through "confusion worse confounded." It is agreed, however, that the Northern republic is in the wrong. I do not think any voice in Europe, entitled to consideration, has denied that. In fact, the French, as the greatest maritime power in Europe next to England, is equally interested with England in the just settlement of the question raised by the affair of the Trent, and there is every reason to suppose that the Imperial Government will view their interests in this light. But is there no way to redress but a bloody and protracted war?
London, and the great seats of population throughout the provinces, were suddenly agitated on the 27th of November, by the telegraphed information that Messrs. Slidell and Mason, the Secessionist Commissioners to Europe, had been forcibly taken out of the English mail steamer Trent, while on her passage from Havannah to St Thomas, by a Federal ship of war. The Trent left Havannah on the 7th of November, with the commissioners on board as passengers; on the following day she was stopped in the Bahama Channel by the United States frigate San Jacinto, under the command of Commodore Wilkes, your
