Chap. VII. whether any inconvenience, or how much, is to be apprehended from not making such a declaration, is not a question which either belligerent has a right to discuss with the neutral, but one of which the neutral is the best and sole judge. That in no case and under no circumstances can a declaration of neutrality be a wrong to a Power which is itself exercising, or has assumed to exercise, against neutrals, any of the jura belli.

5. But lastly, that, at the time of declaring itself neutral, the British Government had in fact sufficient reason to apprehend inconvenience from remaining silent, and to assume formally and at once the position of a neutral, which must have been assumed sooner or later.

The reader of this narrative will be able to judge for himself between these two chains of propositions—which of them is the truer in fact and the sounder in principle. He will be able to judge whether the Confederates were, or were not, a mere body of armed insurgents, without organization, without a Government, without judicial tribunals, without seaports, without resources; and whether the contest was more correctly described by the American Secretary of State as "an armed sedition," such as is "frequent in all countries," or by the Supreme Court as "the greatest of civil wars." He will have observed in what light it was practically regarded by the Federal Administration, by the Federal Courts, by the people of the North, by the people of the South, and by Europe. And he will be able to decide whether, in the presence of such a contest, a maritime nation, with whom both North and South had incessant and profitable intercourse, had or had not the right, without incurring even an imputation of unfriendliness or of undue haste, to declare itself neutral.

It is evident, however, that the real complaint against Great Britain was not that she declared herself neutral, but that she was so. To contend that she ought to have

excluded Confederate ships from her ports, denied them Chap. VII, the hospitalities due by the general custom of nations to all vessels not tainted with piracy, and treated them as pirates, whilst Federal cruisers were permitted to enter and supply themselves freely-what is this but to maintain that she had not in this contest the right to be neutral? I affirm that to be neutral was her right and duty.1

The American Government has represented itself as a sufferer by this neutrality. Had this been really so, to be neutral would none the less have been the right and duty of Great Britain. But was it so? What the United States really lost by it has never been distinctly stated. But it is easy to see what they gained. They gained the liberty to exercise against British ships on the high seas the rights of visit and search, of capturing contraband, and of blockade- rights which spring solely from the relation of belligerent and neutral, and which the neutral acknowledges by recognizing the existence of that relation. The advantages reaped in maritime war from the exercise of such rights fall, where there is a disparity of force, into the hands of the stronger belligerent; where the disparity is great, he has a monopoly of them, for he is able to shut up his

1 In December 1864, Mr. Seward wrote to the Brazilian Chargé d'Affaires

:

“This Government disallows your assumption that the insurgents of this country are a lawful naval belligerent; and on the contrary it maintains that the ascription of that character by the Government of Brazil to insurgent citizens of the United States, who have hitherto been, and who still are, destitute of naval forces, ports, and courts, is an act of intervention in derogation of the law of nations, and unfriendly and wrongful as it is manifestly injurious to the United States."

It is plain that the real grievance was not that the belligerents were recognized as belligerents too soon, but that they were so recognized at all. The stress laid on the date of the British Declaration is an endeavour to give the complaint something like plausibility, and to point against Great Britain in especial an accusation which really includes other neutral nations.

Chap. VII. enemy in port and drive him from the sea. Did not the Government of the United States claim these rights? Did it not exert them-freely, largely, even rigorously? Were they of no advantage to it? Did it ever propose to forego them? There is a lurking idea, I think, in the minds of some Americans, that two parties are not necessary to a war, and that they ought to have been suffered to act as belligerents while refusing to the European Power the right to be neutral. But the difficulty of giving an air of reasonableness to the idea has prevented it from being plainly expressed.

For myself I have never been able to understand how the American Government could seriously insist on a grievance which its own publicists are almost unanimous in disclaiming, and which is indeed the most groundless and unsubstantial that one nation ever alleged against another.1 I am unable to comprehend how it could be premature to provide for a state of circumstances which was actually existing at the time, or precipitate to announce in May a conclusion on which the President himself had begun to act in April; how it can be deliberately maintained by any one that such chimerical hopes as the Confederates may possibly have built, for the moment, on the Queen's Proclamation exercised any material influence on the fortunes of the war; or how, if that were granted, the British Government could be held justly answerable for the chimeras raised in sanguine imaginations by an act which was itself lawful and reasonable. So unsubstantial, indeed, is this complaint, that we see it in the

la

1 See Lawrence, Commentaire sur les Eléments du Droit International, &c., vol. i, p. 185.—“ Les déclarations de neutralité faites par France et la Grande Bretagne en Mai et en Juin 1861, et qui furent suivies par celles d'autres puissances, ne sont donc que les corollaires des actes du Gouvernement Américain. Celui-ci a été en effet le premier à établir les droits de guerre dans les Etats séparés."

See also Woolsey, On the Alabama Claims, 1869, and an article in the American Law Review, October 1869, p. 36.

American despatches continually shifting its position, Chap. VII. changing its shape, and eluding the grasp of argument by studied subtleties of expression. Sometimes the assumption of neutrality in this contest is a "wrongful and injurious" act; sometimes it is only "unfriendly in its operation," or "suggests the suspicion of an unfriendly motive," or is "a sign of a purpose of unfriendliness;" again it re-appears as a wrong, and as the foundation of a specific claim for damages, and finally becomes nothing less than "a virtual act of war." We are sometimes told that the issue is not whether at the date of the Proclamation there was a war between the Union and the revolted States or no: we ask, What then is the issue ?-and are presented with an argument to prove that the contest was not a war, but a mere insurrection; that though the President himself treated it as a war, and assumed to exercise belligerent rights, he did not do this "expressly or in form," and might, had he thought fit, have abstained from exercising them.1

1 "The Supreme Court of the United States and that of the District of Columbia, in their opinions did not pretend, admit, or imply, that the President's aforesaid Proclamation, expressly and in form declared or recognized a state of civil war. The Courts reached their conclusion that a state of civil war was existing at the time of the maritime captures which were under consideration, by processes of reason and argument. Lord Stanley repeats from Earl Russell, and re-affirms, that 'Her Majesty's Government had but two courses open to them on receiving intelligence of the President's Proclamation,' namely, either that of acknowledging the blockade and proclaiming the neutrality of Her Majesty, or that of refusing to acknowledge the blockade and insisting upon the right of Her Majesty's subjects to trade with the ports of the South where the Government of the United States could exercise no fiscal control at that time.

"With due respect I must demur to this statement. The disturbance being, at the time referred to, officially and legally held by the Government of the United States to be a local insurrection, this Government had a right to close the the ports in the States within the scene of the insurrection, by municipal law, and to forbid strangers from all intercourse therewith, and to use the armed and naval forces for that purpose. A blockade was legitimately declared to that end; and, until the state of civil war should actually have developed, the existence of a blockade

Chap. VII. The President need not have instituted a blockade: foreign nations, therefore, were bound to act as if he had not instituted one. It is impossible to speak respectfully, or even seriously, of an argument conducted in this fashion. It is unworthy of a manly and honest reasoner; it is strangely unsuited to the Government of a great people.

would have conferred no belligerent rights upon the insurgents. In choosing the blockade as a form of remedy less oppressive than the closing of the ports by statute, the United States might perhaps have come under an obligation to respect any just rights and interests of aliens which might have been infringed. There was, however, no just ground of apprehension on that subject, for the history of the time shows that those rights were in all cases inviolately respected," Mr. Seward to Lord Stanley, 14th January, 1867.