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296 H. L.Janes refused when it is intended to secure a triumph of justice by discover- ing the truth. But although Your Excellency is authorized to support this idea, this proposition of arbitration, as a last recourse, it should not be suggested either verbally or in writing by Your Excellency. There is one contingency which, while the government of Her Majesty does not look upon it as probable, yet cannot remain unnoticed. I allude to the case that the abolition of the law of neutrality should be proposed in Congress, or what is substantially the same as the trampling under foot of the most sacred precept of the code of nations. If that country should bring such a scandal forth into the world. Your Excellency will take measures to prevent the passage of such a resolution. If, upon being passed, it is sanctioned by the President, Your Excellency will protest against it, representing that Her Majesty will consider it as a declaration of war which is most abhorred by all Christendom, the war of pirates. Your Excellency will [then] withdraw from Washington with the whole legation and send a full report of everything to the captain-general of Cuba. Your Excellency will act in a similar manner if an expedition of pirates,* such as has set out in the past, succeeds in leaving for that island, and if it is followed by another, although it may be a division of the same expedition. Your Excellency will state that war is considered as having been declared, and Your Excellency will advise the captain-general to that effect, in order that he may take the proper measures.^ The Spanish minister at Washington was admonished to keep in constant communication with the captain-general throughout this period of crises, and to galvanize into life the torpidity of certain consuls of Spain in the States, bringing them to a full realization of the necessity of reporting frequently to the legation and of keep- ing constantly on the alert. Further, the consuls in the chief cities of the States were to be kept au coiirant of the course of events in Havana by Pezuela, as is evidenced by the correspondence at hand. Extraordinary powers of removal ad interim of those commercial representatives who did not show the requisite ofificial zeal were given the minister in this emergency. But the fact was apparent that the crisis had already passed. In America a reaction had already begun to set in against the undiplomatic and ambitious Soule. The atten- tion of the American people was directed westward to the great initial manifestations of a hostility which was soon to array one section of the country against the other in civil war. Cueto wrote his government on June 7 that the Washington Cabinet was trying to extricate itself from the Black Warrior en- tanglement. Apropos of the manoeuvre of Soule, ^ which consisted in again presenting a mass of accumulated claims of American citi- ' Reference is made to filibustering expeditions. 2 Calderon to Pezuela (Calderon to Cueto, dated the same), May 7, 1854. 3 Soule to Calderon, April 20, 1854, Serial 790, 33 Cong., 2 Sess., Ex. Doc.