Chap.XVII. non è responsabile della causa debba poi rispondere degli effetti?" Even if it were true that the Confederates would never have sent privateers to sea, had they not been recognized as belligerents, this would not justify a claim for reparation; the recognition itself being a perfectly legiti

Note.

mate act.

Setting aside the case of the Alabama, the conduct of Great Britain was blameless in respect of both the contending parties ("inoffensiva per ambe le parti contendenti").

As regards the Alabama, Professor Esperson thinks that the British Government became responsible for the losses actually inflicted by that vessel. He will pardon me, however, for saying that on this subject, to which he devotes only a few lines, his information seems to be imperfect. He describes the Alabama as having been built, armed, and manned in British waters, under the eyes of the British Government, as having been wholly manned with British seamen, and afterwards received into British ports "with her prizes." And he says that in the Convention rejected by the American Senate the British Government admitted a violation of neutrality in this case, by consenting to refer to arbitration the amount ("il calcolo") of the losses sustained by merchants who suffered from the depredations of the Alabama. If he should do me the honour to read this book, he will find that these are very unlike the true facts of the case, and he may perhaps see reason to change his opinion on this point.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Conclusion.

My narrative is ended. I shall add to it only one or two short general observations. It is the misfortune of a writer who undertakes to treat of questions actually in dispute especially if one of the countries interested in the dispute be his own-that he can scarcely assign to them himself, or expect that others will assign to them, the true measure of their permanent importance. It cannot, however, have escaped the reader's notice that some at least of the questions reviewed in these pages have an importance of their own, wider and more lasting than such as they derive from transient and accidental circumstances. Great Britain and the United States were not the only Powers really concerned in these controversies; still less can they be accounted the only Powers interested in whatever tends to alter, or to define with increased clearness, the rights and duties of belligerent and neutral.

The rights of belligerent and neutral, during the late contest, were brought into discussion, as we have seen, under peculiar circumstances. The contest itself was a civil war; a civil war developed with extraordinary celerity, because it sprang from the revolt of a cluster of communities already completely organized, and accustomed to union for the regulation of common interests and for military defence; a civil war waged on an unexampled scale, since the victorious party mustered at

Ch. XVIII. its close a fleet of more than 500 ships and an army of nearly 1,000,000 men. It was a war prosecuted by land and sea, in which the weaker combatant was an enterprising and audacious people, with plenty of naval officers and few ships, possessing an extensive sea-coast, which was harassed and gradually, but only gradually, closed by a most protracted blockade. The greatest maritime Power in the world, which is also the greatest workshop and mart for general trade, and therefore the most natural resort for procuring all kinds of supplies, was neutral, and separated from the strife only by the broad highway of the Atlantic. Lastly, it should not pass unobserved that steam-power and the changes introduced by it into the art of navigation have insensibly altered in various ways the conditions under which war is carried on, and have been found to affect, to a degree not fully understood before, the facilities for enforcing and for eluding blockades, for the carriage of contraband, for procuring and fitting-out ships, for harassing an enemy's commerce, and for cruising in distant seas.

Questions, therefore, not new in themselves assumed new aspects in the late war. To the difficulty which belligerent and neutral commonly find in looking at the same facts from one and the same point of view was added the more obstinate difficulty which is likely to arise when the belligerent is a citizen fighting against his fellow-citizen, or a Sovereign at war with his subjects. The points of view from which such a struggle is regarded by the neutral and by the belligerent Sovereign are not, it is true, really irreconcilable; on the contrary, they are quite consistent with one another. A rebel is liable to be treated as a criminal within the jurisdiction of his Sovereign, outside of it he is not liable to be so treated; and to insist that he shall be regarded as a criminal abroad is as unreasonable in the Sovereign as it would be in the neutral to contend that he should not be so regarded at home. But although there is no

contradiction in reason and logic, the difficulty exists Ch. XVIII. nevertheless; and it was never more strikingly illustrated than by the experience of the late war.

There is no part of the policy of the United States on which American Presidents have dwelt with greater complacency than the attitude which the Republic has held towards countries struggling with revolt or torn by internal wars. In defining this they have been careful to draw a line between the acts of the Government and the sympathies of the people. A struggle for independence-or, which is exactly the same thing, a revolt has always been deemed in America a natural and legitimate object of popular sympathy. American Governments have avowed this; they have sometimes permitted themselves not only to share the feeling, but to give public expression to it; but they have endeavoured, not always with success, to prevent it from taking the form of active interference, and in their own public acts they have prided themselves in maintaining a perfectly impartial neutrality. Whether a Government was sovereign, whether a people was independent, were, and must always be, to the Government of the United States, questions of fact, to be determined "without any reference to the merits of the original controversy." In the meantime, "when civil war breaks the bonds of society and of government, or at least suspends their force and effect, it gives birth in the nation to two independent parties, who regard each other as enemies and acknowledge no common judge. It is of necessity, therefore, that these two parties should be considered by foreign States as two distinct and independent nations." The principles and policy thus recognized by the United States have been declared "appropriate to their condition, fixed and fastened upon them by their character, their history, and their position among the

1 Report of Committee of the House of Representatives on Foreign Relations, 19th March, 1822.

Ch. XVIII. nations of the world;" and these principles, said an American Secretary of State, "will not be departed from until some extraordinary change shall take place in the general current of human affairs."

We have now seen how painful and difficult it may be for a nation to submit its own feelings and interests to a rule which seems just and expedient when applied to others. To Americans of the North and West it has appeared a thing not to be borne that a civil war, originating in a revolt which they thought unjustifiable and criminal, should be dealt with by foreign Governments on exactly the same principles as if it had been clearly justifiable: in other words, that these Governments should treat it "without reference to the merits of the original controversy," simply as a civil war. This impatience coloured their whole view of the subject, and the treatment of every question as it arose: it speaks in every despatch, and points every argument. The nations of Europe had been asked-they had been importuned -to be neutral; no sooner did they begin to act as neutrals and treat both belligerents alike, than they were overwhelmed with reproaches, and their conduct was persistently judged with reference, not to the rights and

1 See the correspondence between Mr. Webster and M. Hülsemann in 1850, on the proceedings of President Taylor's Government in reference to the insurrection in Hungary. If the United States had formally recognized the independence of Hungary, though no benefit would have resulted from it to either party, it would not, said Mr. Webster, have been an act against the law of nations, provided they took no part in her contest with Austria.

Pando (Elementos del Derecho Internacional, 1838, p. 589), after quoting the judgments delivered by the Supreme Court in the Divina Pastora and the Nuestra Señora de la Caridad, observes::

"Esta misma doctrina ha sido recientemente aplicada por los Estados-Unidos á los insurgentes de Tejas contra autoridad de su protegida la República Mejicana. Falta ver si la Union aprobará estos principios en el futuro caso de que los profesen las Potencias extrangeras, cuando estalle alguna guerra civil entre los miembros de la misma Federacion."