Mr. Seward.  At the time of arrest it was not known they were British subjects.  They have been released.

Lord Lyons.  They applied for habeas corpus, and its exercise was refused.  Congress has not suspended the writ.  Our law officers say that the authority of Congress is necessary to justify this arrest and imprisonment.

Mr. Seward (with suavity, but profound dignity, as if the nation spoke).  I have to regret that, after so long an official intercourse between the governments of the United States and Great Britain, it should be necessary now to inform her Majesty’s ministers that all executive proceedings are of the President.  Congress has no executive power or responsibility.  The President constitutionally exercises the right of suspending the writ of habeas corpus.  This government does not question the learning of the legal advisers of the British Crown, or the justice of the deference which her Majesty’s government pays to them; nevertheless, the British government will hardly expect that the President will accept their explanation of the Constitution of the United States!

* * * * *

Are not the following inferences legitimately to be made from a close and calm study of the published dispatches respecting our foreign relations with Great Britain, and in connection with much that has transpired since their congressional publication?—­

1.  The British government officers were in some way prepared to expect that the election of Mr. Lincoln would result in an attempted disruption of the Union.  The arrival of Governor Pickens in England just before the presidential election, and his arrival in New York, and immediate journey to South Carolina, on the day of that election, may be cited as one of many coincidences—­showing that the spirit of Cobb, Floyd, and Thompson, if not their doings and plans, were parodied on the other side of the Atlantic.

2.  The British government were not averse to disunion from the outset, and seized every pretext of tariff, or of inaction respecting the rebellion, that it might quibble with the United States authority.

3.  The tone of the press, ministry and people was early heard, and echoed by Mr. Dallas to our government.  Mr. Seward therefore, at the outset, knew his position, and most opportunely and dignifiedly maintained a bearing all the more noble because it proceeded from a government which had taken arms against a sea of troubles.

4.  The British government waited only so long as international decency technically warranted before proclaiming an acknowledgment of civil war in the United States, and accepting the government of Mr. Davis as an equal belligerent with that of Mr. Lincoln.  This was a matured step, and a strong link in a chain of ultimate recognition.

5.  The Crown ministers early sought and obtained an understanding with France for mutual action:  an understanding palpably hostile to the United States and tantalizingly acknowledged by open diplomacy.