Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 10 (of 20)

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Title: Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 10 (of 20)

Author: Charles Sumner

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[Illustration: A. W. Elson & Co., Boston: WILLIAM H. SEWARD]

Statesman Edition VOL. X

CHARLES SUMNER

HIS COMPLETE WORKS

With Introduction by Hon. George Frisbie Hoar

[Illustration]

Boston
Lee and Shepard
MCM

Statesman Edition.
Limited to One Thousand Copies.
of Which This Is
No. 565

Norwood Press:
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME X.

PAGE

OUR FOREIGN RELATIONS: SHOWING PRESENT PERILS FROM ENGLAND AND
FRANCE, NATURE AND CONDITION OF INTERVENTION BY MEDIATION AND
ALSO BY RECOGNITION, IMPOSSIBILITY OF ANY RECOGNITION OF A NEW
POWER WITH SLAVERY AS A CORNER-STONE, AND WRONGFUL CONCESSION
OF OCEAN BELLIGERENCE. Speech before the Citizens of New York,
at the Cooper Institute, September 10, 1863. With Appendix 1

OUR DOMESTIC RELATIONS: POWER OF CONGRESS OVER THE REBEL
STATES. Article in the Atlantic Monthly, October, 1863 167

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND JOHN SLIDELL AT PARIS. Article in the
Atlantic Monthly, November, 1863 221

VICTORY AND PEACE THROUGH EMANCIPATION. Letter to Colored
Citizens in New York, celebrating the Anniversary of the
Proclamation, December 18, 1863 259

THE MAYFLOWER AND THE SLAVE SHIP. Letter to the New England
Society at New York, December 21, 1863 260

COMMUTATION FOR THE DRAFT: DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RICH AND POOR.
Remarks in the Senate, on an Amendment moved to the Enrolment
Bill, January 8, 12, and June 20, 1864, and February 7, 1865 262

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON SLAVERY AND FREEDMEN. Resolution in the
Senate, January 13, 1864 271

FOUNDATION OF THE FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY IN BOSTON. Letter to a
Committee in Boston, January 20, 1864 272

LOYALTY IN THE SENATE: THE IRON-CLAD OATH FOR SENATORS. Speech
in the Senate, on a New Rule requiring the Oath of Loyalty for
Senators, January 25, 1864 273

THE LATE HON. JOHN W. NOELL, REPRESENTATIVE OF MISSOURI.
Remarks in the Senate, on his Death, February 1, 1864 293

RECONSTRUCTION AGAIN: GUARANTIES AND SAFEGUARDS AGAINST SLAVERY
AND FOR PROTECTION OF FREEDMEN. Resolutions in the Senate,
February 8, 1864 295

PRAYER OF ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND. Speech in the Senate, on
presenting a Petition of the Women’s National League, praying
Universal Emancipation by Act of Congress, February 9, 1864 300

EQUAL PAY OF COLORED SOLDIERS. Remarks in the Senate, on
Different Propositions, February 10, 29, and June 11, 1864 304

OPENING OF THE STREET-CARS TO COLORED PERSONS. Speeches in the
Senate, on Various Propositions, February 10, March 17, June
21, 1864 323

WRONG AND UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF FUGITIVE SLAVE ACTS. Report in
the Senate, of the Committee on Slavery and Freedmen, February
29, 1864 338

OUR FOREIGN RELATIONS:

SHOWING

PRESENT PERILS FROM ENGLAND AND FRANCE, NATURE AND CONDITION OF
INTERVENTION BY MEDIATION AND ALSO BY RECOGNITION, IMPOSSIBILITY OF ANY
RECOGNITION OF A NEW POWER WITH SLAVERY AS A CORNER-STONE, AND WRONGFUL
CONCESSION OF OCEAN BELLIGERENCE.

SPEECH BEFORE THE CITIZENS OF NEW YORK, AT THE COOPER INSTITUTE,
SEPTEMBER 10, 1863. WITH APPENDIX.

MARCUS. Quæro igitur a te, Quinte, sicut illi solent: Quo si
civitas careat, ob eam ipsam causam, quod eo careat, pro nihilo
habenda sit, id estne numerandum in bonis?

QUINTUS. Ac maximis quidem.

MARCUS. Lege autem carens civitas estne ob id ipsum habenda
nullo loco?

QUINTUS. Dici aliter non potest.

MARCUS. _Necesse est igitur legem haberi in rebus optimis._

QUINTUS. Prorsus assentior.

CICERO, _De Legibus_, Lib. II. cap. 5.

* * * * *

I have told,
O Britons! O my brethren! I have told
Most bitter truth, but without bitterness.
Nor deem my zeal or factious or mistimed;
For never can true courage dwell with them
Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look
At their own vices.

COLERIDGE, _Sibylline Leaves: Fears in Solitude_.

* * * * *

’Tis therefore sober and good men are sad
For England’s glory, seeing it wax pale
And sickly.

COWPER, _The Task_, Book V. 509-511.

* * * * *

The Government condemns in the highest degree the conduct of
any of our citizens who may personally engage in committing
hostilities at sea against any of the nations parties to the
present war, and will exert all the means with which the laws
and Constitution have armed them to discover such as offend
herein and bring them to condign punishment.… The practice of
commissioning, equipping, and manning vessels in our ports
to cruise on any of the belligerent parties is equally and
entirely disapproved; and the Government will take effectual
measures to prevent a repetition of it.--JEFFERSON, _Letter to
Mr. Hammond, May 15, 1793_: Writings, Vol. III. p. 559.

* * * * *

One spot remains which oceans cannot wash out. The slavery of
the African race, which the North Americans had inherited from
the ancient monarchy, was adopted and fondly cherished by the
new Republic.… The logic of the Constitution declared that
all men were free: the pride and avarice of the slave-owners,
disowning the image of the Creator and the brotherhood of
nature, degraded men of a dark color, and even all the
descendants of their sons and daughters, to a level with oxen
and horses. But as oxen and horses never combine, and have
no sense of wronged independence, oxen and horses are better
treated than the men and women of African blood.… But neither
the philosophical dogma of the authors of the Constitution,
nor the strict pedantry of law, can stifle the cry of outraged
humanity, nor still the current of human sympathy, nor arrest
forever the decrees of Eternal Justice.--LORD JOHN RUSSELL,
_Life and Times of Charles James Fox_, Vol. I. pp. 364, 365.

* * * * *

To this condition the Constitution of this Confederacy reduces
the whole African race; and while declaring these to be its
principles, the founders claim the privilege of being admitted
into the society of the nations of the earth,--principles
worthy only of being conceived and promulgated by the
inmates of the infernal regions, and a fit constitution for
a confederacy in Pandemonium. _Now, as soon as the nature
of this Constitution is truly explained and understood, is
it possible that the nations of the earth can admit such a
Confederacy into their society? Can any nation calling itself
civilized associate, with any sense of self-respect, with
a nation avowing and practising such principles?_ Will not
every civilized nation, when the nature of this Confederacy is
understood, come to the side of the United States, and refuse
all association with them, as, in truth, they are, _hostes
humani generis_? For the African is as much entitled to be
protected in the rights of humanity as any other portion of
the human race. _As to Great Britain, her course is, in the
nature of things, already fixed and immutable. She must sooner
or later join the United States in this war, or be disgraced
throughout all future time_; for the principle of that
civilization which this Confederacy repudiates was by her--to
her great glory, and with unparalleled sacrifices--introduced
into the code of Civilization, and she will prove herself
recreant, if she fails to maintain it.--JOSIAH QUINCY, _Address
before the Union Club of Boston, February 27, 1863_.

* * * * *

If British merchants look with eagerness to the event of the
struggle in South America, no doubt they do so with the hope of
deriving advantage from that event. But on what is such hope
founded? On the diffusion of beggary, on the maintenance of
ignorance, on the confirmation of slavery, on the establishment
of tyranny in America? No; these are the expectations of
Ferdinand. The British merchant builds his hopes of trade and
profit on the progress of civilization and good government, on
the successful assertion of Freedom,--of Freedom, that parent
of talent, that parent of heroism, that parent of every virtue.
The fate of South America can only be accessory to commerce as
it becomes accessory to the dignity and the happiness of the
race of man.--SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, _Speech in Parliament, on
the Foreign Enlistment Bill, June 10, 1819_.

* * * * *

When a power comparable only to Thugs, buccaneers, and
cannibals tries to thrust its hideous head among nations, and
claims the protection and privileges of International Law,--a
power which rose against the freest rule on earth for the
avowed motive of propagating the worst form of Slavery ever
known, having no legitimate complaint, or, if it had, certainly
trying no constitutional means of redress, but plunging at once
into arms, and that when the arsenals had been emptied and the
fortresses seized by the treason of office-holders,--I hold it
to be an offence against law, order, and public morality for a
statesman whose words carry weight to speak at all of such a
power without declaring abhorrence of it.--PROFESSOR FRANCIS W.
NEWMAN, _Letter to Mr. Gladstone, December 1, 1862_.

* * * * *

I blame men who are eager to admit into the Family of Nations a
state which offers itself to us, based upon a principle, I will
undertake to say, more odious and more blasphemous than was
ever heretofore dreamed of in Christian or Pagan, in civilized
or in savage times. The leaders of this revolt propose this
monstrous thing: that over a territory forty times as large
as England the blight and curse of Slavery shall be forever
perpetuated.--JOHN BRIGHT, _Speech at Birmingham, December 18,
1862_.

* * * * *

We are already culpable for a part of this bloody war; for,
better informed or less indifferent, less selfish or more
adroit, above all, more wise, more sincerely the friends
of what is right, we could, from London and Paris, have
thrown into the midst of the combatants this declaration,
which would have rendered the conflict ephemeral: “Never
will either England or France, Christian nations, liberal
nations, recognize the existence of a people seeking to found
Liberty and Independence on Slavery!” The misfortune of the
times, in obscuring our judgment, in dulling our passion for
the beautiful ideas of Freedom, has, then, already made us
participants, in some respect, in the rebellion of the people
of the South, and, in order to mask what was gross and low in
our voluntary error, we set up vague reasons of commercial
policy and general policy at which our fathers would have
blushed.… The truth is, that the revolt of the South is the
most impudent and most odious insult that has ever been offered
to the ideas of modern Civilization.--JOURNAL DES ÉCONOMISTES,
Avril, 1864, Tom. XLII. p. 88.

The following speech[1] was delivered at the invitation of the
New York Young Men’s Republican Union, at Cooper Institute,
on the 10th of September, 1863. The announcement that Mr.
Sumner had consented to address the citizens of New York on
a subject so momentous attracted an audience numbering not
less than three thousand persons, among whom were most of the
acknowledged representatives of the intelligence, wealth, and
influence of the metropolis. Long before the hour appointed for
the delivery of the speech, the entrance-doors were besieged by
an impatient and anxious crowd, who, as soon as the gates were
opened, filled the seats, aisles, lobbies, and platform of the
vast hall, leaving at least an equal number to return home,
unable to gain an entrance to the building.

Of the following named gentlemen, who were invited to occupy
seats upon the platform, a majority were present, while in
the auditorium were hundreds of equally prominent citizens,
who preferred to retain seats near the ladies whom they had
escorted to the meeting.

Francis Lieber, LL.D., George Bancroft, Major-General Dix,
Horace Greeley, George Griswold, John E. Williams, W. W.
DeForest, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Abram Wakeman, Rev. Dr. Tyng,
Cyrus W. Field, Alexander T. Stewart, Horace Webster, LL.D.,
Joseph Lawrence, John A. Stevens, Pelatiah Perit, James A.
Hamilton, H. B. Claflin, T. L. Thornell, Colonel William
Borden, William Goodell, Rev. Dr. Thompson, Rev. Dr. Gillette,
William Cullen Bryant, Major-General Fremont, A. A. Low,
John Jay, Henry Grinnell, James Gallatin, Cephas Brainerd,
William B. Astor, William H. Aspinwall, Oliver Johnson, W. M.
Evarts, William Curtis Noyes, Rev. Dr. Hitchcock, Shepherd
Knapp, William H. Webb, James W. Gerard, Anson Livingston,
Frank W. Ballard, Isaac H. Bailey, George B. Lincoln, General
Harvey Brown, Rev. Dr. Shedd, Rev. Dr. Durbin, Peter Cooper,
Major-General Doubleday, Charles H. Marshall, Marshall O.
Roberts, Judge Bradford, Charles H. Russell, E. Delafield
Smith, Hamilton Fish, Robert B. Minturn, Rev. Dr. Cheever, F.
B. Cutting, Charles King, LL.D., Rev. Dr. Ferris, Ex-Governor
King, George Folsom, Samuel B. Ruggles, S. B. Chittenden,
Charles T. Rodgers, Mark Hoyt, Lewis Tappan, Rev. Dr. Storrs,
Rev. Dr. Adams, Rev. Dr. Vinton, Daniel Drew, Francis Hall,
George William Curtis, Judge Edmonds, Rev. Dr. Asa D. Smith,
Truman Smith, William A. Hall, Prosper M. Wetmore, B. F.
Manierre, George P. Putnam, E. C. Johnson, Rev. Dr. Osgood,
Elliott C. Cowdin, Rev. T. Ralston Smith, J. S. Schultz, M.
Armstrong, Jr., D. A. Hawkins, Edgar Ketchum, Joseph Hoxie,
Rev. Dr. Bellows, General S. C. Pomeroy, James McKaye, George
F. Butman, David Dudley Field.

David Dudley Field, Esq., who had been selected by the
Committee as Chairman of the meeting, introduced Mr. Sumner to
the audience in the following words.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--At no former period in the history
of the country has the condition of its foreign relations
been so important and so critical as it is at this moment.
In what agony of mortal struggle this nation has passed the
last two years we all know. A rebellion of unparalleled
extent, of indescribable enormity, without any justifiable
cause, without even a decent pretext, stimulated by the
bad passions which a barbarous institution had originated,
and encouraged by expected and promised aid from false men
among ourselves, has filled the land with desolation and
mourning. During this struggle it has been our misfortune
to encounter the evil disposition of the two nations of
Western Europe with which we are most closely associated
by ties of blood, common history, and mutual commerce.
Perhaps I ought to have said the evil disposition of the
governments, rather than of the nations; for in France the
people have no voice, and we know only the imperial will
and policy, while in England the masses have no powers, the
House of Commons being elected by a fraction of the people,
and the aristocratic classes being against us from dislike
to the freedom of our institutions, and the mercantile
classes from the most sordid motives of private gain. To
what extent this evil disposition has been carried, what
causes have stimulated it, in what acts it has manifested
itself, and what consequences may be expected to follow
from it in future, will be explained by the distinguished
orator who is to address you this evening. His position as
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations has
given him an acquaintance with the subject equal, if not
superior, to that of any other person in the country. He
needs no introduction from me. His name is an introduction
and a passport in any free community between the Atlantic
and the Pacific seas; therefore, without saying more, I
will give way for CHARLES SUMNER, of Massachusetts.”

Amid the most marked demonstrations of satisfaction, expressed
frequently by long-continued applause and hearty cheers, Mr.
Sumner proceeded in the delivery of his discourse. The meeting
adjourned about an hour before midnight.

Three New York newspapers and two in Boston printed the entire
speech on the day following its delivery.

SPEECH.

FELLOW-CITIZENS,--From the beginning of the war in which we are now
engaged, the public interest has alternated anxiously between the
current of events at home and the more distant current abroad. Foreign
Relations have been hardly less absorbing than Domestic Relations.
At times the latter seem to wait upon the former, and a packet from
Europe is like a messenger from the seat of war. Rumors of foreign
intervention are constant, now in the form of mediation, and then
in the form of recognition; and more than once the country has been
summoned to confront the menace of England, and of France, too, in open
combination with Rebel Slavemongers battling in the name of Slavery to
build an infamous power on the destruction of this Republic.

It is well for us to turn aside from battle and siege at home, from
the blazing lines of Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and Charleston, to
glance for a moment at the perils from abroad: of course I mean from
England and France; for these are the only foreign powers thus far
moved to intermeddle on the side of Slavery. The subject to which
I invite attention may want the attraction of waving standards or
victorious marches; but, more than any conflict of arms, it concerns
the civilization of the age. If foreign powers can justly interfere
against human freedom, this Republic will not be the only sufferer.

* * * * *

There is always a natural order in unfolding a subject, and I shall try
to pursue it on this occasion, under the following heads.

_First._ The perils to our country from foreign powers, especially
foreshadowed in the unexpected and persistent conduct of England and
France since the outbreak of the war.

_Secondly._ The nature of foreign intervention by mediation, with the
principles applicable thereto, illustrated by historic instances,
showing especially how England, by conspicuous, wide-spread, and most
determined intervention to promote the extinction of African Slavery,
_is irrevocably committed against any act or policy that can encourage
this criminal pretension_.

_Thirdly._ The nature of foreign intervention by recognition, with
the principles applicable thereto, illustrated by historic instances,
showing that by the practice of nations, and especially by the declared
sentiments of British statesmen, _there can be no foreign recognition
of an insurgent power, where the contest for independence is still
pending_.

_Fourthly._ The moral impossibility of foreign recognition, even if
the pretended power be _de facto_ independent, where it is composed of
Rebel Slavemongers seeking to found a _new_ power with Slavery for its
declared “corner-stone.” Pardon the truthful plainness of the terms I
employ. I am to speak not merely of Slaveholders, but of people to whom
Slavery is a passion and a business, therefore Slavemongers,--now in
rebellion for the sake of Slavery, therefore Rebel Slavemongers.

_Fifthly._ The absurdity and wrong of conceding ocean belligerence to a
pretended power, which, in the first place, is without a Prize Court,
so that it cannot be an ocean belligerent _in fact_,--and, in the
second place, even if ocean belligerent _in fact_, is of such an odious
character that its recognition is a moral impossibility.

From this review, touching upon the present and the past, leaning upon
history and upon law, enlightened always by principles which are an
unerring guide, our conclusion will be easy.

The perils to our country, foreshadowed in the action of foreign powers
since the outbreak of the war, first invite attention.

There is something in the tendencies of nations which must not be
neglected. Like individuals, nations influence each other; like the
heavenly bodies, they are disturbed by each other in their appointed
orbits. Apparent even in peace, this becomes more so in the convulsions
of war, whether from the withdrawal of customary forces or from their
increased momentum. It is the nature of war to enlarge as it continues.
Beginning between two nations, it gradually widens its circle,
ingulfing other nations in its fiery maelström. Such is human history.
Nor is it different, if the war be for independence. Foreign powers may
for a while keep out of the conflict; but examples of history show how
difficult this has been.

There was liberty-loving Holland, which, under that illustrious
character, William of Orange, predecessor and exemplar of our
Washington, rose against the dominion of Spain, upheld by the bigotry
of Philip the Second, and the barbarity of his representative, Alva;
but the conflict, though at first limited to the two parties, was not
slow to engage Queen Elizabeth, who lent to this war of independence
the name of her favorite Leicester and the undying heroism of Sidney,
while Spain retorted by the Armada. The United Provinces of Holland,
in their struggle for independence, were the prototype of the United
States of America, which I need not remind you drew into their contest
the arms of France, Spain, and Holland. In the rising of the Spanish
colonies there was less interposition of other nations, doubtless
from the distant and outlying position they occupied, although not
beyond the ambitious reach of the Holy Alliance, whose purposes were
so far thwarted by Mr. Canning, backed by the declaration of President
Monroe, known as the Monroe doctrine, that the British statesman felt
authorized to boast that he had called a new world into existence to
redress the balance of the old. Then came the struggle of Greece,
which, after painful years darkened by massacre, but relieved by
exalted self-sacrifice, shining with names, like Byron and Bozzaris,
that cannot die, challenged the powerful interposition of England,
France, and Russia. The independence of Greece was hardly acknowledged,
when Belgium, renouncing the rule of the Netherlands, claimed hers
also, and here again the great powers of Europe were drawn into the
contest. Then came the effort of Hungary, inspired by Kossuth, which,
when about to prevail, aroused the armies of Russia. There was also
the contemporaneous effort of the Roman Republic, under Mazzini,
which, almost successful, evoked the bayonets of France. We have only
recently witnessed the resurrection of Italy, inspired by Garibaldi,
and directed by Cavour; but it was not accomplished, until Louis
Napoleon, with well-trained legions, bore the imperial eagles into
battle.

Such are famous instances, being so many warnings. Ponder them, and you
will see the tendency, the temptation, the irresistible fascination,
or the commanding exigency under which foreign nations have been led
to participate in conflicts for independence. I do not dwell on the
character of these interventions, although mostly in the interest of
Human Freedom. It is only as examples to put us on our guard that I
adduce them. The footprints all lead one way.

Even our war is not without its warning. If thus far in its progress
other nations have failed to intervene, they have not succeeded in
keeping entirely aloof. The foreign trumpet has not sounded yet, but
more than once the cry has come that we should soon hear it, while
incidents too often occur, exhibiting abnormal watchfulness of our
affairs and uncontrollable passion or purpose to intermeddle in them,
with signs of unfriendly feeling. This is applicable especially, if not
exclusively, to England and France.

And at the outset, as I am about to speak frankly, I quote the words
of an eminent English statesman and orator, who felt it his duty to
criticize Spain. From his place in the House of Commons, whence his
words flew over Europe, Mr. Canning, Minister of Foreign Affairs,
said:--

“If, in what I have now further to say, I should bear hard
upon the Spanish Government, I beg that it may be observed,
that, unjustifiable as I shall show their conduct to have
been--contrary to the Law of Nations, contrary to the law of
good neighborhood, contrary, I might say, to the laws of God
and man--with respect to Portugal, still I do not mean to
preclude a _locus pœnitentiæ_, a possibility of redress and
reparation.”[2]

Fellow-citizens, you shall decide, on hearing the story, if we also
have not complaints; but I, too, hope that all will end well.

* * * * *

(1.) One act of the British Cabinet stands foremost as an omen of
peril,--foremost in time, foremost also in the magnitude of its
consequences. Though plausible in form, it is none the less injurious
or unjustifiable. I refer to that inconsiderate Proclamation, in the
name of the Queen, as early as 13th May, 1861, which, after raising
Rebel Slavemongers to equality with the National Government, solemnly
declares “neutrality” between the two coëqual parties: as if the
recognition of equality was not an insult to the National Government,
and the declaration of neutrality was not a moral absurdity, offensive
to reason and all those precedents which make the glory of the British
name. Neutrality is equality; neutrality is equity. It is both. But
is there just equality between these two parties? Can neutrality
between such parties, especially at the very outset, be regarded as
equity? Even if the Proclamation could be otherwise than improper at
any time in such a rebellion, it was worse than a blunder at that
early date. The apparent relations between the two powers were more
than friendly. Only a few months had passed since the youthful heir to
the British throne was welcomed everywhere, except in Richmond, as
in the land of kinsmen. And yet, at once, after tidings of the Rebel
assault on Fort Sumter, before the National Government had begun to
put forth its strength, and even without waiting for the arrival of
our newly appointed minister, who was known to be at Liverpool, on his
way to London, the Proclamation was suddenly launched. I doubt if any
well-informed person, who reads Mr. Dallas’s despatch of 2d May, 1861,
recounting a conversation with the British Secretary, will undertake
to vindicate it in point of time. “I informed him,” the minister
reports, “that Mr. Adams had apprised me of his intention to be on
his way hither in the steamship Niagara, which left Boston on the 1st
May, and that he would probably arrive in less than two weeks, by the
12th or 15th instant. His Lordship acquiesced in the expediency of
disregarding mere rumor, _and waiting the full knowledge to be brought
by my successor_.”[3] And yet the blow was struck without waiting.
The alacrity of this concession was unhappy, for it bore an air of
defiance, or at least of heartlessness, towards an ally of kindred
blood engaged in the maintenance of its traditional power against an
infamous pretension. More unhappy still was it that the good genius of
England did not save this historic nation, linked with so many triumphs
of Freedom, from a fatal step, which, under the guise of “neutrality,”
was a betrayal of Civilization itself.

It is difficult to exaggerate the consequences of this precipitate,
unfriendly, and immoral concession, which has been, and still is, an
overflowing fountain of mischief and bloodshed,--“_hoc fonte derivata
clades_,”--_first_, in what it vouchsafes to Rebel Slavemongers on sea
and in British ports, and, _secondly_, in the removal of impediments
from British subjects ready to make money out of Slavery,--all of which
has been declared by undoubted British authority. Lord Chelmsford, of
professional renown as Sir Frederick Thesiger, now an ex-Chancellor,
used these words recently in the House of Lords: “If the Southern
Confederacy had not been recognized by us as _a belligerent power_,
he agreed with his noble and learned friend [Lord BROUGHAM], that any
Englishman aiding them by fitting out a privateer against the Federal
Government _would be guilty of piracy_.”[4] But this is changed by
the Queen’s Proclamation. For Rebel Slavery there is recognition; for
the British subject opportunity of trade. For Rebel Slavery there is
fellowship and equality; for the British subject a new customer, to
whom he may lawfully sell Armstrong guns, and other warlike munitions
of choicest British workmanship, and, as Lord Palmerston tells us, even
ships of war, to be used in behalf of Slavery.[5] What was unlawful is
suddenly made lawful, while the ban is taken from an odious felony. It
seems superfluous to add, that such concession, thus potent in reach,
must have been a direct encouragement and overture to the Rebellion.
Slavery itself was exalted, when barbarous pretenders, battling to
found a new power in its hateful name, without so much as a single port
on the ocean where a prize could be carried for condemnation, were yet,
_in face of this essential deficiency_, swiftly acknowledged as _ocean_
belligerents, while, as consequence, their pirate ships, cruising for
plunder in behalf of Slavery, were acknowledged as national ships,
entitled to equal immunities with the national ships of the United
States. This simple statement is enough. It is vain to say that the
concession was a “necessity.” There may have been strong temptation
to it, constituting, perhaps, imagined necessity, as with many there
is strong temptation to Slavery itself. But such concession to Rebels
fighting for Slavery can be vindicated only as Slavery is vindicated.
As well declare “neutrality” between Right and Wrong, between Good and
Evil, with concession to Evil of belligerent rights, and then set up
the apology of “necessity.”

If he is an enemy who does what pleases an enemy, according to the
rule borrowed by Grotius from the Christian lawyer of the age of
Justinian,[6] then did England become the enemy of the National Union,
for this most fruitful concession rejoiced beyond measure the Rebel
enemy.

(2.) An act so essentially unfriendly in character, and also in the
alacrity with which it was done, too clearly indicated an unfriendly
sentiment, easily stimulated to menace of war. And this menace was not
wanting, when, soon afterwards, the two Rebel emissaries on board the
Trent were seized by a patriotic, brave commander, whose highest fault
was, that, in the absence of instructions from his own Government, he
followed British precedents only too closely. This accident--for such
it was, and nothing else--assumed at once overshadowing proportions.
With indefensible exaggeration, it was changed by the British nation,
backed by the British Government, into a _casus belli_,--as if an
unauthorized incident, obviously involving no question of self-defence,
could justify war between two civilized nations. And yet, in the face
of positive declaration from the United States, communicated by our
minister at London, that it was an accident, the British Government
_made preparations to take part with Rebel Slavery_, and fitly began
such an ignoble proceeding by keeping back from the British people the
official despatch of 30th November, 1861, where our Government, after
announcing that Captain Wilkes had acted “without any instructions,”
expresses a “trust that the British Government would consider the
subject in a friendly temper,” and promises “the best disposition” on
our part.[7] It is painful to recall this exhibition. But it belongs to
history, and we cannot forget the lesson it teaches.

(3.) This tendency to espouse the side of Slavery appears in small
things as well as great, becoming more marked in proportion to the
inconsistency involved. Thus, where two British subjects, “suspected”
of participation in the Rebellion, were detained in a military
prison without the benefit of _Habeas Corpus_, the British minister
at Washington was directed to complain of their detention _as
inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States_, of which
this intermeddling power assumed to be “expounder”; and the case was
accordingly presented on this ground.[8] But the British Cabinet, with
instinct to mix in our war, if only by diplomatic notes, seemed to have
forgotten the British Constitution, under which, in 1848, with consent
of all the party leaders, Brougham and Lansdowne, Peel and Disraeli,
_Habeas Corpus_ was suspended in Ireland, and the Government authorized
to apprehend and detain “such persons as they shall suspect.” The
bill sanctioning this exercise of power went through all its stages
in the House of Commons on one day, and the next day went through all
its stages in the House of Lords without a dissenting vote. It is
hard to believe that Lord Russell, who complains of our detention of
“suspected” persons as inconsistent with the Constitution of the United
States, was the minister who introduced this bill, and on that occasion
used these words: “I believe in my conscience that this measure is
calculated to prevent insurrection, to preserve internal peace, _to
preserve the unity of this empire_, and to secure the throne of these
realms and the free institutions of this country.”[9]

(4.) The complaint about _Habeas Corpus_ was hardly answered, when
another was solemnly presented, founded on the legitimate effort to
complete the blockade of Charleston, by sinking at the mouth of its
harbor ships laden with stone, usually known as “the stone blockade.”
Did anybody find fault with the Russians for sinking their men-of-war
in the harbor of Sebastopol? Nor is the allegation of permanent damage
to the harbor tenable in the present advanced state of engineering
science. A London journal, not inferior to any other in character
and ability, has recently recognized the normal character of such a
proceeding by mentioning it as a possible defence for Calcutta against
naval force, saying: “The ascent of the river without pilots is
impossible; for the Government can alter all the channels in a night by
_merely sinking a couple of loaded schooners_.”[10] In common times her
Majesty’s Government would shrink from such intermeddling. It could not
forget that history, early and late, and especially English history,
abounds in similar incidents: that, as long ago as 1436, at the siege
of Calais by the Duke of Burgundy, and also in 1628, at the memorable
siege of Rochelle by Cardinal Richelieu, ships laden with stone were
sunk in the harbor; that, during the war of the Revolution, in 1779,
six vessels were sunk by the British commander in the Savannah River,
not far from this very Charleston, as a protection against the approach
of the French naval forces; that, in 1804, under direction of the
British Admiralty, there was an attempt, notorious from contemporary
jest,[11] to choke the entrance into the harbor of Boulogne by sinking
stone vessels; and that, in 1809, the same blockade of another port was
recommended to the Admiralty by no less a person than Lord Dundonald,
saying: “Ships filled with stones would ruin forever the anchorage of
Aix, and some old vessels of the line well loaded would be excellent
for the purpose.”[12] This complaint by the British Cabinet becomes
doubly strange, when it is considered that one of the most conspicuous
treaties of modern history contains solemn exactions from France by
England herself, that the harbor of Dunkirk, whose prosperity was
regarded with jealousy, should be permanently “filled up,” so that
it could no longer furnish those hospitalities to commerce for which
it was famous. This was the Treaty of Utrecht, in 1713. The Triple
Alliance, four years later, compelled France to stipulate again that
nothing should be omitted “which Great Britain could think necessary
for the entire destruction of the harbor”; and the latter power was
authorized to send commissioners as “ocular witnesses of the execution
of the treaty.” These humiliating provisions were renewed in successive
treaties down to the Peace of Versailles, in 1783, when the immunity of
that harbor was recognized with American Independence. And yet it is
Great Britain, thus persistent in closing ports and rivers, that now
interferes to warn us against a stone blockade in a war to put down
Rebel Slavery.

(5.) The same propensity and the same inconsistency appear in another
instance, where an eminent peer, once Foreign Secretary, did not
hesitate, from his place in Parliament, to charge the United States
with making medicines and surgical instruments contraband, “contrary
to all the common laws of war, _contrary to all precedent, not
excluding the most ignorant and barbarous ages_.”[13] Thus exclaims
the noble Lord. Now I have nothing to say of the propriety of making
these things contraband. My simple object is to exhibit the spirit
against which we are to guard. It is difficult to understand how such
a display could be made in face of the historic fact, exposed in the
satire of Peter Plymley, that Parliament, in 1808, by large majorities,
prohibited the exportation of Peruvian bark into any territory occupied
by France, and that this prohibition was moved by no less a person than
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Perceval, who commended it on the
ground that “the severest pressure was already felt on the Continent
from the want of that article,” and that “it was of great importance to
the armies of the enemy.”[14] Such, in an age neither “ignorant” nor
“barbarous,” is authentic British precedent, but now ostentatiously
forgotten.

(6.) The same recklessness, of such evil omen, breaks forth again in a
despatch of the Foreign Secretary, where he undertakes to communicate
the judgment of the British Cabinet on the President’s Proclamation
of Emancipation. Here, at least, you will say there can be no
misunderstanding and no criticism; but you are mistaken. Under any
ordinary circumstances, when great passions find no vent, such an act,
having such an object, and being of such unparalleled importance, would
be treated by the minister of a foreign power with supreme caution, if
not with sympathy; but, under the terrible influence of the hour, Earl
Russell, not content with condemning the Proclamation, misrepresents
it in the most barefaced manner. This was done in a communication to
Lord Lyons here in Washington. Gathering his condemnation into one
phrase, he says that it “makes Slavery at once legal and illegal”[15];
whereas it is obvious to the most careless observer, who looks only
at the face of the Proclamation, that, whatever its faults, it is not
obnoxious to this criticism, for it makes Slavery legal nowhere, while
it makes it illegal in an immense territory. An official letter so
incomprehensible in motive, from a statesman usually liberal, if not
cautious, is another illustration of that irritating tendency which
will be checked, at last, when it is fully comprehended.

(7.) The activity of our navy is only another occasion for criticism
in a similar spirit. Nothing can be done anywhere to please our
self-constituted monitor. Our naval officers in the West Indies,
acting under instructions modelled on the judgments of the British
Admiralty, are reprehended by Earl Russell in a formal despatch.[16]
The judges in our Prize Court are indecently belittled by this same
minister, from his place in Parliament,[17] when it is notorious that
there are several who compare favorably with any British Admiralty
judge since Lord Stowell, not even excepting that noble and upright
magistrate, Dr. Lushington. And this same minister has undertaken to
throw the British shield over a newly invented contraband trade with
the Rebel Slavemongers _viâ_ Matamoras, claiming that it is “a lawful
branch of commerce” and “a perfectly legitimate trade.” The “Dolphin”
and “Peterhoff” were two ships elaborately prepared in London for this
illicit commerce, and they have been duly condemned as such; but their
seizure was made the occasion of official protest and complaint, with
the insinuation of “vexatious capture and arbitrary interference,”
followed by the menace, that, under such circumstances, “it is obvious
that Great Britain must interfere to protect her flag.”[18]

(8.) This persistent, inexorable criticism, even at the expense
of all consistency, or of all memory, has broken forth in forms
incompatible with that very “neutrality” so early declared. It was
bad enough to declare neutrality, when the question was between a
friendly power and an insulting barbarism; but it is worse, after
the declaration, to depart from it, _if in words only_. The Court of
Rome, at a period when it dictated the usage of nations, instructed
its Cardinal Legate, on an important occasion, as a solemn duty, first
and above all things, to cultivate “indifference” between the parties,
and in this regard he was to be so exact, that not only should no
partiality be seen in his conduct, but it should not be remarked even
“_in the actions and words of his domestics_.”[19] If, in that early
day, before steam and telegraph, or even the newspaper, neutrality
was disturbed by “words,” how much more so now, when every word is
multiplied indefinitely, and wafted we know not whither, to begin,
wherever it falls, a subtle, wide-spread, and irrepressible influence!
This injunction is in plain harmony with the refined rule of Count
Bernstorff, who, in his admirable despatch at the time of the Armed
Neutrality, says sententiously: “Neutrality does not exist, _when it
is not perfect_.”[20] It must be clear and above suspicion. Like the
reputation of a woman, it is lost when you begin to talk about it.
Unhappily, there is too much occasion to talk about the “neutrality” of
England.

I say nothing of a Parliamentary utterance, that the national cause
was “detested by a large majority of the House of Commons”; nor do I
speak of other most unneutral speeches. I confine myself to official
declarations. Here the case is plain. Several of the British Cabinet,
including the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
two masters of “words,” have allowed themselves in public speech
to characterize our present effort to put down Rebel Slavery as “a
contest for empire on one side and for independence on the other.”
Here are “words” which, under a specious form, openly encouraged Rebel
Slavery. But they are more specious than true, revealing nothing but
the side espoused by the orators. Clearly, on our side it is a contest
for national life, involving the liberty of a race. Clearly, on the
other side it is a contest for Slavery, in order to secure for this
hateful crime _new_ recognition and power; and it began in rebellion
against the solemn judgment of the American people, declaring, in the
election of Abraham Lincoln, that Slavery shall not be extended. Our
empire is simply to crush Rebel Slavery. Their independence is but
the unrestrained power to whip and sell women and children. If at the
beginning the National Government made no declaration, yet the real
character of the war was none the less apparent in the Presidential
election, out of which it grew, and in the repeated declarations of the
other side, who did not hesitate to assert their purpose to build a
_new_ power on Slavery,--as in the Italian campaign of Louis Napoleon
against Austria the object was necessarily apparent, even before
the Emperor tardily at Milan put forth his life-giving proclamation
that Italy should be free from the Alps to the Adriatic, by which the
war became, in its avowed purpose, as well as in reality, a war of
liberation. That such a rebellion should be elevated by the unneutral
“words” of a foreign Cabinet into respectability which it deserves so
little is only another sign we have to watch.

(9.) These same Cabinet orators, not content with giving us a bad
name, allow themselves to pronounce against us on the whole case. They
declare that the National Government cannot succeed in crushing Rebel
Slavery, and that dismemberment is inevitable. “Jefferson Davis,” says
one of them, “has created _a nation_.” Thus do these representatives
of declared “neutrality” degrade us and exalt Slavery. It is apparent
that their utterance, though made in Parliament and repeated at public
meetings, was founded less on special information from the seat of
war--disclosing its secret--than on political theory, if not prejudice.
It is true that our eloquent teacher, Edmund Burke, in his famous
Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, argued most persuasively that Great
Britain could not succeed in reclaiming the colonies which had declared
themselves independent. His reasoning rather than his wisdom enters
into and possesses the British statesmen of our day, who do not take
the trouble to see how the two cases are so entirely unlike that the
example of the one is not applicable to the other,--that the colonies
were battling to found a _new_ power on the corner-stone of Liberty,
Equality, and Happiness to All Men, while our Slavemongers are battling
to found a _new_ power on the corner-stone of Slavery. The difference
becomes a contrast, so that whatever was once generously said in favor
of American Independence now tells with unmistakable force against this
new-fangled pretension.

No British statesman saw the past more clearly than Earl Russell, when,
long ago, in striking phrase, he said that England, in her war against
our fathers, “had engaged _for the suppression of Liberty_”;[21]
but this is precisely what Rebel Slavery is doing. Men change, but
principles are the same now as then. Therefore do I say, that every
sympathy formerly bestowed upon our fathers now belongs to us their
children, striving to uphold their work against bad men, who would not
only break it in pieces, but put in its stead a _new_ piratical power,
whose declared object is “the suppression of Liberty.” And yet British
ministers, mounting the prophetic tripod, presume most oracularly to
foretell the doom of this Republic. Their prophecies do not disturb my
confidence. I do not forget how often false prophets have appeared,
like the author of the “Oceana,” who published a demonstration that
monarchy was impossible in England[22] less than six months before
Charles the Second was welcomed to London amid salvos of cannon
and hurrahs of the people. Nor do I stop to consider how far such
prophecies uttered in public places by British ministers are consistent
with that British “neutrality” so constantly boasted. Opinions are
allies more potent than subsidies, especially in an age like the
present. Prophecies are opinions proclaimed and projected into the
future; and yet these are given freely to Rebel Slavery. There is
matter for reflection in this instance, but I adduce it only as another
illustration of the times. Nothing is more clear than that whosoever
assumes to play prophet becomes pledged in character and pretension
to sustain his prophecy. The learned Jerome Cardan, professor and
doctor, also dabbler in astrology, of great fame in the sixteenth
century, undertook to predict the day of his death, and he maintained
his prophetic character by taking his own life at the appointed time.
If British ministers, playing prophet, escape the ordinary influences
of this craft, it is from that happy nature which suspends for them
human infirmity and human prejudice. But it becomes us to note well
the increased difficulties and dangers to which, on this account, the
national cause is exposed.

(10.) It is not in “words” only, of speeches, despatches, or
declarations, that our danger lies. I am sorry to add, that there
are acts, also, with which the British Government is too closely
associated. I do not refer to the unlimited supply of “munitions of
war,” so that our army everywhere, whether at Vicksburg or Charleston,
is compelled to encounter Armstrong guns and Blakely guns, with all
proper ammunition, from England; for the right of British subjects to
sell these articles to Rebel Slavemongers was fixed, when the latter,
by sudden metamorphosis, were changed from lawless vagrants of the
ocean to lawful belligerents. Nor do I refer to the swarms of swift
steamers, “a pitchy cloud warping on the eastern wind,” always under
British flag, with contributions to Rebel Slavery; for these, too,
enjoy kindred immunity. Of course no royal proclamation can change
wrong into right, or make such business otherwise than immoral; but the
proclamation may take from it the character of felony.

Even the royal manifesto gives no sanction to the fitting out in
England of a _naval expedition_ against the commerce of the United
States. It leaves the Parliamentary statute, as well as the general
Law of Nations, in full efficacy to restrain and punish such offence.
And yet, in face of this obvious prohibition, standing forth in the
text of the law, and founded in reason “ere human statute purged the
gentle weal,” also exemplified by the National Government, which, from
the time of Washington, has always guarded its ports against such
outrage, powerful ships are launched, equipped, fitted out, and manned
in England, with arms supplied at sea from another English vessel,
and then, assuming that by this insulting _hocus pocus_ all English
liability is avoided, they proceed at once to rob and destroy the
commerce of the United States. _England is the naval base_ from which
are derived the original forces and supplies enabling them to sail the
sea. Several such ships are now depredating on the ocean, like Captain
Kidd, under pretended commissions, each in itself a _naval expedition_.
As England is not at war with the United States, these ships can be
nothing else than pirates; and their conduct is that of pirates. Unable
to provide a court for the trial of prizes, they revive for every
captured ship the barbarous Ordeal of Fire. Like pirates, they burn
what they cannot rob. Raging from sea to sea, they turn the ocean into
a furnace and melting-pot of American commerce. Of these incendiaries,
the most famous is the “Alabama,” with a picked crew of British seamen,
with “trained gunners out of her Majesty’s naval reserve,” all,
like those of Queen Elizabeth, described as “good sailors and better
pirates,” and with everything else from keel to truck British, which,
after more than a year of unlawful havoc, is still firing the property
of our citizens, _without once entering a Rebel Slavemonger port_, but
always keeping the umbilical connection with England, out of whose womb
she sprung, and never losing the original nationality stamped upon
her by origin, so that, at this day, she is a British pirate ship,
precisely as a native-born Englishman, robbing on the high seas, and
never naturalized abroad, is a British pirate subject.

It is bad enough that all this should proceed from England. It is hard
to bear. Why is it not stopped at once? One cruiser might, perhaps,
elude a watchful government. But it is difficult to see how this can
occur once, twice, three times,--and the cry is, Still they sail!
Two powerful rams are announced, like stars at a theatre. Will they,
also, be allowed to perform? I wish there were not too much reason to
believe that all these performances are sustained by prevailing British
sympathy. A Frenchman, accidentally prisoner on the Alabama at the
destruction of two American ships, describes a British packet in sight
whose crowded passengers made the sea resound with cheers, as they
witnessed the captured ships handed over to the flames. The words of
Lucretius were verified:--

“Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri.”[23]

And these same cheers were echoed in Parliament, as the builder of the
piratical craft gloried in his deed. The verse which filled the ancient
theatre with glad applause declared sympathy with Humanity[24]; but
English applause is now given to Slavery and its defenders: “I am an
Englishman, and nothing of Slavery is foreign to me.” Accordingly,
Slavery is helped by English arms, English gold, English ships, English
speeches, English cheers. And yet, for the honor of England be it
known, there are Englishmen who stand firm and unshaken amidst this
painful recreancy. Their names cannot be forgotten. And still more
for the honor of England be it spoken, the working classes, called
to suffer the most, bravely bear their calamity, without joining the
enemies of the Republic. Their cheers are for Freedom, and not for
Slavery.

But the cheers of the House of Commons prevail in her Majesty’s
Government. Municipal Law is violated, while International Law, in its
most solemn obligation to do unto others as we would have them do unto
us, is treated as the merest nullity. Eminent British functionaries,
in Court and Parliament, vindicate the _naval expeditions_ which in
the name of Slavery are unleashed against a friendly power. Taking
advantage of an admitted principle, that, after the concession of
belligerent rights, “munitions of war” may be supplied, the Lord Chief
Baron of the Exchequer tells us that “ships of war” may be supplied
also. Lord Palmerston echoes Lord Chief Baron. Each vouches American
authority. But they are mistaken. The steel which they strive to
“impel” cannot be feathered from our sides. Since the earliest stage
of its existence, the National Government has asserted a distinction
between the two cases; and so has the Supreme Court, although there
are words of Story latterly quoted to the contrary. The authority of
the Supreme Court is positive on the two points into which the British
apology is divided. The first is, that, even if a “ship of war” cannot
be furnished, the offence is incomplete until the armament is put
aboard, so that, where the ship, though fitted out and equipped in a
British port, awaits an armament at sea, she is not liable to arrest.
Such apology is an insult to the understanding and to common sense,--as
if it were not obvious that the offence begins with the laying of
the keel for the hostile ship, _knowing it to be such_:[25] and in
this spirit the Supreme Court has decided that it is not necessary
to find that a ship on leaving port was armed, or in a condition to
commit hostilities; for citizens are restrained from such acts as
are calculated to involve the country in war.[26] The second apology
assumes, that, even if the armament were aboard, so that the “ship of
war” is complete at all points, still the expedition would be lawful,
if the fiction of a sale were adroitly managed. On this point, the
Supreme Court, speaking by Chief-Justice Marshall, has left no doubt
of its deliberate and most authoritative judgment. In the case before
the Court the armament was aboard, but cleared as cargo; the men, too,
were aboard, but enlisted for a commercial voyage; the ship, though
fitted out to cruise against a nation with which we were at peace, was
not commissioned as a privateer, and did not attempt to act as such,
until she reached the river La Plata, _where a commission was obtained
and the crew reënlisted_; yet, in the face of these extenuating
circumstances, it was declared by the whole Court, that the neutrality
of the United States had been violated, so that the guilty ship could
not afterwards be recognized as a legitimate cruiser. All the disguises
were to no purpose. The Court penetrated them every one, saying, that,
if such a ship could lawfully sail, there would be on our part “a
fraudulent neutrality, disgraceful to our own Government, and of which
no nation would be the dupe.”[27] But a “neutrality” worse even than
that condemned in advance by our Supreme Court, “of which no nation
would be the dupe,” is now served out to us, which nothing can explain,
short of the fatal war-spirit that has entered into Great Britain.
There was a time when the Foreign Secretary of England, truly eminent
as statesman and orator, Mr. Canning, said in the House of Commons:
“If a war must come, let it come in the shape of satisfaction to be
demanded for injuries, of rights to be asserted, of interests to be
protected, of treaties to be fulfilled. _But, in God’s name, let it not
come on in the paltry, pettifogging way of fitting out ships in our
harbors to cruise for gain. At all events, let the country disdain to
be sneaked into a war._”[28] These noble words were uttered in reply
to Lord John Russell and his associates in 1823, when trying to repeal
the Foreign Enlistment Act, and to overturn the statute safeguards of
British neutrality. They speak now with greater force even than then.

Though it be admitted that “ships of war,” like “munitions of war,” may
be sold to a belligerent, as is asserted by the British Prime-Minister,
echoing the Lord Chief Baron, it is obvious that it can be only with
the distinction already mentioned, that the sale is a _commercial
transaction_, pure and simple, and not in any respect a _hostile
expedition_ fitted out in England. The ship must be “exported” as an
_article of commerce_, and must continue such _until_ arrival at the
belligerent port, where alone can it be fitted out and commissioned as
a “ship of war,” when its hostile character will commence. Any attempt
in England to impart a hostile character to the ship, or, in one
word, to make England its _naval base_, must be criminal: but this is
precisely what has been done. Ships are sent forth, armed and equipped.
And, pray, how distinguish a ship armed and equipped from a regiment
armed and equipped? It is not a munition, it is not even an article,
but much more; and here is the distinction not to be overlooked. It
is an _organized force_, and the nation sending it forth makes itself
a party to the war,--all of which England has done. And here are the
leonine footprints which point so badly.

(11.) Not content with misconstruing the decisions of our Supreme
Court, making them a cover for _naval expeditions_ to depredate on
our commerce, our whole history is forgotten or misrepresented. It
is forgotten, that, as early as 1793, under the administration of
Washington, before any Act of Congress on the subject, the National
Government recognized its liability, under the Law of Nations, for
ships fitted out in its ports to depredate on British commerce; that
Washington, in his speech at the opening of Congress, describes such
ships as “vessels commissioned or _equipped in a warlike form_ within
the limits of the United States,” and also as “military expeditions
or enterprises”;[29] and that Jefferson, vindicating this policy of
_repression_, said, in a letter to the French Minister, that it was
“our wish to preserve the morals of our citizens from being vitiated by
courses of lawless plunder and murder”;[30] that, on this occasion, the
National Government made the distinction between “munitions of war,”
which a neutral might supply in the way of commerce to a belligerent,
and “ships of war,” which a neutral was not allowed to supply or even
to augment with arms; that Mr. Hammond, the British plenipotentiary at
that time, by his letter of 8th May, 1793, after complaining of two
French privateers, fitted out at Charleston to cruise against British
commerce, expressly declares that “he conceives them to be breaches of
that neutrality which the United States profess to observe, and direct
contraventions of the proclamation which the President issued,”[31]
and that very soon there were criminal proceedings, at British
instigation, on account of these privateers, in which it was affirmed
by the Court that such ships could not be fitted out in a neutral port
without violation of international obligations; that promptly, on
the representation of the British Government, a statute was enacted
by Congress, in harmony with the Law of Nations, for the better
maintenance of our neutrality;[32] that, in 1818, another statute
followed in the nature of a Foreign Enlistment Act,[33] afterwards
proposed as an example by Lord Castlereagh, when urging a similar
statute upon Parliament;[34] that, in 1823, the conduct of the United
States on this whole head was presented as a model by Mr. Canning;[35]
that, in 1838, during the rebellion in Canada, on the appeal of the
British Government, and to its special satisfaction, as was announced
in Parliament by Lord Palmerston, at the time Foreign Secretary, our
Government promptly declared its purpose “to maintain the supremacy of
those laws which were passed to fulfil the obligations of the United
States to all friendly nations who may be unfortunately engaged in
foreign or domestic war,” and, not satisfied with existing powers,
undertook to ask additional legislation from Congress; that Congress
proceeded at once to the enactment of another statute, calculated to
meet the immediate exigency, where it is provided that collectors,
marshals, and other officers shall “seize and detain _any vessel_
or any arms or munitions of war which may be provided or prepared
for _any military expedition_ or enterprise against the territory or
dominions of any foreign prince or state.”[36] It is something to
forget these things; but it is convenient to forget still further,
that, at the Crimean War, in 1854, the British Government, jointly with
France, made another appeal to the United States, that our citizens
should “rigorously abstain from taking part in armaments of Russian
privateers, or in any other measure opposed to the duties of a strict
neutrality”;[37] and this appeal, declared by the British Government
to be “in the spirit of just reciprocity,” was answered on our part by
a sincere and determined vigilance, so that not a single British or
French ship suffered from any cruiser fitted out in our ports. And it
is also convenient to forget no less the solemn obligations of treaty,
binding both parties:--

“That the subjects and citizens of the two nations _shall not
do any acts of hostility or violence against each other_,
nor accept commissions or instructions so to act from any
foreign prince or state, enemies to the other party; nor
shall the enemies of one of the parties be permitted to
invite or endeavor to enlist in their military service any of
the subjects or citizens of the other party; _and the laws
against all such offences and aggressions shall be punctually
executed_.”[38]

At the date of this treaty, in 1794, there was little legislation on
the subject in either country; so that the treaty, in harmony with
the practice, testifies to the requirements of the Law of Nations as
understood at the time by both powers.

And yet, disregarding all these things, which show how faithfully the
National Government has acted, both in measures of _repression_ and
measures of _compensation_, also how often the British Government
asked and received protection at our hands, and how highly our example
of neutrality has been appreciated by leading British statesmen,--and
disowning, also, that “spirit of just reciprocity,” which, besides
being the prompting of an honest nature, has been positively promised,
ship after ship is permitted to leave British ports to depredate on
our commerce; and when we complain of an outrage so unprecedented
and so unjustifiable, all the obligations of International Law are
ignored, and we are petulantly told that the evidence against the
ships is not sufficient _under the statute_; and when we propose that
the statute shall be rendered efficient for the purpose,--precisely
as in past times the British Government, under circumstances less
stringent, proposed to us,--we are pointedly repelled by the old
baronial declaration, that there must be no change in the laws
of England,--“_nolumus leges Angliæ mutari_”; while, to cap this
strange insensibility, Lord Palmerston, in a last debate of the late
Parliament, brings against us a groundless charge of infidelity to
neutral duties during the Crimean War,[39] when the fact is notoriously
the reverse, and Earl Russell, in the same spirit, imagines an equally
groundless charge, which he records in one of his diplomatic notes,
that we have recently enlisted men in Ireland,[40] when notoriously we
have done no such thing. Thus are the obligations of reciprocal service
and good-will openly discarded, while our public conduct, as well in
the past as the present, is openly misrepresented.

(12.) This flagrant oblivion of history and of duty, which seems
the adopted policy of the British Government, is characteristically
followed by flat refusal to pay for the damages to our commerce caused
by the hostile expeditions. The United States, with Washington as
President, on application of the British Government, made compensation
for damages to British commerce under circumstances much less
vexatious,--and, still further, by special treaty, made compensation
for damages “by vessels originally armed” in our ports,[41]--which is
the present case. Of course it can make no difference, not a pin’s
difference, if the armament is carried out to sea in another vessel
from a British port and there transshipped. Such an elaborate evasion
may be effectual against a Parliamentary statute, but it must be
impotent against a demand upon the British Government, according to
the principles of International Law; for this law looks always at
_substance_, and not _form_, and will not be diverted by the trick
of a pettifogger. Whether the armament be put on board in port or
at sea, England is always the _naval base_, or, according to the
language of Sir William Scott in a memorable case, the “station” or
“vantage-ground,” which he declared a neutral country could not be.[42]
Therefore the early precedent between the United States and England is
in every respect completely applicable; and since this precedent was
established _not only by the consent of England, but at her motion_, it
must be accepted on the present occasion as an irreversible declaration
of international duty. Other nations might differ, but England is
bound. And now it is her original interpretation, first made to take
compensation from us, which is flatly rejected when we ask compensation
from her. Even if the responsibility for _a hostile expedition_ fitted
out in British ports were not plain, there is something in the recent
conduct of the British Government calculated to remove all doubt.
Pirate ships are reported on the stocks ready to be launched, and when
the Parliamentary statute is declared insufficient to stop them, the
British Government declines to amend it, and, so doing, openly declines
to stop the pirate ships, saying, “If the Parliamentary statute is
inadequate, then let them sail.” It is not needful to consider the
apology. The act of declension is positive, and its consequences are
no less positive, _fixing beyond question the responsibility of the
British Government for these criminal expeditions_. Thus fixing the
responsibility, we but follow the suggestions of reason and the text of
an approved authority, whose words have been adopted in England.

“_It must be laid down as a maxim_, that a sovereign, who,
knowing the crimes of his subjects, as, for example, that
they _practice piracy_ on strangers, and, being also able and
obliged to hinder it, does not hinder it, _renders himself
criminal, because he has consented to the bad action, the
commission of which he has permitted_.… It is presumed that a
sovereign knows what his subjects openly and frequently commit;
and _as to his power of hindering the evil, this likewise is
always presumed_, unless the want of it be clearly proved.”[43]

Such are the words of Burlamaqui, in his work on Political Law, quoted
with approbation by Phillimore, in his work on the Law of Nations.[44]
Unless these words are discarded as “a maxim,” while the early
precedent of British demand upon us is also rudely rejected, it is
difficult to see how the British Government can avoid the consequences
of complicity with the pirate ships in all their lawless devastation.
I forbear to dwell on this accumulating liability, amounting already
to many millions of dollars, with accumulating exasperations also. My
present object is accomplished, if I make you see which way danger lies.

(13.) Beyond acts and words, this same British _rabbia_ shows itself
in the official tone towards the national cause in its unparalleled
struggle, especially throughout the correspondence of the British
Foreign Office. There is little friendship in any of these letters.
Nor is there any sympathy with the national championship against
Rebel Slavery, nor even one word of mildest dissent from the
miscreant apocalypse preached in its behalf. Naturally the tone is
in harmony with the sentiment. Hard, curt, captious, cynical, it
evinces indifference to that kindly intercourse which nations ought
to cultivate with each other, and which should be the study of a
wise statesmanship. The Malay _runs amuck_, and such is the British
diplomatic style in dealing with us. This is painfully conspicuous in
all that concerns the pirate ships. But I can well understand that a
Secretary conceding belligerent rights to Rebel Slavery so easily, and
then so easily permitting its ships to sally forth for piracy, would be
very indifferent to the tone of what he wrote. And yet, even outrage
may be soothed or softened by gentle words; but none such come out of
British diplomacy to us. Most deeply do I regret this too suggestive
failure. And believe me, fellow-citizens, I say these things with
sorrow unspeakable, and only in discharge of my duty, when, face to
face, I meet you to consider the aspects of our affairs abroad.

(14.) There is still another head of danger, in which all others
culminate. I refer to intrusive mediation, or, it may be, recognition
of the Slavemonger attempt as an independent nation,--for such
movements have been made openly in Parliament and urged constantly
by the British press, and, though not yet adopted by her Majesty’s
Government, have never been repelled on principle, so that they
constitute a perpetual cloud threatening to break. It is plain to all
who have not forgotten history, that England never can be guilty of
such recognition without unpardonable apostasy; nor can she intervene
by way of mediation, except in the interests of Freedom. And yet such
are the “elective affinities” newly born between England and Slavery,
such is the wilful blindness with regard to our country, kindred to
that which prevailed in the time of George Grenville and Lord North,
that her Majesty’s Government, instead of repelling the proposition,
simply adjourn it, adopting meanwhile the attitude of one watching to
strike. The British Minister at Washington, of model prudence, whose
individual desire for peace I cannot doubt, tells his Government, in a
despatch found in the last Blue Book, that as yet he sees no sign of “a
conjuncture at which foreign powers _may step in with propriety_ and
effect to put a stop to the effusion of blood.”[45] Here is the plain
assumption that such conjuncture may occur. For the present we are left
free to wage the battle against Slavery without any such intervention
in arrest of the national efforts.

Such are some of the warnings which lower from the English sky arching
the graves of Wilberforce and Clarkson, while sounding above these
sacred resting-places are heard strange, un-English voices, crying
out: “Come unto us, Rebel Slavemongers, whippers of women and sellers
of children!--for you are the people of our choice, whom we welcome
promptly to _ocean rights_, with Armstrong guns and _naval expeditions_
equipped in our ports, and on whom we lavish sympathy always and the
prophecy of success; while for you who uphold the Republic and oppose
Slavery we have hard words, criticism, rebuke, and the menace of war!”

* * * * *

Crossing the Channel into France, we are not encouraged much. And yet
the Emperor, though acting habitually in concert with the British
Cabinet, has not intermeddled so illogically or displayed a temper
of so little international amiability. The correspondence under his
direction, even at the most critical moments, leaves little to be
desired in respect of form. Nor has there been a single blockade-runner
under the French flag, nor a single pirate ship from a French port.
But, in spite of these things, it is too apparent that the Emperor
has taken sides against us in at least four important public acts,
positively, plainly, offensively. The Duc de Choiseul, Prime-Minister
of France, was addressed by Frederick of Prussia as “Coachman of
Europe,”--a title which belongs now to Louis Napoleon. But he must not
try to be “coachman of America.”

(1.) Following the example of England, Louis Napoleon acknowledges the
Rebel Slavemongers as _ocean_ belligerents, so that, with the sanction
of France, our ancient ally, their pirate ships, although without
a single open port which they can call their own, enjoy complete
immunity as lawful cruisers, while all who sympathize with them furnish
supplies and munitions of war. This fatal concession was aggravated by
the concurrence of the two great powers. But, God be praised, their
joint act, though capable of giving brief vitality to Slavery on pirate
decks, is impotent to confirm the intolerable pretension.

(2.) Sinister events are not alone, and this recognition of Slavery was
followed by an expedition of France, in concurrence with England and
Spain, against our neighbor Republic, Mexico. The two latter powers
very soon withdrew, but the Emperor, less wise, did not hesitate at
invasion. A French fleet, with an unmatched iron-clad,--the consummate
product of French naval art,--is now at Vera Cruz, and the French
army, after a protracted siege, has stormed Puebla and entered the
famous capital. This far-reaching enterprise was originally declared
to be nothing more than process, served by a general, for the recovery
of outstanding debts due to French citizens. But the Emperor, in a
mystic letter to General Forey, gives it another character. He proposes
nothing less than the restoration of the Latin race on this side of
the Atlantic, and more than intimates that the United States must be
restrained in power and influence over the Gulf of Mexico and the
Antilles. And now the Archduke Maximilian of Austria is proclaimed
Emperor of Mexico under the protection of France. It is obvious that
this imperial invasion, though only indirectly against us, would
not have been made, if our convulsions had not left the door of the
Continent ajar, so that foreign powers may bravely enter in. And it is
more obvious that this attempt to plant a throne by our side would
“have died before it saw the light,” had it not been supposed that
Rebel Slavery was about to triumph.[46] Plainly the whole transaction
is connected with our affairs. But it can be little more than a
transient experiment; for who can doubt that this imperial exotic,
planted by foreign care and propped by foreign bayonets, must disappear
before the ascending glory of the Republic?

(3.) This enterprise of war was followed by an enterprise of diplomacy
not less hardy. The Emperor, not content with stirring against us
the Gulf of Mexico, the Antilles, and the Latin race, entered upon
work of a different character. He invited England and Russia to unite
with France in tendering to the two “belligerents” (such is the equal
designation of our Republic and the embryo Slavemonger mockery!) a
joint mediation to procure “an armistice for six months, during which
every act of war, direct or indirect, should provisionally cease on
sea as well as on land, to be renewed, if necessary, for a further
period.” The Cabinets of England and Russia, better inspired, declined
the invitation, which looked to little short of recognition itself.
Under the proposed armistice, all our vast operations must have been
suspended, the blockade itself must have ceased, while the Rebel ports
were opened on the one side to unlimited supplies and military stores,
and on the other to unlimited exports of cotton. Trade, for the time,
would have been legalized in these ports, and Slavery would have lifted
its grinning front before the civilized world. Not disheartened by this
failure, the Emperor alone pushed forward his diplomatic enterprise
against us, as alone he had pushed forward his military enterprise
against Mexico, and presented to our Government the unsupported
mediation of France. His offer was promptly rejected by the President.
By solemn resolutions of both Houses, adopted with singular unanimity,
and communicated since to all foreign governments, Congress announced
that such a proposition could be attributed only to “a misunderstanding
of the true state of the question, and of the real character of the
war in which the Republic is engaged”; and that it was in its nature
so far injurious to the national interests that Congress would be
obliged to consider its repetition an unfriendly act.[47] This strong
language frankly states the true position of our country. Any such
offer, whatever its motive, must be an encouragement to the Rebellion.
In an age when ideas prevail and even words become things, the simple
declarations of statesmen are of incalculable importance. But the
head of a great nation is more than statesman in such influence. The
imperial proposition tended directly to the dismemberment of the
Republic and the substitution of a ghastly Slavemonger nation.

Baffled in this effort twice attempted, the Emperor does not yet
abandon his policy. We are told that it is “postponed to a more
suitable opportunity”; so that he, too, waits to strike, if the Gallic
cock does not sound alarm in an opposite quarter. Meanwhile the
development of the Mexican expedition shows too clearly the motive of
mediation. It was all one transaction. Mexico was invaded for empire,
and mediation was proposed to help the plot. But the invasion must fail
with the diplomacy to which it is allied.

(4.) The policy of the French Emperor towards our Republic is not left
to uncertain inference. For a long time public report has pronounced
him unfriendly, and now public report is confirmed by what he does
and says. The ambassadorial attorney of Rebel Slavery is received at
the Tuileries, members of Parliament on an errand of hostility to
our cause are received at Fontainebleau, and the open declaration
is made that the Emperor desires to recognize Rebel Slavery as an
independent power. This is hard to believe, but it is too true. The
French Emperor is against us. In an evil hour, under temptations which
should be scouted, he forgets the precious traditions of France,
whose blood commingled with ours in a common cause; he forgets the
swords of Lafayette and Rochambeau, flashing side by side with the
swords of Washington and the earlier Lincoln, while the lilies of
the ancient monarchy floated together with the stars of our infant
flag; he forgets that early alliance, sealed by Franklin, which gave
to the Republic the assurance of national life, and made France the
partner of her rising glory;--“_Heu pietas! heu prisca fides! Manibus
date lilia plenis!_”--and he forgets still more the obligations of
his own name,--how the first Napoleon surrendered to us Louisiana and
the whole region west of the Mississippi, saying: “This accession of
territory establishes forever the power of the United States, and gives
to England a maritime rival destined to humble her pride”;[48] and he
forgets, also, how he himself, when beginning intervention for Italian
liberty, boasted proudly that France always stood for an “idea”;
and forgetting these things, which mankind cannot forget, he seeks
the disjunction of this Republic, with the spoliation of that very
territory which came to us with such auspices, while France, always
standing for an “idea,” stands, under the second Napoleon, for the
“idea” of welcome to a new evangel of Slavery, with Mason and Slidell
as the evangelists. Thus is imperial influence exerted for Rebel
Slavemongers. The Emperor, for the present, forbears to fling his sword
into the scale; but he flings his heavy hand, if not his sword.

Only recently we have the menace of the sword. The throne of Mexico
is offered to an Austrian archduke. The desire to recognize the
independence of Rebel Slavery is openly declared. These two incidents
together are complements of each other. And now we are assured by
concurring report, that Mexico is to be maintained as an empire. The
policy of the Holy Alliance, originally organized against the great
Napoleon, is adopted by his representative on the throne of France.
What its despot authors left undone the present Emperor, nephew of the
first, proposes to accomplish. Report informs us that Texas also is
doomed to the imperial protectorate, thus ravishing a possession which
belongs to this Republic as much as Normandy belongs to France.[49]
The partition of Poland is acknowledged to be the great crime of the
last century. It was accomplished by three powers, with the silent
connivance of the rest, but not without pangs of remorse in one of
the spoilers. “I know,” said Maria Theresa to the ambassador of Louis
the Sixteenth, “that I have brought a deep stain on my reign by what
has been done in Poland; but I am sure that I should be forgiven,
if it could be known what repugnance I had to it.”[50] Here on this
Continent the French Emperor seeks to play the very part which of old
caused the contrition of Maria Theresa; nor could the partition of our
broad country--if, in an evil hour, it were accomplished--fail to be
the great crime of the present century. Trampler upon the Republic in
France, trampler upon the Republic in Mexico, it remains to be seen if
the French Emperor can prevail as trampler upon this Republic. I do not
think he can; nor am I anxious on account of this new-found Emperor,
who will be another King Canute against the rising tide of the American
people. His chair must be withdrawn, or he will be overwhelmed.[51]

* * * * *

Here I bring to an end this unpleasant review. It is with little
satisfaction, and only in explanation of our relations with foreign
powers, that I accumulate these instances, not one of which, small or
great, is without its painful lesson, while they all testify with a
single voice to the perils of our country.

II.

Another branch of the subject is not less important. Considering all
these things, and especially how great powers abroad constantly menace
intervention, now by criticism and then by proffer of mediation, all
tending painfully to something further, it becomes us to see what,
according to International Law and the examples of history, will
justify foreign intervention, in any of the forms it may take. And here
there is one remark to be made at the outset. Nations are equal in the
eye of International Law, so that what is right for one is right for
all. It follows that no nation can justly exercise any right which it
is not bound to concede under like circumstances. Therefore, should our
cases be reversed, there is nothing England and France now propose,
or may hereafter propose, which it will not be our equal right to
propose, when Ireland or India once more rebels, or when France is in
the throes of its next revolution. Generously, and for the sake of that
international comity not lightly hazarded, we may reject the precedents
they furnish; but it will be difficult for them to complain, if we
follow their steps.

Foreign intervention is, on its face, inconsistent with every idea of
national independence, which in itself is the natural and acknowledged
right of a nation to rest undisturbed so long as it does not disturb
others. If nations stood absolutely alone, dissociated from each other,
so that what passed in one had little or no influence in another, only
a tyrannical or intermeddling spirit could fail to recognize this
right. But civilization, drawing nations nearer together and into one
society, brings them under reciprocal influence, so that no nation
can now act or suffer alone. Out of the relations and suggestions
of good neighborhood, involving the admitted right of self-defence,
springs the only justification or apology to be found for _foreign
intervention_, which is the general term to signify interposition in
the affairs of another country, whatever form it may take. Much is done
under the name of “good offices,” whether in the form of mediation or
intercession,--and much also by military power, whether in the declared
will of superior force or directly by arms. Recognition of independence
is also another instance. Intervention in any form is interference. If
peaceable, it must be judged by its motive and tendency; if forcible,
it will naturally be resisted by force.

Intervention may be between two or more nations, or between the two
parties to a civil war; and yet again, it may be where there is no
war, foreign or domestic. In each case it is governed by the same
principles, except, perhaps, that in the case of civil war there
should be more careful consideration, not only of the rights, but
of the susceptibilities of a nation so severely tried. Such is the
obvious suggestion of humanity. Intervention between nations is only
a common form of participation in foreign war, but intervention in a
civil war is intermeddling in the domestic concerns of another nation.
Whoever acts at the _joint invitation_ of belligerent parties to
compose a bloody strife is entitled to the blessings which belong
to the peacemakers; but, if uninvited, or acting at the invitation
of one party only, he will be careful to proceed with reserve and
tenderness, in the spirit of peace, and confining action to a proffer
of good offices in the form of mediation or intercession, unless he is
ready for war. Such proffer may be declined without offence. But it
can never be forgotten, that, _where one side is obviously fighting
for Barbarism_, any intervention, whatever form it takes,--if only
by captious criticism, calculated to encourage the wrong side, or to
secure for it time or temporary toleration, if not final success,--_is
plainly immoral_. If not contrary to the Law of Nations, it ought to be.

Intervention in the spirit of peace and for the sake of peace belongs
to the refinements of modern civilization. Intervention in the spirit
of war, if not for the sake of war, has filled a large space in
history, ancient and modern. But all these instances may be grouped
under two heads: first, intervention in _external_ affairs; and,
secondly, intervention in _internal_ affairs. The first is illustrated
by the intervention of the Elector Maurice of Saxony against Charles
the Fifth, of King William against Louis the Fourteenth, of Russia and
France in the Seven Years’ War, of Russia again between France and
Austria in 1805, and also between France and Prussia in 1806, and of
France, Great Britain, and Sardinia between Turkey and Russia in the
war of the Crimea.

The intervention of Russia, Austria, and Prussia in the affairs of
Poland, of Great Britain among the native provinces of India, and
of the Allied Powers in the French Revolution, under the continued
inspiration of the Treaty of Pilnitz, are illustrations of the second
head. Without dwelling on these great examples, I shall call attention
to instances showing more especially the growth of intervention,
first in external, and then in internal affairs. Here I shall conceal
nothing. Instances seeming against the principles I have at heart will
at least help illustrate the great subject, so that you may see it as
it is.

* * * * *

(1.) First in order, and for the sake of completeness, I speak of
intervention in _external_ affairs, where two or more nations are
parties.

As long ago as 1645, France offered mediation between what were then
called “The Two Crowns of the North,” Sweden and Denmark. This was
followed, in 1648, by the famous Peace of Westphalia, the beginning of
our present Law of Nations, negotiated under the joint mediation of
the Pope and the Republic of Venice, present by nuncio and ambassador.
In 1655, the Emperor of Germany offered mediation between Sweden and
Poland; but the old historian records that the Swedes suspected him
of seeking to increase rather than to arrange pending difficulties;
and the effort ended by the withdrawal of the imperial envoy into
the Polish camp. Sweden, though often belligerent in those days, was
not so always, and, in 1672, when war broke forth between France and
England on one side and the Dutch Provinces on the other, we find her
proffering mediation, which was promptly accepted by England, who
justly rejected a similar proffer most hardily made by the Elector
of Brandenburg, ancestor of the kings of Prussia, while marching at
the head of his forces to join the Dutch. The English note on this
occasion, written in what at the time was called “sufficiently bad
French, but in very intelligible terms,” declared that the Electoral
proffer, though under the pleasant name of mediation (_par le doux nom
de médiation_), was adjudged to be only arbitration, and that, instead
of mediation _unarmed and disinterested_, it was mediation armed and
pledged to the enemies of England.[52]

Such are earlier instances, all of which have their lessons for us.
There are modern, also. I allude only to the Triple Alliance, between
Great Britain, Prussia, and Holland, which, at the close of the last
century, successively intervened, by mediation which could not be
resisted, to compel Denmark, while siding with Russia against Sweden,
to remain neutral for the rest of the war,--then, in 1791, to dictate
terms of peace between Austria and the Porte,--and lastly, in 1792,
to constrain Russia into abandonment of her designs upon the Turkish
Empire by the Peace of Jassy. On this occasion, the Russian Empress,
Catharine the Second, peremptorily refused the mediation of Prussia,
and the mediating Alliance made its approaches through Denmark, by
whose good offices the Empress was finally induced to accept the
treaty. While thus engaged in professed mediation, England, in a
note to the French ambassador, declined to act as mediator between
France and the Allied Powers, leaving that world-embracing war to
proceed. Not only has England refused to act as mediator, but _also
refused submission to mediation_. This was during the last war with
the United States, when Russia, at that time the ally of England,
proffered mediation between the two belligerents, which was promptly
accepted by the United States. Its rejection by England, causing the
prolongation of hostilities, was considered by Sir James Mackintosh
less justifiable, as “a mediator is a common friend, who counsels both
parties with a weight proportioned to their belief in his integrity
and their respect for his power; but he is not an arbitrator, to whose
decision they submit their differences, and whose award is binding
on them.”[53] The Peace of Ghent was concluded at last under Russian
mediation. But England has not always been belligerent. When Andrew
Jackson menaced letters of marque against France, on account of failure
to pay a sum stipulated in a recent treaty with the United States,
King William the Fourth proffered mediation; but happily the whole
question was already virtually arranged. It appears, also, that, before
our war with Mexico, the good offices of England were tendered to the
two parties; but neither was willing to accept them, and war took its
course.

Such are instances of interference in external affairs; and since
International Law is traced in history, they furnish a guide we cannot
now neglect, especially when we regard the actual policy of England and
France.

* * * * *

(2.) Instances of foreign intervention in the _internal_ affairs
of a nation are more pertinent. They are numerous, and not always
harmonious, especially if we compare the new with the old. In the
earlier times such intervention was regarded with repugnance. But
the principle then declared has been sapped on the one side by
the conspiracies of tyranny seeking the suppression of liberal
institutions, and on the other by a generous sympathy breaking forth
from time to time in their support. According to old precedents,
most of which are found in the gossipping book of Wicquefort,[54]
whence they have been copied by Mr. Wildman, in his “Institutes of
International Law,”[55] even _foreign intercession_ was prohibited.
Not even in the name of charity could one ruler speak to another on
the domestic affairs of his government. Peter, King of Aragon, was
astonished at a proposed embassy from Alphonso, King of Castile,
entreating mercy for rebels. Charles the Ninth of France, a detestable
monarch, in reply to ambassadors of the Protestant princes of Germany,
pleading for his Protestant subjects, insolently declared that he
required no tutors to teach him how to rule. And yet this same
sovereign did not hesitate to ask the Duke of Savoy to receive certain
subjects “into his benign favor, and to restore and reëstablish them
in their confiscated estates.”[56] In this appeal there was a double
inconsistency; for it was not only interference in the affairs of
another prince, but it was in behalf of Protestants, only a few months
before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Henry the Third, successor of
Charles, and another detestable monarch, in reply to the Protestant
ambassadors, announced that he was a sovereign prince, and ordered them
to leave his dominions. Louis the Thirteenth was of milder nature,
and yet, when the English ambassador, the Earl of Carlisle, presumed
to speak in favor of the Huguenots, he intimated that no interference
between the King of France and his subjects could be approved. The
Cardinal Richelieu, who governed France so long, learning that an
attempt was made to procure the intercession of the Pope, stopped it
by a message to his Holiness, that the King would be displeased by any
such interference. The Pope himself, on another recorded occasion,
admitted that it would be a pernicious precedent for a subject to
negotiate terms of accommodation through a foreign prince. On still
another occasion, when the King of France, forgetting his own rule,
interposed in behalf of the Barberini family, Innocent the Tenth
declared, that, having no desire to interfere in the affairs of France,
he trusted his Majesty would not interfere in his. Queen Christina of
Sweden, merely hinting a disposition to proffer good offices for the
settlement of the unhappy divisions in France, was told by the Queen
Regent that she need give herself no trouble about them, and one of
her own ministers at Stockholm declared that the overture was properly
rejected. Nor were the States General of Holland less sensitive. They
even refused audience to the Spanish ambassador seeking to congratulate
them on the settlement of a domestic question; and when the French
ambassador undertook to plead for Roman Catholics, the States, by
formal resolution, denounced his conduct as inconsistent with the peace
and constitution of the Republic, all of which was communicated to him
by eight deputies, who added in speech whatever the resolution seemed
to want in plainness.

Nor is England without similar example. Louis the Thirteenth, shortly
after the marriage of his sister Henrietta Maria with Charles the
First, consented that the English ambassadors should interpose for
French Protestants; but when the French ambassador in England requested
the repeal of a law against Roman Catholics, Charles expressed his
surprise that the King of France should presume to intermeddle in
English affairs. Even as late as 1746, when, after the Battle of
Culloden, the Dutch ambassador in France was induced to address the
British Government in behalf of the unfortunate Charles Edward, to the
effect, that, if taken, he should not be treated as a rebel, it is
recorded that this intercession was greatly resented by the British
Government, which, not content with apology from the unfortunate
official, required that he should be rebuked by his own Government
also.[57] And this is British testimony with regard to intervention in
a civil war, even when it took the mildest form of intercession for the
life of a prince.

In face of such repulses, all these nations, at different times,
practised intervention in every variety of form,--sometimes by
intercession or “good offices” only, sometimes by mediation, and often
by arms. Even these instances attest the intermeddling spirit; for such
intervention, however received, was at least attempted.

Two precedents belonging to the earlier period deserve to stand apart,
not only for historic importance, but for applicability to our times.
The first was the effort to institute mediation between King Charles
the First and his Parliament, attempted by Cardinal Mazarin, that
powerful minister, who, during the minority of Louis the Fourteenth,
swayed France. The civil war had been waged for years; good men on each
side had fallen,--Falkland fighting for the King, and Hampden fighting
for the Parliament,--and other costliest blood been shed on the fields
of Edgehill, Newbury, Marston Moor, and Naseby, when the ambitious
Cardinal, wishing to serve the King, promised, as Clarendon relates,
“to press the Parliament so imperiously, and to denounce a war against
them, if they refused to yield to what was reasonable.”[58] For this
important service he selected the famous Pomponne de Bellièvre, of a
family tried in public duties,--himself President of the Parliament
of Paris and peer of France,--conspicuous in personal qualities as in
place, whose beautiful head, preserved by the graver of Nanteuil, is
illustrious in Art, and whose dying charity lives still in the great
hospital of the Hôtel Dieu, at Paris. Arriving at London, the graceful
ambassador presented himself to that Long Parliament which knew so
well how to guard English rights. At once every overture was rejected
in formal proceedings, from which I copy these words: “We do declare
that we ourselves have been careful to improve all occasions to compose
these unhappy troubles, _yet we have not, neither can we, admit of any
mediation or interposing betwixt the King and us by any foreign prince
or state_. And we desire that his Majesty, the French King, will rest
satisfied with this our resolution and answer.”[59] On the committee
which drew this reply was John Selden, unsurpassed for learning and
ability in the whole splendid history of the English bar, in every
book of whose library was written, “Before everything, Liberty,” and
also that Harry Vane whom Milton, in one of his most inspired sonnets,
addresses as

“Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old,
Than whom a better Senator ne’er held
The helm of Rome, when gowns, not arms, repelled
The fierce Epirot and the African bold.”

The answer of such men is a precedent for us, especially should
England, taking up the rejected policy of Mazarin, presumptuously send
any ambassador to stay the Republic in its war with Slavery.

The same heart of oak, so strenuous to repel intervention of France
between King and Parliament, was not less strenuous the other way, when
intervention could serve the rights of England or the principles of
religious liberty. Such was England when ruled by the great Protector,
called in his own day “chief of men.” No nation so powerful as to be
exempt from that irresistible intercession, where, beneath the garb
of peace, was a gleam of arms. From France, even under the rule of
Mazarin, he claimed respect for the Protestant name, which he insisted
upon making great and glorious. From Spain, on whose extended empire
the sun did not cease to shine, he required that no Englishman should
be subject to the Inquisition. Reading to his Council a despatch from
Admiral Blake, announcing justice obtained from the Viceroy of Malaga,
Cromwell said, that “he hoped to make the name of Englishman as great
as ever that of Roman had been.”[60] In this same exalted mood he
turned to propose mediation between Protestant Sweden and Protestant
Bremen, “chiefly bewailing, that, being both his friends, they should
so despitefully combat one against another,” offering his assistance
to “a commodious accommodation on both sides,” and exhorting them “by
no means to refuse any honest conditions of reconciliation.”[61] Here
was intervention between nation and nation; but it was soon followed
by intervention in the internal affairs of a distant country, which of
all the acts of Cromwell is the most touching and sublime. The French
ambassador, while at Whitehall, urging the signature of a treaty,
was unexpectedly interrupted by news from a secluded valley of the
Alps, far away among mountain torrents, affluents of the Po, that a
company of pious Protestants, for centuries gathered there, keeping
the truth pure, “when all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,”
were suffering terrible persecution from their sovereign, Emanuel of
Savoy. Despoiled of all possessions and liberties, brutally driven from
their homes, given over to licentious and infuriate violence, and then
turning in self-defence, they had been “slain by the bloody Piemontese,
that rolled mother with infant down the rocks”; and it was reported
that French troops took part in the dismal transaction. The Protector
heard the story, and his pity flashed into anger. He would not sign
the treaty until France united with him in securing justice to these
humble sufferers, whom he called the Lord’s people. For their relief he
contributed out of his own purse two thousand pounds, and authorized a
general collection throughout England, which reached a large sum; but
besides money, he set apart a day of humiliation and prayer for them.
Nor was this all. “I should be glad,” wrote his Secretary, Thurloe,
“to have a most particular account of that business, and to know
what is become of those poor people, for whom our very souls here do
bleed.”[62] But a pen mightier than that of any plodding secretary was
enlisted in this pious intervention. It was John Milton, glowing with
that indignation which his sonnet “On the Massacre in Piemont” makes
immortal in the heart of man, who wrote the magnificent despatches,
where the English nation of that day, after declaring itself “linked
together” with its distant brethren, “not only by the same tie of
humanity, but by joint communion of the same religion,” naturally and
grandly insisted that “both this edict and whatsoever may be decreed
to their disturbance upon the account of the Reformed Religion” should
be abrogated, “and that an end be put to their oppressions.”[63] Not
content with this call upon the Duke of Savoy, the Protector appealed
to Louis the Fourteenth and his Cardinal Minister, to the States
General of Holland, the Protestant Cantons of Switzerland, the King of
Denmark, the King of Sweden, and even to the Protestant Reformed Prince
of remote Transylvania,--and always by the pen of Milton,--rallying
these princes and powers in joint entreaty and intervention, and, if
need were, to “some other course to be speedily taken, that such a
numerous multitude of our innocent brethren may not miserably perish
for want of succor and assistance.”[64] The Regent of Savoy, daughter
of Henry the Fourth, professed to be affected by this English charity,
and announced for her Protestant subjects a free pardon, and also
“such privileges and graces as could not but give the Lord Protector a
sufficient evidence _how great a respect they bare both to his person
and mediation_.”[65] But there was still delay. Meanwhile Cromwell
began to inquire where in the Prince’s territories English troops might
debark, and Mazarin, anxious to complete the yet unfinished treaty,
joined in requiring immediate pacification of the Valleys and the
restoration of these persecuted people to their ancient liberties.
It was done. Such is the grandest intervention of English history,
inspired by Milton, enforced by Cromwell, and sustained by Louis the
Fourteenth with his Cardinal Minister by his side, while foreign
nations watched the scene.

This great instance, constituting an inseparable part of the
Protector’s glory, is not the last where England intervened for
Protestant liberties. Troubles, beginning in France with the Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes, broke forth in the rebellion of the Camisards,
smarting under the Revocation. Sheltered by the mountains of the
Cevennes, and nerved by a good cause, with the device “Liberty of
Conscience” on their standards, they made head against two successive
marshals of France, and perplexed the old age of Louis the Fourteenth,
whose arms were already enfeebled by foreign war. At last, through the
mediation of England, the great monarch made terms with his Protestant
rebels, and this civil war was brought to a close.[66]

Intervention, more often armed than unarmed, showed itself in the
middle of the last century. All decency was set aside, when Frederick
of Prussia, Catharine of Russia, and Maria Theresa of Austria invaded
and partitioned Poland, under pretext of suppressing anarchy. Here
was intervention with a vengeance, and on the side of arbitrary
power. Such is human inconsistency, almost at the same time was
another intervention in the opposite direction. It was the armed
intervention of France, followed by that of Spain and Holland, in
behalf of American Independence. Spain began by offer of mediation
with a truce, which was accepted by France on condition that meanwhile
the United States should be independent _in fact_.[67] Then came, in
1788, the armed intervention of Prussia to sustain the Orange faction
in Holland, followed soon by the compact between Great Britain,
Prussia, and Holland, known as the Triple Alliance, which entered upon
the business of its copartnership by armed intervention to reconcile
the insurgent provinces of Belgium with the German Emperor and their
ancient Constitution. As France began to shake with domestic troubles,
mediation in her affairs was proposed. Among the papers of Burke,
in 1791, is the draught of a memorial, in the name of the British
Government, offering what he calls “this healing mediation.”[68] Then
came the vast coalition for armed intervention in France to put down
the Republic. This dreary cloud was for a moment brightened by a
British attempt in Parliament, through successive debates, to institute
an intercession for Lafayette, immured in the dungeons of European
despotism. “It is reported,” said one of the orators, “that America has
solicited the liberation of her unfortunate adopted fellow-citizen.…
Let British magnanimity be called to the aid of American gratitude,
and exhibit to mankind a noble proof, that, wherever the principles of
genuine liberty prevail, _they never fail to inspire sentiments of
generosity, feelings of humanity, and a detestation of oppression_.”[69]

Meanwhile France, against whom all Europe intervened, played her
part of intervention, and the scene was Switzerland. In the unhappy
disputes between the aristocratic and democratic parties by which this
Republic was distracted, French mediation became chronic, beginning
in 1738, when it found partial apology in the invitation of several
cantons and of Geneva; occurring again in 1768, and again in 1782. The
mountain Republic, breathing the air of Freedom, was naturally moved
by the convulsions of the French Revolution. Civil war ensued, and
grew in bitterness. At last, when France herself was composed under
the powerful arm of the First Consul, we find him turning to compose
Swiss troubles. He was a military ruler, and always acted under the
instincts of military power. By proclamation, dated at the palace of
St. Cloud, September 30, 1802, Bonaparte declared that for three years
the Swiss had been slaying each other, and that, if left to themselves,
they would continue to slay each other for three years more, without
reaching any understanding; that, at first, he had resolved not to
interfere, but that he now changed his mind, and announced himself
as mediator of their difficulties, proclaiming confidently that his
mediation would be efficacious, as became the great people in whose
name he spoke. Deputies from the cantons, together with the chief
citizens, were summoned to declare the means of restoring the Union,
securing peace, and reconciling all parties.[70] This was armed
mediation; but Switzerland was weak and France strong, while the
declared object was union, peace, and reconciliation. I know not if all
this ensued, but the civil war was stifled, and the Constitution was
established by what is entitled in history the Act of Mediation.

From that period down to the present moment, intervention in the
internal affairs of other nations has been a prevailing practice, now
cautiously and peaceably, now offensively and forcibly. Sometimes
it was against the rights of men, sometimes it was in their favor.
Sometimes England and France stood aloof, sometimes they took part.
The Congress of Vienna, which undertook to settle the map of Europe,
organized universal and perpetual intervention in the interest
of monarchical institutions and existing dynasties. This compact
was renewed at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1818, with the
explanatory declaration, that the five great powers would never assume
jurisdiction over questions concerning the rights and interests of
another power, _except at its request_, and without inviting such power
to take part in the conference,--a concession obviously adverse to any
liberal movement. Meanwhile appeared the Holy Alliance, specially to
watch and control the revolutionary tendencies of the age; but into
this combination England most honorably declined to enter. The other
powers were sufficiently active. Austria, Russia, and Prussia did
not hesitate at the Congress of Laybach, in 1821, to institute armed
intervention for the suppression of liberal principles in Naples; and
again, two years later, at the Congress of Verona, these same powers,
together with France, instituted another armed intervention to suppress
liberal principles in Spain, which ultimately led to the invasion of
that kingdom and the overthrow of its Constitution. France was the
belligerent agent, and would not be turned aside, although the Duke of
Wellington at Verona, and Mr. Canning at home, sought to arrest her
armies by the mediation of Great Britain, which was directly sought
by Spain and directly refused by France. The British Government, in
admirable letters, composed with unsurpassed skill, and constituting
a noble page of International Law, “disclaimed for itself, and denied
for other powers, the right of requiring any changes in the internal
institutions of independent states, _with the menace of hostile attack
in case of refusal_”; and bravely declared to the imperial and royal
interventionists, that, “so long as the struggles and disturbances of
Spain should be confined within the circle of her own territory, they
could not be admitted by the British Government to afford any plea
of foreign interference”; and in still another note repeated that a
“_menace of direct and imminent danger could alone, in exception to the
general rule, justify foreign interference_.”[71] These were the words
of Mr. Canning; but even Lord Castlereagh, in an earlier note, asserted
the same limitation, which, at a later day, had the unqualified support
of Lord Grey, and also of Lord Aberdeen. Justly interpreted, they
leave no apology for armed intervention, except in case of direct and
imminent danger, when a nation, like an individual, may be thrown upon
the great right of self-defence.

Great Britain bore testimony by what she did, as well as by what she
refused to do. Even while resisting the armed intervention of the
great conspiracy, her Government intervened sometimes by mediation
and sometimes by arms. Early in the contest between Spain and her
colonies she consented to act as mediator, on the invitation of the
former, in hope of effecting reconciliation; but Spain declined the
mediation she had invited. From 1812 to 1823, Great Britain constantly
repeated her offer. In the case of Portugal she went further. Under
the counsels of Mr. Canning, whose speech on the occasion was of the
most memorable character, she intervened by landing troops at Lisbon;
but this intervention was vindicated by the obligations of treaty.
Next came the greater instance of Greece, when the Christian powers
of Europe intervened to arrest a protracted struggle and to save this
classic land from Turkish tyranny. Here the first step was _a pressing
invitation from the Greeks_ to the British and French Governments
for their mediation with the Ottoman Porte. These powers united with
Russia in proffering the much desired intervention, which the Greeks at
once accepted and the Turks rejected. Already battle raged fiercely,
reddened by barbarous massacre. Without delay, the allied forces were
directed to compel the cessation of hostilities, which was accomplished
by the destruction of the Turkish fleet at Navarino and the occupation
of the Morea by French troops. At last, under the continued mediation
of these powers, the independence of Greece was recognized by the
Ottoman Porte, and another commonwealth consecrated to Freedom
took its place in the Family of Nations. But mediation in Turkish
affairs did not stop. The example of Greece was followed by Egypt,
whose provincial chief, Mehemet Ali, rebelled, and by genius for war
succeeded in dispossessing the Ottoman Porte not only of Egypt, but of
other possessions also. This civil war was first arrested by temporary
arrangement at Kutaieh, in 1833, under the mediation of Great Britain
and France, and finally ended by an armed mediation in 1840, when,
after elaborate and irritating discussions threatening to involve
Europe, a treaty was concluded at London between Great Britain, Russia,
Austria, and Prussia, by which the Pacha was compelled to relinquish
his conquests, while he was secured in the Government of Egypt as
perpetual vassal of the Porte. France, dissatisfied with the terms of
this adjustment, stood aloof from the treaty, which found apology,
such as it had, first, in the invitation of the Sultan, and, secondly,
in the desire to preserve the integrity of the Turkish Empire, as
essential to the balance of power and the peace of Europe, to which may
also be added the desire to stop effusion of blood.

Before the Eastern questions were settled, other complications
commenced in Western Europe. Belgium, restless from the French
Revolution of 1830, rose against the House of Orange and claimed
independence. Civil war ensued; but the great powers promptly
intervened, even to the extent of arresting a Dutch army on its march.
Beginning with armistice, there was a long and fine-spun negotiation,
which, assuming the guise alternately of pacific mediation and of armed
intervention, ended in the established separation of Belgium from
Holland, and its recognition as an independent nation. Do you ask why
Great Britain intervened on this occasion? Lord John Russell, in the
course of debate at a subsequent day, declared that a special motive
was “the establishment of a free constitution.”[72] Meanwhile the
Peninsula of Spain and Portugal was torn by civil war. The regents of
these two kingdoms respectively appealed to Great Britain and France
for aid, especially in the expulsion of the pretender Don Carlos from
Spain and the pretender Dom Miguel from Portugal. For this purpose the
Quadruple Alliance was formed in 1834. The moral support from this
treaty is said to have been important, but Great Britain was compelled
to provide troops. This intervention, however, was _at the solicitation
of the actual Governments_. Even after Spanish troubles were settled,
war still lingered in the sister kingdom, when, in 1847, the Queen
addressed herself to her allies, among whom was Great Britain, the
ancient patron of Portugal, who undertook to mediate between her
and her insurgent subjects, in the declared hope of composing the
difficulties “in a just and permanent manner, with all due regard to
the dignity of the crown on the one hand, and to the constitutional
liberties of the nation on the other.”[73] The insurgents did not
submit until after military demonstrations. Liberty and Peace were the
two watchwords.

Then occurred the European uprising of 1848, with France once more a
Republic; but Europe, wiser grown, did not interfere even so much as to
write a letter. The case was different with Hungary, whose victorious
armies, radiant with Liberty regained, expelled the Austrian power
only to be arrested by the armed intervention of the Russian Czar, who
yielded to the double pressure of invitation from Austria and fear
that successful insurrection might extend into Poland. It was left
for France, in another country, with strange inconsistency, to play
the part which Russia played in Hungary. Rome, after rising against
the temporal power of the Pope and proclaiming the Republic, was
occupied by a French army, which expelled the republican magistrates,
and, though fourteen years are already passed since that unhappy
act, the occupation still continues. From this military intervention
Great Britain stands aloof. In a despatch, dated at London, January
28, 1849, Lord Palmerston makes a permanent record, to the honor of
his country, as follows: “Her Majesty’s Government would, upon every
account, and not only upon abstract principle, but with reference
to the general interests of Europe, and from the value which they
attach to the maintenance of peace, _sincerely deprecate any attempt
to settle the differences between the Pope and his subjects by the
military interference of foreign powers_.”[74] This statesman gives
further point to the position of Great Britain in contrast with
France, when he says: “Armed intervention _to assist in retaining a
bad Government would be unjustifiable_.”[75] Such was the declaration
of the Lord Palmerston of that day. How much more unjustifiable the
strange assistance now proposed _to found_ a bad Government! The
British minister insisted that the differences should be accommodated
by “the diplomatic interposition of friendly powers,” which he declared
a “much better mode of settlement than an authoritative imposition of
terms by the force of foreign arms.”[76] In harmony with this policy,
Great Britain, during the same year, united with France in proffering
mediation between the insurgent Sicilians and the King of Naples, the
notorious Bomba, in the hope of helping good government and liberal
principles. Not disheartened by rebuff, these two powers, in 1856,
united in friendly remonstrance to the same tyrannical sovereign
against the harsh system of political arrests, and against his cruelty
to good citizens thrust without trial into the worst of prisons. The
advice was indignantly rejected, and the two powers that gave it
withdrew their ministers from Naples. The sympathy of Russia was on the
wrong side, and Prince Gortschakoff, in a circular, while admitting,
that, “as a consequence of friendly fore-thought, one Government might
give advice to another,” declared, that “to endeavor by threats or a
menacing demonstration to obtain from the King of Naples concessions in
the internal affairs of his Government is a violent usurpation of his
authority, and an open declaration of the right of the strong over the
weak.”[77] This was practically answered by Lord Clarendon, speaking
for Great Britain at the Congress of Paris, when, admitting the
principle that no Government has the right to interfere in the internal
affairs of other states, he declares that there are cases where an
exception to this rule becomes equally a right and a duty; that peace
must not be broken, but that there is no peace without justice; and
that therefore the Congress must let the King of Naples know its desire
for the amelioration of his Government, and must demand amnesty for
political offenders suffering without trial.[78] This language was bold
beyond the practice of diplomacy, but the intervention it proposed was
on the side of humanity.

I must draw this chapter to a close, although the long list is not
yet exhausted. Even while I speak, we hear of intervention by England
and France in the civil war between the Emperor of China and his
subjects,--and also in that other war between the Emperor of Russia
on the one side and the Poles whom he claims as subjects on the
other, but with this difference, that in China these powers take
the part of the existing Government, while in Poland they intervene
against the existing Government. In the face of positive declarations
of neutrality, the British and French admirals have united their
forces with the Chinese; but thus far in Poland, although there is no
declaration of neutrality, the intervention is unarmed. In both these
instances we witness a common tendency, directed, it may be, by the
interests or prejudices of the time, and, so far as it has proceeded,
it is, at least in Poland, on the side of liberal institutions. But,
alas for human consistency! the French Emperor is now intervening
in Mexico with armies and navies to build an imperial throne for an
Austrian Archduke.

* * * * *

There is one long-continued British intervention, which speaks now
with controlling power; and it is on this account that I reserve it
for the close of what I have to say on this head. Though not without
original shades of dark, it has for more than half a century been a
shining example to the civilized world. I refer to that _intervention
against Slavery_, which, from its first adoption, has been so constant
and brilliant as to make us forget the earlier _intervention in behalf
of Slavery_, when, for instance, at the Peace of Utrecht, Great
Britain intervened to extort the detestable privilege of supplying
slaves to Spanish America at the rate of four thousand eight hundred
yearly during the space of thirty years, and then again, at the Peace
of Aix-la-Chapelle, higgled for a yet longer sanction of the ignoble
intervention; nay, it almost makes us forget the kindred intervention,
at once sordid and criminal, by which this power counteracted all
efforts for the prohibition of the slave-trade even in its own
colonies, and thus helped to fasten Slavery upon Virginia and Carolina.
The abolition of the slave-trade by Act of Parliament, in 1807, was
the signal for a change of history. A British poet at the time gave
exulting expression to the grandeur of the epoch:--

“‘Thy chains are broken, Africa, be free!’
Thus saith the island-empress of the sea;
Thus saith Britannia. O ye winds and waves,
Waft the glad tidings to the land of slaves!”[79]

Curiously, it was the other color which gained the first fruits of
this revolution, by triumphant intervention for the overthrow of
White Slavery in the Barbary States. The old hero of Acre, Sir Sidney
Smith, released from long imprisonment in France, sought to organize
a “holy league” for this purpose; the subject was discussed at the
Congress of Vienna; and the agents of Spain and Portugal, anxious
for the punishment of their piratical neighbors, argued, that,
because Great Britain had abolished for itself the traffic in African
slaves, therefore it must see that whites were no longer enslaved
in the Barbary States. The argument was less logical than humane.
But Great Britain undertook the work. With a fleet complete at all
points, consisting of five line-of-battle ships, five frigates, four
bomb-vessels, and five gun-brigs, Lord Exmouth approached Algiers,
where he was joined by a considerable Dutch fleet, anxious to take
part. “If force must be resorted to,” said the Admiral in general
orders shortly before, “we have the consolation of knowing that we
fight in the sacred cause of Humanity, and cannot fail of success.”
Less than half a day was enough, with such a force in such a cause. The
formidable castles of the great Slavemonger were battered to pieces,
and he was compelled to sign a treaty, confirmed under a salute of
twenty-one guns, which in its first article stipulated “the abolition
of Christian Slavery forever.” Glorious and beneficent intervention!
Not inferior to that renowned instance of Antiquity, where the
Carthaginians were required to abolish the practice of sacrificing
their own children,--a treaty which has been called the noblest of
history, because stipulated in favor of human nature. The Admiral who
had thus triumphed was hailed as Emancipator. He received a new rank
in the peerage, and a new blazonry on his coat of arms. The rank is
continued in his family, and on their shield, in perpetual memory of
this great transaction, is still borne _a Christian slave holding
aloft the Cross and dropping his broken fetters_. But the personal
satisfactions of the Admiral were more than rank or heraldry. In his
despatch to the Government, describing the battle, and written at the
time, he says: “To have been one of the humble instruments in the hands
of Divine Providence for bringing to reason a ferocious Government and
destroying forever the insufferable and horrid system of Christian
Slavery, can never cease to be a source of delight and heartfelt
comfort to every individual happy enough to be employed in it.”[80]

I have said too much with regard to an instance, which, though
beautiful and important, is only a parenthesis in the grander and more
extensive intervention against African Slavery, which was already
organizing, destined at last to embrace the whole human family. Even
before Wilberforce triumphed in Parliament, Great Britain intervened
with Napoleon, in 1806, pressing him to join in the abolition of the
slave-trade; but he flatly refused. What France would not then yield
was exacted from Portugal in 1810, from Sweden in 1813, and from
Denmark in 1814. An ineffectual attempt was made to enlist Spain,
even by temptation of pecuniary subsidies,--and an appeal was made to
the restored monarch of France, Louis the Eighteenth, with the offer
of a sum of money outright or the cession of a West India island, in
consideration of the desired abolition. The Prince Regent wrote with
his own hand to the latter, assuring him that he could not give a more
acceptable proof of his regard than by consenting to the abolition.
Had gratitude to a benefactor prevailed, these powers could not have
resisted; but Lord Castlereagh confessed in the House of Commons, that
in France there was distrust of the British Government “even among the
better classes of people,” who thought that its zeal in this behalf was
prompted by desire to injure the French colonies and commerce, rather
than by benevolence. The British minister was more successful with
Portugal, where pecuniary equivalents led to a supplementary treaty, in
January, 1815. This was followed by the declaration of the Congress of
Vienna, on motion of Lord Castlereagh, 8th February, 1815, denouncing
the African slave-trade “as repugnant to the principles of humanity
and of universal morality.” Meanwhile Napoleon returned from Elba,
and what British intervention failed to accomplish with the Bourbon
monarch, and the Emperor once flatly refused, was now spontaneously
done by him, doubtless in the hope of conciliating British sentiment.
His hundred days of power were signalized by an ordinance abolishing
the slave-trade in France and her colonies. Louis the Eighteenth, once
again restored by British arms, and with the shadow of Waterloo resting
upon France, could not do less than ratify the imperial ordinance by
a royal assurance that “the traffic was henceforth forever forbidden
to all the subjects of his most Christian Majesty.”[81] Holland
came under the same influence, and accepted the restitution of her
colonies, except the Cape of Good Hope and Guiana, on condition of
the entire abolition of the slave-trade in the restored colonies, and
also everywhere else beneath her flag. Spain was the most indocile;
but this proud monarchy, under whose auspices the African slave-trade
first came into being, at last yielded. By the treaty of Madrid, of 23d
September, 1817, extorted by Great Britain, it stipulated the immediate
abolition of the trade north of the equator, and also, after 1820,
its abolition everywhere, in consideration of four hundred thousand
pounds, the price of Freedom, paid by the other contracting party. In
vindication of this intervention, Wilberforce declared in Parliament,
that “the grant to Spain would be more than repaid to Great Britain in
commercial advantages by the opening of a great continent to British
industry,”--all of which was impossible, if the slave-trade was allowed
to continue under the Spanish flag.[82]

At the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1818, and of Verona, in
1822, Great Britain continued her intervention against Slavery.
Chateaubriand, in his history of the latter Congress, pauses to
express his admiration of the “singular perseverance” in this cause
manifested by her at all Congresses, amidst questions the most urgent
and interests the most pressing.[83] Here her primacy was undisputed,
and her fame complete. It was the common remark of Continental
publicists, that she “made the cause her own.”[84] One of them portrays
her vividly, since 1810 waging “relentless war” against the principle
of the slave-trade, and by this “crusade,” undertaken in the name of
Humanity, making herself the “declared protectress” of the African
race. These are the words of a French authority.[85] According to
him, it is nothing less than “relentless war” and a “crusade” which
she has waged, and the position which she has achieved is that of
“protectress” of the African race,--while no less a person than
Chateaubriand recognizes with admiration the “singular perseverance”
she has displayed in this practical extension of Christianity. Not
content with imposing her magnanimous system upon the civilized world,
she carried it among the tribes and chiefs of Africa, who, by her
omnipresent intervention, were summoned to renounce a barbarous and
criminal custom. By a Parliamentary Report, it appears that in 1849
there were twenty-four treaties in force between Great Britain and
foreign civilized powers for the suppression of the slave-trade, and
also forty-two similar treaties between Great Britain and native chiefs
of Africa.[86]

This intervention was not by treaties only; it was by correspondence
and circulars also. And here I approach a part of the subject which
illustrates the vivacity of its character. All British ministers and
consuls were so many pickets on constant guard in the outposts. They
were held to every service by which the cause could be promoted,
even to translating and printing documents against the slave-trade,
especially in countries where, unhappily, it was still pursued. There
was the Pope’s Bull of 1839, which Lord Palmerston transmitted for this
purpose to his agents in Cuba, Brazil, and even in Turkey, some of whom
were unsuccessful in their efforts to obtain its publication, although,
curiously enough, it was published in Turkey.[87]

Such zeal could not stop at the abolition of the traffic. Accordingly,
Great Britain, by Act of Parliament, in 1834, enfranchised all the
slaves in her own possessions, and thus again secured to herself the
primacy of a lofty cause. The intervention was now openly declared to
be against Slavery itself, assuming its most positive character while
Lord Palmerston was Foreign Secretary,--and I say this sincerely to his
great honor. Throughout his long life, among all the various concerns
in which he has acted, there is nothing to be remembered hereafter with
such gratitude. By his untiring diplomacy her Majesty’s Government
constituted itself a vast Abolition Society, with the whole world for
its field. It was in no respect behind the famous World’s Convention
against Slavery, held at London in June, 1840, with Thomas Clarkson,
the pioneer Abolitionist, as President; for the strongest declarations
of this Convention were adopted by Lord Palmerston as “the sentiments
of her Majesty’s Government,” and communicated officially to British
functionaries in foreign lands. The Convention declared “the utter
injustice of Slavery in all its forms, and the evil it inflicts upon
its miserable victims, and the necessity of employing every means,
moral, religious, and pacific, for its complete abolition, an object
most dear to the members of this Convention, and for the consummation
of which they are especially assembled.”[88] These words became the
words of the British Government, and in circular letters were sent over
the world.

It was not enough to declare the true principles. They must be
enforced. Spain and Portugal hung back. The Secretary of the
Antislavery Society was sent “to endeavor to create in those countries
a public feeling in favor of the abolition of Slavery”; and the British
minister at Lisbon was desired by Lord Palmerston to “afford all the
assistance and protection in his power for promoting the object of his
journey.”[89] British functionaries abroad sometimes backslided. This
was corrected by circulars setting forth “that it would be unfitting
that any officer holding an appointment under the British Crown
should, either directly or indirectly, hold or be interested in slave
property.”[90] The Parliamentary Papers which attest the universality
of this instruction show the completeness with which it was executed.
The consul at Rio Janeiro, in slaveholding Brazil, had among his
domestics three negro slaves, two men and a woman; “of the men one was
a groom and the other a waiter, and the woman he was forced to hire
to nurse one of his children”; but he discharged them at once, under
the antislavery discipline of the British Foreign Office, and Lord
Palmerston, in formal despatch, “expresses his satisfaction.”[91] In
Cuba, at the time of its reception, there was not a single resident
officer, holding under the British Crown, “who was entirely free from
the charge of countenancing Slavery.” But only a few weeks afterwards
it was officially reported from Havana that there was “not a single
British officer residing within the consular jurisdiction who had
not relinquished, or was not at least preparing to relinquish, this
odious practice.”[92] This was quick work. The metamorphosis was prompt
as anything in ancient fable. Every person holding office under the
British Government at once set his face against Slavery, _and the way
was by having nothing to do with it, even in employing or hiring the
slave of another,--nothing, “directly or indirectly”_.

Lord Palmerston, acting in the name of the British Government, did not
stop with changing British officials into practical Abolitionists,
whenever they were in foreign countries. He sought to enlist other
European Governments, and to this end requested them to forbid their
functionaries residing in slaveholding communities to be interested
in slave property or in any holding or hiring of slaves. Denmark
for a moment hesitated, from unwillingness to debar them from acting
according to the laws where they resided, when the minister at once
cited in support of his request the example of Belgium, Hanover,
Holland, Sweden, Naples, Portugal, and Sardinia, all without delay
having yielded to this British intervention, and Denmark ranged herself
in the list.[93] Nor was this indefatigable Propaganda confined to the
Christian powers. With a sacred pertinacity it reached into distant
Mohammedan regions, where Slavery was imbedded not only in the laws,
but the habits, the social system, and the very life of the people,
and called upon the Government to act against it. No impediment
deterred,--no prejudice, national or religious. To the Shah of Persia,
ruling a vast, outlying slave empire, Lord Palmerston announced the
desire of the British Government “to see the slave-trade put down
and the condition of Slavery abolished in every part of the world”;
“that it conceived much good might be accomplished in these respects,
even in Mohammedan countries, by steady perseverance, and by never
omitting to take advantage of favorable opportunities”; and “that
the Shah would be doing a thing extremely acceptable to the British
Government and nation, if he would issue a decree prohibiting for the
future the importation of slaves of any kind into Persia, and making it
penal for a Persian to purchase slaves.”[94] To the Sultan of Turkey,
whose mother was a slave, whose wives were all slaves, and whose very
counsellors, generals, and admirals were originally slaves, he made a
similar appeal, and he sought to win the dependent despot by reminding
him that only in this way could he hope for that good-will which was
so essential to his Government; “that the continued support of Great
Britain will, for some years to come, be an object of importance to
the Porte,--_that this support cannot be given effectually, unless the
sentiments and opinions of the majority of the British nation shall
be favorable to the Turkish Government,--and that the whole of the
British nation unanimously desire, beyond almost anything else, to put
an end to the cruel practice of making slaves_.”[95] Such, at that
time, was the voice of the British people. Since Cromwell pleaded for
the Vaudois, no nobler voice had gone forth. The World’s Convention
against Slavery saw itself transfigured, while platform speeches
were transfused into diplomatic notes. The Convention, earnest for
Universal Emancipation, declared that “_the friendly interposition_ of
Great Britain could be employed for no nobler purpose,” and, as if to
crown its work, in an address to Lord Palmerston, humbly and earnestly
implored his Lordship to use his high authority for “connecting the
overthrow of Slavery with the consolidation of Peace”; and these
words were at once adopted in foreign despatches, as expressing the
sentiments of her Majesty’s Government.[96] Better watchwords could
not be, nor any more worthy of the British name. _There can be no
consolidation of Peace without the overthrow of Slavery._ This is as
true now as when first uttered. Therefore is Great Britain still bound
to her original faith; nor can she abandon the cause, of which she
was the declared protectress, without betrayal of Peace, as well as
betrayal of Liberty.

Even now while I speak this same conspicuous fidelity to a sacred
cause is announced. The ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez, first
attempted by the early Pharaohs, and at last resumed by French
influence, under the auspices of the Pacha, is most zealously opposed
by Great Britain for the declared reason that in its construction
“forced labor” is employed, which this power cannot in conscience
sanction. Not even to complete this vast beneficence, bringing East
and West near together, for which mankind has waited throughout long
centuries, will Great Britain depart from the rule so gloriously
declared. Slavery is wrong, therefore not to be employed. The canal
must stop, if it cannot be constructed without “forced labor.”

The veteran statesman who did so much in this cause, weaving its
golden thread into the tissue of his renown, dwelt on it with pride,
and accepted for his country the primacy that had been awarded. Never,
in his extended Parliamentary career, did Lord Palmerston rise to a
higher mood,--not even when claiming for Englishmen all the immunities
of Roman citizenship,--_Civis Romanus sum_,--than when he pictured
the dependence of Africans on their constant friend. “If ever,” said
he, “by the assault of overpowering enemies, or by the errors of her
misguided sons, England should fall, and her star should lose its
lustre, with her fall, for a long period of time, would the hopes of
the African, whether in his own continent or in the vast regions of
America, be buried in the darkness of despair. I know well that in such
case Providence would in due course of time raise up some other nation
to inherit our principles and to imitate our practice; but, taking the
world as it is, and states as they are constituted, I do not know--and
I say it with regret and with pain--I do not know any nation that is
now ready in this respect to supply our place.”[97] And can it be that
now, instead of the African, a rebellion inspired by Slavery turns to
England with hope?

The honorable story of British intervention against Slavery is
incomplete without showing how its generous ardor broke forth against
our Republic, which was denounced as linked with Slavery. Literature,
eloquence, and poetry lent themselves to expose the terrible
inconsistency. Lord Russell stepped aside from the easy path of
biography, to declare that among us “oxen and horses are better treated
than the men and women of African blood,” and then to proclaim “the
cry of outraged humanity,” “the current of human sympathy,” and “the
decrees of Eternal Justice,” irresistible.[98] Lord Macaulay, in the
House of Commons, thundered forth: “The Government of the United States
has formally declared itself the patron, the champion, of Negro Slavery
all over the world, the evil genius, the Arimanes, of the African race,
and seems to take pride in this shameful and odious distinction.… They
put themselves at the head of the slave-driving interest throughout
the world, just as Elizabeth put herself at the head of the Protestant
interest; and wherever their favorite institution is in danger,
are ready to stand by it as Elizabeth stood by the Dutch.”[99]
Thomas Campbell, fresh from writing “Ye Mariners of England” and
“Hohenlinden,” struck at our Slavery in most scornful verses on the
national flag:--

“But what’s the meaning of the stripes?
They mean your negroes’ scars!”[100]

If these things, so bitterly said, were true, if Campbell, Macaulay,
and Russell were right in their indignant rebuke, if Palmerston was
justified in his eloquent pride, then must England make haste to turn
away from a rebellion which seeks to reverse that noble intervention
where the liberty of the African was a constant guide.

* * * * *

Here I close the historic instances illustrating the right and practice
of foreign intervention. The whole subject is seen in these instances,
teaching clearly what to avoid and what to follow. In this way, the
Law of Nations, like History, gives its best lessons. For the sake of
plainness, I gather up some of the conclusions.

* * * * *

Foreign intervention is _armed_ or _unarmed_, although sometimes the
two are not easily distinguishable. Unarmed intervention may have in
it the menace of arms, or it may be war in disguise. When this is the
case, it must be treated accordingly.

_Armed_ intervention is war, and nothing less. Of course it can be
vindicated only as war, and it must be resisted as war. Believing,
as I do most profoundly, that war can never be a game, but must
always be a crime when it ceases to be a duty,--a crime to be
shunned, if not a duty to be performed swiftly and surely,--and that
a nation, like an individual, is not permitted to take the sword
except in just self-defence,--I find the same limitation in armed
intervention, which becomes unjust invasion in proportion as it
departs from just self-defence. Under this head is naturally included
all that intervention moved by a tyrannical or intermeddling spirit,
because such intervention, whatever its professions, is essentially
hostile,--as when Russia, Prussia, and Austria partitioned Poland, when
the Holy Alliance intermeddled everywhere and menaced even America, or
when Russia intervened to crush the independence of Hungary, or France
to crush the Roman Republic. All such intervention is inexcusable,
illegal, and scandalous. Its vindication is found only in the
effrontery that might makes right.

_Unarmed_ intervention is of a different nature. If sincerely unarmed,
it may be regarded as obtrusive, but not hostile. It may assume the
form of mediation or the proffer of good offices, at the invitation of
both parties, or, in the case of civil war, at the invitation of the
original authority. With such invitation, this intervention is proper
and honorable; without such invitation, it is of doubtful character;
but if known to be contrary to the desires of both parties, or to
the desires of the original authority in a distracted country, it
becomes offensive and inadmissible, _unless obviously on the side of
Human Rights_, when the act of intervention takes its character from
the cause in which it is made. But it must not be forgotten, that,
in the case of civil war, any mediation, or, indeed, any proposition
not enjoining submission to the original authority, is in its nature
adverse, for it assumes the separate existence of the other party, and
secures for it temporary immunity and opportunity, if not independence.
Congress, therefore, was right in declaring to foreign powers that
any renewed effort of mediation in our affairs will be regarded as an
unfriendly act.

There is another case of unarmed intervention which I cannot criticize.
It is where a nation intercedes or interposes in favor of Human Rights,
or to secure the overthrow of some enormous wrong,--as when Cromwell
pleaded, with noble intercession, for the secluded Protestants of
the Alpine valleys, when Great Britain and France declared sympathy
with the Greeks struggling for independence, and when Great Britain
alone, by splendid diplomacy, set herself against Slavery everywhere
throughout the world.

* * * * *

The full lesson may be summed up briefly. All intervention in the
internal affairs of another nation is contrary to law and reason,
and can be vindicated only by overruling necessity. Intervening by
war, then must there be the necessity of self-defence. Intervening by
mediation or intercession, then must you be able to speak in behalf
of civilization endangered or human nature wronged. To this humane
policy no power is bound so absolutely as England; especially is none
so fixed, beyond possibility of retreat or change, in hostility to
Slavery, whatever shape this criminal pretension may assume, whether
the animating principle of a nation, the “forced labor” of a multitude,
or even the service of a solitary domestic.

III.

There is a species of foreign intervention which stands by itself and
has its own illustrations. Therefore I speak of it by itself. It is
where a foreign power undertakes to acknowledge the independence of
a colony or province renouncing its original allegiance, and it may
be compendiously called _Intervention by Recognition_. Recognition
is strictly applicable only to the act of the original government,
renouncing all claim of allegiance, and at last acknowledging the
independence in dispute. It becomes an act of intervention, where
a foreign government steps between the two parties. The original
government is so far master of its position, that it may select its
own time in making this recognition. But the question arises, At what
time and under what circumstances can this recognition be made by a
foreign power? It is obvious that a recognition proper at one time
and under special circumstances would not be proper at another time
and under different circumstances. Mr. Canning said, with reference
to Spanish America, that, “if he piqued himself upon anything, it was
upon the subject of _time_”; and he added, that there were two ways of
proceeding,--“recklessly and with a hurried course to the object, which
might be soon reached and almost as soon lost, or by another course so
strictly guarded that no principle was violated and no strict offence
given to other powers.”[101] These are words of wise statesmanship,
and they present the practical question occurring in every case of
recognition: What condition of the controversy will justify such
intervention?

Here again the whole matter is best explained by historic instances.
The earliest is that of Switzerland, as long ago as 1307, breaking
off from the House of Hapsburg, whose original cradle was a Swiss
canton. But Austria did not acknowledge the independence of the
Republic until the Peace of Westphalia, nearly three centuries and
a half after the struggle began under William Tell. Meanwhile the
cantons lived through the vicissitudes of war, foreign and domestic,
and formed treaties with other powers, including the Pope. Before Swiss
independence was acknowledged, the Dutch conflict began under William
of Orange. Smarting from intolerable grievances, and with a price set
upon the head of their illustrious Stadtholder, the United Provinces
of the Netherlands, in 1581, renounced the tyrannical sovereignty
of Philip the Second, and declared themselves independent. In the
history of Freedom this is an important epoch. They were Protestants,
battling for rights denied, and Queen Elizabeth of England, the
head of Protestantism, acknowledged their independence, and shortly
afterwards extended military aid. Nor did other powers stand aloof.
In 1594, Scotland, Protestant also, under James the Sixth, afterwards
the first James of England, treated with the insurgent Provinces as
successors of the Houses of Burgundy and Austria, and in 1596 France
entered into alliance with them. The contest continued, sustained on
the side of Spain by the genius of Parma and Spinola, and on the side
of the infant Republic by the youthful talent of Maurice, son of the
great Stadtholder. But the claims of Spain were enduring; for it was
not until the Peace of Westphalia, eighty years after the revolt, and
nearly seventy years after their Declaration of Independence, that this
power consented to Dutch independence. Nor do these examples stand
alone, even at that early day. Portugal, unjustly subjugated by Spain
in 1580, broke away in 1640 and declared herself independent, under
the Duke of Braganza as King. A year scarcely passed before Charles
the First of England negotiated a treaty with the new sovereign.
The contest had ceased, but not the claim; for it was only after
twenty-eight years that Spain made this other recognition.

Traversing the Atlantic Ocean in space and more than a century in
time, I come to the next historic instance, so interesting to us all,
while as a precedent it dominates the whole question. The long discord
between the Colonies and the mother country broke forth in blood on
the 19th of April, 1775. Independence was declared on the 4th of July,
1776. Battles ensued,--Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown,
Saratoga, followed by the winter of Valley Forge. The contest was yet
undecided, when, on the 6th of February, 1778, France entered into
a treaty of amity and commerce with the United States, containing,
among other things, a recognition of their independence, with mutual
stipulations between the two parties to protect the commerce of the
other, by convoy on the ocean, “against all attacks, force, and
violence”;[102] and on the 13th of March this treaty was communicated
to the British Government by the French ambassador at London, with a
diplomatic note, in which the United States are described as “in full
possession of the independence pronounced by their Act of 4th July,
1776,” and the British Government is warned that the King of France,
“being determined effectually to protect the legitimate freedom of the
commerce of his subjects and to maintain the honor of his flag, has
taken in consequence some eventual measures with the United States
of North America.”[103] A further treaty of alliance, whose declared
object was the maintenance of the independence of the United States,
had been signed on the same day, but this was not communicated; nor is
there evidence that it was known to the British Government at the time.
The communication of the other sufficed, for it was an open recognition
of the new power, with promise of protection on the ocean, _while the
war was yet flagrant between the two parties_. As such it must be
regarded as an armed recognition, constituting in itself a belligerent
act, aggravated and explained by the circumstances under which it
was made, the warning, in the nature of menace, by which it was
accompanied, the clandestine preparations by which it was preceded, and
the corsairs to cruise against British commerce, which for some time
had been allowed to swarm under the American flag from French ports.
It was so accepted by the British Government. The British minister
was summarily withdrawn from Paris, all French vessels in British
harbors were seized, and on the 17th March a message from the King
was brought down to Parliament in the nature of a declaration of war
against France. In this declaration there was no allusion to anything
but the treaty of amity and commerce officially communicated by the
French ambassador, which was denounced by his Majesty as an “unprovoked
and unjust aggression on the honor of his crown and the essential
interests of his kingdoms, _contrary to the most solemn assurances,
subversive of the Law of Nations, and injurious to the rights of every
sovereign power in Europe_.” Only three days later, on the 20th March,
the Commissioners of the United States were received by the King of
France in solemn audience, with all the pomp and ceremony accorded by
the Court of Versailles to the representatives of sovereign powers.
War ensued between France and Great Britain on land and sea, in which
Holland and Spain afterwards took part against Great Britain. With such
allies, a just cause prevailed. Great Britain, by provisional articles,
signed at Paris 30th November, 1782, acknowledged the United States
“to be free, sovereign, and independent,” and declared the boundaries
thereof.

Colonial independence was contagious, and the contest for it presented
another illustration, more discussed, and constituting a precedent, if
possible, more interesting still. This was when the Spanish colonies
in America, following the Northern example, broke away from the mother
country and declared themselves independent. The contest began as
early as 1810, but it was long continued, and extended over an immense
region,--from New Mexico and California in the North to Cape Horn in
the South,--washed by two vast oceans, traversed by mighty rivers,
and buttressed by lofty mountains fruitful in silver, capped with
snow, and shooting volcanic fire. At last the United States, satisfied
that the ancient power of Spain had ceased to exist beyond reasonable
chance of restoration, and that the contest was practically ended,
acknowledged the independence of Mexico and five other provinces. This
act was approached only after frequent debate in Congress, where Henry
Clay took an eminent part, and after most careful consideration in the
Cabinet, where John Quincy Adams, as Secretary of State, shed upon the
question all the light of his unsurpassed knowledge, derived from
long practice as well as from laborious study of International Law.
This judgment must be regarded as a sufficient authority. President
Monroe, in a special message, on the 8th of March, 1822, twelve years
after the war began, called the attention of Congress to the state of
the contest, which he said had “now reached such a stage, and been
attended with such decisive success on the part of the provinces,
that it merits the most profound consideration whether their right
to the rank of independent nations, with all the advantages incident
to it in their intercourse with the United States, is not complete.”
After setting forth the _de facto_ condition of things, he proceeded:
“Thus it is manifest that all those provinces are not only in the full
enjoyment of their independence, but, _considering the state of the war
and other circumstances, that there is not the most remote prospect
of their being deprived of it_.” In proposing their recognition, the
President declared that it was done “under a thorough conviction that
it is in strict accord with the Law of Nations”; and further, that “it
is not contemplated to change thereby, in the slightest manner, our
friendly relations with either of the parties.” In accordance with this
recommendation, Congress authorized the recognition. Three years later
the same thing was done by Great Britain, after much debate, diplomatic
and Parliamentary. No case of international duty has been illustrated
by a clearer eloquence, an ampler knowledge, or a purer wisdom.
The despatches were written by Mr. Canning, and upheld by him in
Parliament; but Lord Liverpool took part in the discussion, succinctly
declaring “that there could be no right to recognition while the
contest was actually going on,”[104]--a conclusion cautiously, but
strongly, enforced by Lord Lansdowne, and nobly vindicated, in an
oration reviewing the whole subject, by that great publicist, Sir James
Mackintosh. All inclined to recognition, but admitted that it could not
take place _so long as the contest continued_,--and that there must
be “such a contest as exhibits some equality of force, and of which,
if the combatants were left to themselves, the issue would be in some
degree doubtful.” The Spanish strength throughout the whole continent
was reduced to a single castle in Mexico, an island on the coast of
Chile, and a small army in Upper Peru, while in Buenos Ayres no Spanish
soldier had set foot for fourteen years. “Is this a contest,” said
Mackintosh, “approaching to equality? Is it sufficient to render the
independence of such a country doubtful? Does it deserve the name of
a contest?”[105] It was not until 1825 that Great Britain was so far
satisfied as to acknowledge this independence. France followed in 1830,
and Castilian pride relaxed in 1836, twenty-six years from the first
date of the contest.

The next instance is Greece, which declared independence January 27,
1822. After a cruel contest of more than five years, with alternate
success and disaster, the great powers intervened forcibly in 1827;
but the final recognition was postponed till May, 1832. Then came the
instance of Belgium, which declared independence in November, 1830,
and was promptly recognized by the great powers intervening for this
purpose. The last instance is Texas, which declared independence in
December, 1835, and defeated the Mexican army under Santa Aña, making
him prisoner, in 1836. The power of Mexico seemed to be overthrown; but
Andrew Jackson, then President of the United States, in his Message
of December 21, 1836, laid down the rule of caution and justice,
as follows: “The acknowledgment of a new state as independent and
entitled to a place in the Family of Nations is at all times an act
of great delicacy and responsibility, but more especially so when
such state has forcibly separated itself from another, of which it
had formed an integral part, and which still claims dominion over it.
_A premature recognition_ under these circumstances, _if not looked
upon as justifiable cause of war_, is always liable to be regarded
as a proof of an unfriendly spirit.” And he concluded by proposing
that our country should “stand aloof” until the question was decided
“beyond cavil or dispute.” During the next year, when the contest had
practically ceased and only the claim remained, this new power was
acknowledged by the United States, who were followed in 1839 by France,
and in 1840 by Great Britain, Holland, and Belgium. Texas was annexed
to the United States in 1845; but at this time Mexico had not joined in
the general recognition.

* * * * *

Such are historic instances illustrating Intervention by Recognition.
As in other cases of intervention, the recognition may be _armed_ or
_unarmed_, with an intermediate case, where the recognition may seem
unarmed, when in reality it is armed,--as when France simply announced
recognition of the independence of the United States and at the same
time prepared to maintain it by war.

_Armed_ recognition is simply _Recognition by Coercion_. It is a
belligerent act, constituting war, and can be vindicated only as
war. No nation will undertake it, unless ready to assume all the
responsibilities of war,--as in the recent cases of Greece and Belgium,
not to mention the recognition of the United States by France. But
an attempt, under guise of recognition, to coerce the dismemberment
or partition of a country is in its nature offensive beyond ordinary
war, especially when the country to be sacrificed is a republic,
and the plotters against it are crowned heads. Proceeding from the
consciousness of brute power, such an attempt is an insult to mankind.
If armed recognition at any time can find apology, it is only _where
sincerely made for the protection of Human Rights_. It would be hard to
condemn that intervention which saved Greece to Freedom.

_Unarmed_ recognition is where a foreign power acknowledges in some
pacific form the independence of a colony or province against the claim
of its original government. Although excluding all idea of _coercion_,
yet it cannot be uniformly justified.

* * * * *

Here we are brought to that question of “time,” on which Mr. Canning
so pointedly piqued himself, and to which President Jackson referred,
when he suggested that “a premature recognition” might be “looked
upon as justifiable cause of war.” Nothing is more clear than that
recognition may be favored at one time, while it must be rejected
at another. So far as it assumes to determine rights instead of
facts, or to anticipate the result of a contest, it is wrongful. No
nation can undertake to sit in judgment on the rights of another
nation without its consent. Therefore it cannot declare that _de
jure_ a colony or province is _entitled_ to independence, but, from
the necessity of the case, and that international intercourse may
not fail, it must ascertain the facts, carefully and wisely, and,
on the actual evidence, it may declare that _de facto_ the colony
or province appears _to be in possession_ of independence,--which
means, first, that the original government is dispossessed beyond the
possibility of recovery, and, secondly, that the new government has
achieved a reasonable stability, with fixed limits, giving assurance
of solid power. All this is simply fact and nothing more. But just
in proportion as a foreign nation anticipates the fact, or imagines
the fact, or substitutes its own passions for the fact, it transcends
the well-defined bounds of International Law. Without the fact of
independence, positive and fixed, there is nothing but a claim. Now
nothing is clearer than, that, while the terrible litigation is still
pending, and the trial by battle, to which appeal is made, remains
undecided, _the fact of independence cannot exist_. There is only a
paper independence, which, though reddened with blood, is no better
than a paper empire or a paper blockade; and any pretended recognition
of it is a wrongful intervention, inconsistent with just neutrality,
since the obvious effect must be to encourage the insurgent party. Such
has been the declared judgment of our country, and its practice, even
under circumstances tempting in another direction; and such, also, was
the declared judgment and practice of Great Britain with reference to
Spanish America.

The conclusion, then, is clear. To justify recognition, it must appear
beyond doubt that _de facto_ the contest is finished, and that _de
facto_ the new government is established secure within fixed limits.
_These are conditions precedent_, not to be avoided without open
offence to a friendly power, and open violation of that International
Law which is the guardian of the world’s peace, even if there be not
_another condition precedent_ which civilization in this age will
require.

Do you ask now if foreign powers can acknowledge our Rebel embryo as
an independent nation? There is madness in the thought. Recognition
accompanied by the breaking of the blockade would be war, impious war,
against the United States, where Slavemongers would be the allies and
Slavery the inspiration. Of all wars in history, none more accursed,
none more sure to draw down upon its authors the judgment alike of God
and man. But the thought of recognition, under existing circumstances,
while the contest is still pending, even without any breaking of the
blockade or attempted coercion, is a Satanic absurdity, hardly less
impious than the other. It would assume unblushingly, that, already
Rebel Slavery had succeeded in establishing an independent nation
with an untroubled government and a secure conformation of territory,
when, _in fact_, nothing is established, nothing untroubled, nothing
secure, not even a single boundary-line, and there is no element of
independence except the audacious attempt,--when, _in fact_, the
conflict is still waged on numerous battle-fields, and these pretenders
to independence have been driven from State to State, driven away
from the Mississippi which parts them, driven back from the sea which
surrounds them, and shut up in the interior or in blockaded ports,
so that only by stealth can they communicate with the outward world.
Any recognition of such a pretension, existing only as pretension,
scouted and denied by a whole people with invincible armies and navies
embattled against it, would be a mockery of truth. It would assert
independence as _a fact_, when notoriously it was not _a fact_. It
would be an enormous lie. Naturally a power thus guilty would expect to
support the lie by arms.

IV.

I do not content myself with a single objection to this outrageous
consummation. There is another, of a different nature. Assuming, for
the moment, what I glory to believe can never happen, that the _new_
Slave Power has become independent _in fact_, while the national flag
has sunk away exhausted in the contest, there is one objection which,
in an age of Christian light, thank God, cannot be overcome, unless,
after solemn covenants branding Slavery, the great powers shall forget
their vows, while England, the declared protectress of the African
race, and France, the declared champion of “ideas,” both break away
from the irresistible logic of their history, and turn their backs upon
the past. Vain is honor, vain is human confidence, if these nations,
at a moment of high duty, can thus ignobly fail. “Renown and grace
is dead.” Like the other objection, this is _of fact_ also,--for it
is founded on the character of the pretension claiming recognition,
which constitutes _fact_. Perhaps it may be said that it is a question
of policy; but it is of policy which ought to be beyond debate, _if
such fact be established_. Something more is necessary than that the
new power shall be _de facto_ independent. _De facto_ it must be _fit_
for independence; and, from the nature of the case, every nation will
judge of this fitness _in fact_. Undertaking to acknowledge a _new_
power, you proclaim its fitness for welcome and association in the
Family of Nations. Can England gazette such a proclamation, elevating
the whippers of women and sellers of children? Can France permit Louis
Napoleon to do the same?

Here, on the threshold of this inquiry, the true state of the question
must not be forgotten. It is not whether old and existing relations
shall be continued with a power permitting Slavery, but _whether
relations shall be commenced with a new power_, not merely permitting
Slavery, but building its whole intolerable pretension upon this
Barbarism. “No _new_ Slave State” is a watchword with which we are
familiar in our domestic history; but even such cry does not reveal
the full opposition to the _new_ revolt against Civilization,--for,
even if disposed to admit a _new_ Slave State, there must be, among men
who have not yet lost all sense of decency, undying resistance to the
admission of a _new_ Slave Power with such an unquestioned origin and
such an unquestioned purpose as that which now flaunts in piracy and
blood before the civilized world, seeking recognition for its criminal
chimera. Here is nothing for nice casuistry. Duty is plain as the moral
law or the multiplication table.

Look for a moment at the unprecedented character of this pretension. A
President known to be against the extension of Slavery was duly elected
by the people in the autumn of 1860. This was all. He had not entered
upon his duties. But the apostolic Slavemongers saw that Slavery at
home must suffer under the popular judgment against its extension;
they saw that a vote against its extension was a vote for its
condemnation; and they rebelled. Under this wicked inspiration, State
after State pretended to withdraw from the Union, and to construct a
new Confederacy, whose “corner-stone” was Slavery. A Constitution was
adopted, declaring these words: (1.) “No law denying or impairing the
right of property in negro slaves shall be passed”[106]; and (2.) “In
all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the
limits of the several States, the institution of Negro Slavery, as it
now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected
by Congress and by the Territorial Government.”[107] Do not start.
These are the authentic words of the text. You will find them in the
Rebel Constitution.

Such was the unalterable fabric of the new government. Nor was there
any doubt or hesitation in proclaiming its distinctive character.
Its Vice-President, Mr. Stephens, thus far remarked for moderation
on Slavery, as if smitten with diabolic light, undertook to explain
and vindicate the new Magna Charta. His words are familiar, but they
cannot be omitted in a complete statement of the case. “_The new
Constitution_,” he said, “has put at rest _forever_ all the agitating
questions relating to our peculiar institution, African Slavery, as
it exists among us,” which he proceeds to declare “was the immediate
cause of the late rupture and present revolution.” The Vice-President
announced unequivocally the change that had taken place. Admitting
it was “the prevailing idea of most of the leading statesmen at the
time of the formation of the old Constitution that the enslavement
of the African was in violation of the Laws of Nature, that it was
wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically,” he denounces
this idea as “fundamentally wrong,” and proclaims the new government
“founded upon _exactly the opposite idea_.” Here is no disguise. “Its
foundations,” he avows, “are laid, its _corner-stone_ rests, upon
the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man,--that
Slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal
condition.” Not content with exhibiting the untried foundation, he
boastfully claims for the new government priority of invention. “_This
our new government_,” he vaunts, “_is the first in the history of the
world_ based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.…
This stone, which was rejected by the first builders, ‘is become the
chief stone of the corner.’” And then, as if priority of invention
were not enough, he proceeds to claim for the new government future
supremacy, saying that it is already “the nucleus of a growing power,
which, if we are true to ourselves, our destiny, and our high mission,
will become the controlling power on this continent.”[108]

Since Satan first declared the “corner-stone” of his new government,
and openly denounced the Almighty Throne, there has been no blasphemy
of equal audacity. In human history nothing but itself can be its
parallel. The gauntlet is thrown down to heaven and earth, while a
disgusting Barbarism is proclaimed as the new Civilization. Here is
a new method, a _novum organum_, to usher in the world’s future. Two
years are already passed,--but, as the Rebellion began, so is it now.
A Governor of South Carolina, in a message to the Legislature, as late
as 3d April, 1863, takes up the boastful strain, and congratulates
the Rebel Slavemongers that they are “a refined, cultivated, and
enlightened people,” and that the new government is “the finest type
that the world ever beheld.”[109] God save the mark! Such, doubtless,
was the speech of the African tyrant, as he sat in state on the
prostrate bodies of his subjects and rejoiced in this manifestation
of power. A leading journal, more than any other the organ of the
Slavemongers, repeats the original vaunt with more than the original
brutality. After dwelling on “the grand career and lofty destiny”
before the new government, the “Richmond Examiner” of 28th May, 1863,
proceeds as follows. “Would that all of us understood and laid to heart
the true nature of that career and that destiny, and the responsibility
it imposes. _The establishment of the Confederacy is, verily, a
distinct reaction against the whole course of the mistaken civilization
of the age._ For Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity we have deliberately
substituted Slavery, Subordination, and Government. _Reverently we feel
that our Confederacy is a God-sent missionary to the nations, with
great truths to preach._ We must speak thus boldly; but ‘whoso hath
ears to hear, let him hear.’” This God-sent missionary to the nations
it is now proposed to welcome at the household hearth of the civilized
world.

Unhappily, there are old nations already in the family still tolerating
Slavery; but now, for the first time, a new nation claims admission
there, which not only tolerates Slavery, but, exulting in its shame,
strives to reverse the judgment of mankind, making this outrage its
chief support and glory, so that all recognition of the new power will
be recognition of a sacrilegious pretension,

“With one vast blood-stone for the mighty base.”

Elsewhere Slavery has been an accident; here it is the principal.
Elsewhere it has been an instrument only; here it is the inspiration.
Elsewhere it has been kept back in becoming modesty; here it is pushed
forward in all its brutish nakedness. Elsewhere it has claimed nothing
but liberty to live; here it claims license to rule, with unbounded
empire at home and abroad. Look at this candidate power in its whole
continued existence, from Alpha to Omega, and it is nothing but
Slavery. Its origin is Slavery, its mainspring is Slavery, its object
is Slavery. Wherever it appears, whatever it does, whatever form it
takes, it is Slavery and nothing else; so that, with the agonizing
despair of Satan, it might cry out:--

“Me miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; _myself am Hell_.”

The Rebellion is Slavery in arms, Slavery on horseback, Slavery on
foot, Slavery raging on the battle-field, Slavery savage on the
quarter-deck, robbing, destroying, burning, killing, to uphold this
candidate power. Its legislation is simply Slavery in statutes,
Slavery in chapters, Slavery in sections, with an enacting clause.
Its diplomacy is Slavery in pretended ambassadors, Slavery in
cunning letters, Slavery in cozening promises, Slavery in persistent
negotiation,--all to secure for the candidate power its much desired
welcome. Say what you will, try to avoid it, if you can, you are
compelled to admit that the candidate power is nothing else than
_organized Slavery_, now, in its madness, surrounded by its criminal
clan, and led by its felon chieftains, braving the civilization of
the age. Any recognition of Slavery is bad enough; but this will be
recognition with welcome and benediction, imparting _new_ consideration
and respectability, and, worse still, securing _new_ opportunity and
foothold for the supremacy it openly proclaims.

In ancient days the candidate was robed in white, while at the
Capitol and in the Forum he canvassed the people for their votes. The
candidate nation, unashamed of Slavery, should be robed in black, while
it conducts the great canvass, and asks the votes of the Christian
powers. “Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night,” as
the outrage proceeds; for the candidate gravely asks international
recognition of the claim to hold property in man, to sell wife away
from husband, to sell child away from parent, to shut the gates of
knowledge, to appropriate all the fruits of another’s labor. The
candidate proceeds in the canvass, notwithstanding all history declares
Slavery essentially barbarous, and that whatever it touches it changes
to itself,--that it barbarizes laws, barbarizes business, barbarizes
manners, barbarizes social life, and makes the people who cherish it
barbarians. And still the candidate proceeds, although it is known
to the Christian powers that the partisans of Slavery are naturally
“filibusters,” always apt for lawless incursion and for robbery;
that, during later years, under their instigation and to advance
their pretensions, expeditions _identical in motive with the present
Rebellion_ were let loose in the Gulf of Mexico, twice against Cuba,
and twice, also, against Nicaragua, breaking the peace of the United
States and threatening the repose of the world, so that Lopez and
Walker were but predecessors of Beauregard and Jefferson Davis. And yet
the candidate proceeds, although it is obvious that the recognition
urged will be nothing less than solemn sanction by the Christian powers
of Slavery everywhere throughout the new jurisdiction, on land or
sea, so that every ship, being part of _the floating territory_, will
be _Slave Territory_. And yet, with the phantasy that man can hold
property in man shooting from his lips, with the shackle and lash in
his hands, with barbarism on his forehead, with filibusterism in his
recorded life, and with Slavery woven in his flag wherever it floats on
land and sea, the candidate clamors for independent recognition. It is
sad to think that there is delay in repelling the insufferable canvass.
Can Christian nations longer hesitate? To detest and combat such an
accursed pretension it is not necessary even to be a Christian,--it is
sufficient to be a man.

If the recognition of a _de facto_ power were a duty imposed upon
other nations by International Law, there would be no opportunity for
objections founded on principle or policy. _But there is no such duty._
International Law leaves to each nation, precisely as the Municipal
Law leaves to each citizen, what company to keep or what copartnership
to form. No company and no copartnership can be forced upon a nation.
It is all a question of free choice and acceptance. International Law
on this head is like the Constitution of the United States, which
declares, “New States _may be admitted_ by the Congress into this
Union.” Not _must_, but _may_,--it being in the discretion of Congress
to determine whether the State shall be admitted. Accordingly, in the
exercise of this discretion, Congress for a long time refused to admit
Missouri _as a Slave State_. And now the old Missouri Question, in
more outrageous form, on vaster theatre, with “monarchs to behold the
swelling scene,” is presented to the Christian powers of the world. If
it was right to exclude Missouri, having only few slaves, and regarding
Slavery merely as a temporary condition, it must be right to exclude
a pretended nation, which not only boasts millions of slaves, but
passionately proclaims the perpetuity and propagation of Slavery as the
cause and object of its separate existence.

Practical statesmen have always treated recognition as a question of
policy, to be determined on the whole case, even where the power is
_de facto_ established,--as amply appears in the Parliamentary debates
on the recognition of Spanish America. If we go behind the practical
statesmen and consult the earliest oracles of International Law, we
find, that, according to their most approved utterances, not only may
recognition be refused, but there are considerations of duty this way
which cannot be evaded. It is not enough that a pretender has the form
of a commonwealth. “A people,” says Cicero, in a definition copied by
most jurists, “is not every body of men, _howsoever_ congregated,
but a gathered multitude _associated through agreement in right and
community of interest_.”[110] Again, he goes so far as to say, “When
the king is unjust, or the aristocracy, or the people itself, the
commonwealth is not vicious, _but null_.”[111] Of course a commonwealth
that is _null_ cannot be recognized. This same lofty standard is of
frequent recurrence in the testimony of the great Roman. But he is not
alone. Grotius, who speaks always with the magistral voice of learning
and genius, furnishes the just conclusion, when, after declaring that
a state is “a complete body of freemen associated for the enjoyment of
right and for their common benefit,”[112] he exposes the distinction
between a body of men, who, being already a recognized commonwealth,
are guilty of systematic crime,--as, for instance, piracy,--and
another body of men, who, _not yet recognized as a commonwealth_, band
together for this purpose,--_sceleris causâ coeunt_. The latter, by
happy discrimination, he places beyond the pale of recognition.[113]
When before, in all history, have creatures wearing the human form
proclaimed the _criminal principle_ of their association with the
audacity of our Slavemongers? And yet there is hesitation to place them
beyond the pale of recognition. A recent English authority on the Law
of Nations adopts the same distinction. I quote Mr. Phillimore, who,
after alluding to societies united _for the sake of crime_, says:
“All agree to class such bodies amongst those of whose corporate
existence the law takes no cognizance (_qui civitatem non faciunt_),
and therefore as not entitled to international rights either in peace
or war.”[114]

It might be argued, on grounds of reason and authority even, that
the _declared principle_ of the pretended power was a violation of
International Law. Eminent magistrates have solemnly ruled, that, in
the development of civilization, the Slave-Trade has become illegal
by a law higher than any statute. Sir William Grant, an ornament of
the British bench, whose elegant mind was governed always by practical
sense, adjudged that this trade “cannot, _abstractedly speaking_, be
said to have a legitimate existence”;[115] and our own great authority,
Mr. Justice Story, in a remarkable judgment, declared himself
constrained “to consider the trade _an offence against the universal
law of society_”;[116] and the highest professional authorities of our
country adopted the same conclusion: I refer especially to the late
William Pinkney and Jeremiah Mason.[117] But arguments which are strong
against any recognition of the Slave-Trade are strong also against any
recognition of Slavery itself, especially when it is the foundation of
a _new_ power.

In the determination of present duty, it is not necessary to assume
that Slavery or the Slave-Trade is positively forbidden by existing
International Law. It is enough to show, that, _according to the
spirit_ of that sovereign law which “sits empress, crowning good,
repressing ill,” and also according to those commanding principles
of justice and humanity which cannot be set at nought without shock
to human nature itself, so foul a wrong as Slavery can receive no
voluntary support from the Commonwealth of Nations. It is not a
question of Law, but of Morality. The Rule of Law is sometimes less
comprehensive than the Rule of Morality, so that the latter may
positively condemn what the former silently tolerates. But within its
own domain Morality cannot be less authoritative than Law. It is,
indeed, nothing less than the Law of Nature, which is the Law of God.
If we listen again to heathen teaching, we shall confess its truth.
“Law,” says Cicero, “is the highest reason, implanted in nature,
_which prescribes those things which ought to be done, and forbids the
contrary_.”[118] This law is an essential part of International Law,
as is also Christianity itself, and where treaties fail and usage is
silent it is the only law between nations. Jurists of all ages and
countries have delighted to acknowledge its authority, if it spoke only
in the still, small voice of conscience. A celebrated professor of
Germany in our own day, Savigny, whose name is honored by students of
jurisprudence everywhere, touches upon this monitor of nations, when
he declares that “there may exist between different nations _a common
consciousness of right_ similar to that which engenders the positive
law of particular nations.”[119] This common consciousness of right is
identical with that law, which, according to Cicero, is “the highest
reason, implanted in nature.” Such is the _Rule of Morality_.

The Rule of Morality differs from the Rule of Law in this
respect,--that the former finds support in the human conscience, the
latter in the sanctions of public force. But moral power prevails with
a good man as much as if it were physical. I know no different rule for
a good nation than for a good man. I am sure that a good nation will
not do what a good man would scorn to do.

There is a Rule of Prudence superadded to the Rule of Morality.
Grotius, in discussing treaties, does not forget the wisdom of
Solomon, who, in not a few places, warns against fellowship with the
wicked,--although he adds, that these are maxims of prudence, and not
of law.[120] And he reminds us of the saying of Alexander, “that those
grievously offend who enter the service of barbarians.”[121] Better
still are the words of the wise historian of classical antiquity, who
enjoins upon a commonwealth the duty of considering carefully, when
sued for assistance, “whether what is sought is sufficiently pious,
safe, glorious, or whether it is _unbecoming_”;[122] and also those
words of the Hebrew king, who, after rebuking an alliance with Ahab,
asks with scorn, “Shouldest thou help the ungodly?”[123]

The claim for recognition, when brought to the touchstone of these
principles, is easily disposed of.

* * * * *

Urge not the _Practice of Nations_ in its behalf. Never before in
history has a candidacy been put forward _in the name of Slavery_,
and the terrible outrage is aggravated by the Christian light which
surrounds it. This is not an age of darkness. But even in the Dark
Ages, when the Slavemongers of the Barbary coast had gathered into
cities, the saintly Louis the Ninth was fired to treat one of these
communities as a “nest of wasps.”[124] Afterwards, but slowly, they
obtained “the right of legation” and “the reputation of a government”;
when at last, weary of their criminal pretensions, the aroused
vengeance of Great Britain and France blotted out this power from the
list of nations. Louis the Eleventh, who has been described as the
sovereign “who best understood his interest,” indignant at Richard the
Third of England, who had murdered two infants in the Tower and usurped
the crown, sent back his ambassadors without holding intercourse
with them. This is a suggestive precedent, which I give on venerable
authority in diplomatic history;[125] but the parricide usurper of
England had never murdered so many infants or usurped so much as the
pretended Slave Power, strangely tolerated by the sagacious sovereign
who sits on the throne of Louis the Eleventh.

It is not necessary, however, to go so far in history, nor to dwell on
the practice of nations in withholding or conceding recognition. The
whole matter is stated by Burke, with his customary power.

“In the case of a divided kingdom, by the Law of Nations, Great
Britain, like every other power, is free to take any part
she pleases. _She may decline, with more or less formality,
according to her discretion, to acknowledge this new system_;
or she may recognize it as a government _de facto_, setting
aside all discussion of its original legality, and considering
the ancient monarchy as at an end. The Law of Nations leaves
our court open to its choice.… The declaration of a _new_
_species_ of government on new principles is a real crisis in
the politics of Europe.”[126]

This same rule Burke declared in Parliament, saying, “that the French
Republic was _sui generis_, and bore no analogy to any other that ever
existed in the world. It, therefore, did not follow that we ought to
recognize it, merely because different powers in Europe had recognized
the Republic of England under Oliver Cromwell.”[127] And in his famous
“Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs” this illustrious authority
proclaimed the new French Government “so fundamentally wrong as to be
utterly incapable of correcting itself by any length of time, or of
being formed into any mode of polity of which a member of the House of
Commons could publicly declare his approbation.”[128]

Another eloquent publicist, Sir James Mackintosh, while pressing on
Parliament the recognition of Spanish America, says: “The reception of
a new state into the society of civilized nations by those acts which
amount to recognition is a proceeding which has no legal character, and
_is purely of a moral nature_”; and he proceeds to argue, that, since
England “is the only anciently free state in the world, for her to
refuse her _moral aid to communities struggling for liberty_ is an act
of unnatural harshness.”[129] Thus does he vindicate recognition for
the sake of Freedom. How truly he would have repelled any recognition
for the sake of Slavery let his life testify.

At the Congress of Verona, Chateaubriand, as representative of France,
replied to a proposition from the Duke of Wellington on this subject:--

“France is influenced by considerations of more general
importance with regard to the governments _de facto_. She
conceives that _the principles of justice on which society is
founded must not be lightly sacrificed_ to secondary interests,
and it appears to her that those principles increase in
importance _when the matter in question is that of recognizing
a political order of things virtually hostile to that which
exists in Europe_.”[130]

Here the rule is mildly stated, but in harmony with correct principle.
A _new_ government, with Slavery as its active soul, must be “virtually
hostile” to European civilization, so as to make its recognition
impossible; nor can the principles of justice be lightly sacrificed.

No better testimony to the practice of nations can be found than the
words of Vattel, whose work, presenting the subject in familiar form,
has done more, during the last century, to fashion opinion on the Law
of Nations than any other authority. Here it is briefly.

“If there be any nation that _makes an open profession_ of
trampling justice under foot, of despising and violating
the rights of others, whenever it finds an opportunity, the
interest of human society will authorize all others to unite in
order to humble and chastise it.”[131]

“_To form and support an unjust pretension_ is to do an injury
only to the nation whom such pretension concerns; to mock at
justice in general is to injure all nations.”[132]

“The power that assists an odious tyrant, that declares for an
unjust and rebellious people, undoubtedly violates duty.”[133]

“As to those monsters who under the title of sovereigns render
themselves the scourges and horror of humanity, they are
ferocious beasts, of whom every brave man may justly clear the
earth.”[134]

“If the maxims of a religion tend to establish it by violence,
and to oppress all those who do not embrace it, the Law
of Nature forbids us to favor that religion, or to unite
unnecessarily with its inhuman followers, and the common safety
of mankind invites them rather to enter into _a league against
such madmen, to repress such fanatics, who disturb the public
repose and menace all nations_.”[135]

Nor can you urge this recognition on any principle of _Comity of
Nations_. This is an expansive term, into which enters much of the
refinements, amenities, and hospitalities of civilization, and also
something of the obligations of moral duty. But where an act is
prejudicial to national interests, or contrary to national policy, or
questionable in morals, it cannot be commended by any consideration
of courtesy. A paramount duty must not be betrayed by a kiss. For the
sake of comity, acts of good-will and friendship not required by law
are performed between nations; but an English court has authoritatively
declared that this principle cannot prevail, “where it violates the
law of our own country, the Law of Nature, or the Law of God,” and on
this exalted ground it was decided that an American slave who had found
shelter on board a British man-of-war on the high seas could not be
recognized as a slave.[136] The same principle must prevail against
recognition of a new slave nation.

Nor, finally, can this recognition be urged on any reason of _Peace_.
There can be no peace founded on injustice; and any recognition is
injustice which will cry aloud, resounding through the earth. You may
seem to have peace, but it will be only smothered war, sure to break
forth in war more direful than before.

Thus is every argument for recognition repelled, whether under the
sounding words, Practice of Nations, Comity of Nations, or Peace. There
is nothing in practice, nothing in comity, nothing in peace, which is
not against any such shameful acknowledgment.

* * * * *

Applying the principles already set forth,--assuming what cannot be
denied, that every power is free to refuse recognition,--assuming that
it is not every body of men that can be considered a commonwealth,
but only those “associated _through agreement in right and community
of interest_,”--that men “banding together for the sake of systematic
crime” cannot be considered a commonwealth,--assuming that every member
of the Family of Nations will surely obey the rule of morality,--that
it will “shun fellowship with the wicked,”--that it will not “enter
the service of barbarians,”--that it will avoid what is “unbecoming,”
and do that only which is “pious, safe, and glorious,”--and that,
above all things, it will not enter into alliance to “help the
ungodly,”--assuming these things, every such member must reject with
indignation a new pretension whose declared principle of association is
so intrinsically wicked. Here there can be no question. The case is
plain; nor is any language of contumely or scorn too strong to express
the irrepressible repugnance to such a pretension, which, like vice,
“to be hated needs but to be seen.” Surely there can be no Christian
power which will not rouse to expose it, crying, with irresistible
voice,--

No _new_ sanction of Slavery!

No _new_ quickening of Slavery in its active and aggressive barbarism!

No _new_ encouragement to “filibusters” engendered by Slavery!

No _new_ creation of _Slave Territory_!

No _new_ creation of a _Slave Navy_!

_No new Slave Nation!_

No installation of Slavery as a _new_ Civilization!

But all this litany will fail, if recognition succeeds,--from which,
good Lord, deliver us! Nor will this be the end.

* * * * *

Slavery, through the _new_ power, will take its place in the Parliament
of mankind, with the immunities of an independent nation, ready
always to uphold and advance itself, and organized as an unrelenting
Propaganda of the new faith. A power having its inspiration in such
a Barbarism must be essentially barbarous; founded on the asserted
right to whip women and sell children, it must assume a character
of disgusting hardihood; and openly professing determination to
revolutionize the public opinion of the world, it must be in open
schism with Civilization itself, so that all its influences will be
wild, savage, brutal, and all its offspring kindred in character.

“Pards gender pards; from tigers tigers spring;
No doves are hatched beneath a vulture’s wing.”[137]

Such a power, from very nature, must be despotism at home “tempered
only by assassination,” with the cotton-field for its Siberia,--while
abroad it must be aggressive, dangerous, and revolting, in itself
a _Magnum Latrocinium_, whose fellowship can have nothing but “the
filthiness of evil,” and whose very existence will be an intolerable
nuisance. When Dante, in the vindictive judgment hurled against his own
Florence, called it _bordello_, he did not use a term too strong for
the mighty house of ill-fame which the Christian powers are now asked
for the first time to license. Such must be the character of the new
power. But, though only a recent wrong, and pleading no prescription,
the illimitable audacity of its nature can hesitate at nothing; nor is
there anything offensive or detestable it will not absorb into itself.
It will be an Ishmael, with hand against every man. It will be a brood
of Harpies, defiling all it cannot steal. It will be the one-eyed
Cyclop of nations, seeing

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