Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams
Sir: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch of the 23d of October, No. 1467.
Having carefully read the papers which accompany that communication, I have now to observe that it will be impossible for this government to acquiesce in the practice which has obtained of an indefinite suspension of the habeas corpus in the time of peace and with no declared insurrection in Ireland, while the privileges of the writ remain undisturbed in England and Scotland. The practice especially operates to discriminate dangerously against one class of citizens of the United States when sojourning abroad under the protection of a mutual treaty, that class being one that, though discriminated against in Great Britain, has received special guarantees of protection from the United States.
It is certain that the course of proceeding which has been pursued in Ireland hitherto has induced the consul there to answer citizens of the United States detained under arbitrary arrest that he could not lend his good offices to them unless they should produce passports, which no public law or military order in force in that country requires a foreigner to carry while sojourning there.
It is easy to see how the studied reservations in the correspondence of the Irish local government with the consul has obliged him to give to arrested prisoners such replies as are complained of. It ought not to be difficult for her Majesty’s government to perceive how such replies may serve to excite and inflame popular opinion in the United States.
For these reasons the President desires that you will earnestly renew your appeal to the British government to adopt either the measure which was suggested in my despatch No. 2049, or some other measure which will not leave it doubtful that every citizen of the United States arrested in Ireland without authority of law enjoys the same attention and measure of protection at the hands of this government that every British subject is allowed to claim from his own government under parallel circumstances when arrested or detained in the United States.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.