While his treaty with Lord Lyons in 1862 for the suppression of the slave trade conceded to England the right of search to a limited extent in African and Cuban waters, he secured a similar concession for American war vessels from the British government, and by his course in the Trent Affair he virtually committed Great Britain to the American attitude with regard to this right.
The M`Leod case' in which the state of New York insisted on trying a British subject, with whose trial the Federal government had no power to interfere, while the British govern - ment had declared that it would consider conviction and execu - tion a casus belli; the exercise of the hateful right of search by British vessels on the coast of Africa; the Maine boundary, as to which the action of a state might at any time bring the Federal government into armed collision with Great Britain - all these at once met the new secretary, and he felt that he had no right to abandon his work for party reasons.
By the Milan Decree of the 17th of December 1807, he ordained that every ship which submitted to the right of search now claimed by Great Britain would be considered a lawful prize.
In 1831 and 1833 Great Britain entered into an arrangement with France for a mutual right of search within certain seas, to which most of the other powers acceded; and by the Ashburton treaty (1842) with the United States provision was made for the joint maintenance of squadrons on the west coast of Africa.
On the one hand the British claim did not, it is seen, go the length of the restriction Great Britain consented to place on her own right of search during the Boer War, seeming to apply only to the case of ships carrying conditional contraband.
