We need foreign mediation as little as we need foreign help; in fact, we do not need any mediation, neither from home, nor from abroad. As far as foreign assistance is concerned, all that is necessary is that foreign powers, which are at peace with us, permit us to put out the fire that has been started in our house, and do not do anything to hinder us, and that they be not too critical of the method and means which we employ to extinguish the fire. We request the foreign powers to consider especially, that if we blockade Southern ports we are not blockading foreign ports, but our own ports, and that we have just as much right to do so, as the owner of a house has to lock the doors in order to capture a thief, or as the police have to barricade a street for the purpose of quelling a riot or protecting people against contagious disease. If the foreign nations, our friends, will bear in mind that the blockade of our Southern ports is more to our advantage than to their disadvantage, and 2that one section of international law specifically states: "No neutral power shall be incommodated or importuned by a military operation which is not more to the advantage of the warring nation than it is to the disadvantage of the neutral nation", and, accordingly, do not interfere with our conduct of the war, they will do all that we ask.

According to the London Times, the English cabinet will offer its mediation as soon as hostilities have actually begun, and Governor Hicks, of Maryland has already made the proposal that the whole dispute be submitted to Lord Lyons for adjudication. Such a proposal, made by an American, amounts to an act of treason, and if made by the representatives of a foreign nation it must be looked upon as meddling, and rejected. What would Great Britain have said if America had offered her mediation when England was at war with the sepoys? His Majesty's Government would have given us the same answer that we will be obliged to give, and shall give, namely, that we do not negotiate with rebels, and that we shall suppress and subdue the Montgomery sepoys, just as England suppressed and subjected the sepoys of India. The 3only notes which one is wont to exchange with rebels are the paper in which powder and bullets are conveyed, and which are called shells, in military language.