got rid of
the cargo before claiming for her admission as a ship of war. Certainly,
acts had been done by him which, according to Wheaton, constituted a
"setting forth as a vessel of war."
Your Grace likewise states, "Whether in the case of a vessel duly
commissioned as a ship of war, after being made prize by a belligerent
Government without being first brought _infra praesidia_, or condemned
by a Court of Prize, the character of prize, within the meaning of Her
Majesty's orders, would or would not be merged in a national ship of
war, I am not called upon to explain."
I feel myself forced to ask for further advice on this point, on which
it is quite possible I may be called upon to take an active part. I have
already, in error apparently, admitted a Confederate prize as a ship of
war.
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