presses the permanent and universal law of international dealings, which, like the extradition treaties for crime, has for its object the suppression of domestic crime and the forwarding of international justice; and which ought, therefore, to have as little connection as possible with the passing politics of the day.

(7) Nor, finally, is such frittering-away and repeal of all .neutrality restraints the moral inculcated by our late civil struggle. On the contrary, that event, like the occurrence of a great conflagration, warns us that we ought immediately to seek to guard ourselves for the future against the recurrence of some of those injurious practices- such, for instance, as the affording foreign aid to domestic rebellion, and the tolerating the hostile equipment of naval armaments in foreign friendly ports from which we have suffered so injuriously, and of which we now so justly complain.

(8) Affirmatively, the revision and reconstruction of the American neutral code — with a view to its improvement and perfection, instead of to its subversion and abrogation-constitutes the true "coming" movement in American foreign policy.

In development of these points, I do not propose to treat them seriatim, in the order above set forth, but rather to prove their justice, as I best may, by some general discussion of the province of neutral laws, and how far our own stand-point towards them has been shifted by the events of the recent civil war. I begin with the latter branch of the subject first.

General Banks's Report and the late action of the House of Representatives seem to have at bottom two great motives for some fundamental change in our neutral policy:

(1) That we have become a great and powerful nation. (2) That, under our past self-inflicted neutral restraints, we have been imposed upon by the warlike powers of Europe.

As to the first, so far as it asserts a fact, I shall not be unpatriotic enough to deny it; so far, however, as it implies a motive for altered national conduct hereafter, I should demur to the proposition in full, unless it shall first be shown that our past action has proceeded upon mistaken principles and unworthy

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motives. Because a man has become rich, shall he thereupon declare that he can now afford to become," not " honest,” but dishonest? If, when we were poor and "a little people," we could dare to be honestly neutral and justly impartial, shall we say, now that we have become " a great nation," that we can afford to act as lawlessly as we please, and follow out our own "wicked will"? that, as we have become strong enough to afford to be pugnacious, we mean to put ourselves in fighting attitude, and repeal all our old-fashioned rules and ordinances, so that nothing shall stand between us and a free practice under the law of might making right?

If this is the first fruit of our matured national strength, I beg to dissent from the proposition with my whole energy. On the contrary, would not the dictates of common decency - not to say the manifest behests of Divine Providence-impose upon us the obligation, a fortiori, of respecting the laws of international equity, now that it has become a so much easier matter to obey their injunctions? And as "much is required" " of the individual "to whom much is given," is not the obligation, in like manner, all the more imperative upon us as a great power, to make good use of our national example in the conduct of the world's affairs?

There is nothing, then, I apprehend, in the circumstance of our national growth, to vary the position of the question, whether it is expedient to adhere to our past policy of neutrality, provided (as I have endeavored to show) that that policy has been founded upon just and theoretically true principles of international law.

But the more difficult question to answer is, whether we have not been trifled with, or, if the questioner pleases, been imposed upon, for our peace-loving neutrality, by the powers of Western Europe, and particularly during the late civil struggle?

The Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the House of Representatives with him, in its brief discussion of the the Committee's Report and Bill, seemed to think that we had experienced from England such a poor return of neutral favors conferred, and had witnessed on her part such a disregard of the neutral restraints of the law of nations, that it was hardly

worth while to pretend to keep up towards her, at least, a further compliance with those restraints ourselves. Is that a justifying motive for a fundamental change of our foreign policy?

In the first place, England does not stand to us for all the world. Are not France, Spain, Russia, Holland, Italy, and other governments of Europe, to say nothing of the growing empire of Brazil and the Mexican and South-American republics, something to us, in the matter of shaping our neutral relations for the future? Supposing that it is expedient for us to keep no terms with Great Britain on points of neutral law, have we not other related nations, friends or foes, with whom we must keep up an intercourse, either of friendship or hostility, or of impartial neutrality? And do we not need laws to express and regulate the terms upon which that intercourse shall be maintained?

I assume, then, that General Banks and his coadjutors would agree that the legislation must be special which should strike out all provisions of the neutral code so as to exclude England from any possible benefit under it, and leave it standing for the rest of the world. Perhaps, in fairness, any such exclusion should also except the case of France, at least so long as its present Emperor presides over and shapes its policy; for have we not, in many respects, as good grounds for complaint against French disregard of international restraints during the late struggle, as we have against English?

But then, in answer to this bête noire of English ingratitude and English trifling with any system of neutral law, I beg to ask our American legislators, whether, after all, we do not owe to the existence of our own neutral code, and to the precedents of our own neutral record, the fact of the British Government's declining to side with our rebel enemies, and allowing themselves to be drawn into their quarrel so far as to declare open war against us? For my own part, I think there can be but very little doubt of it; and but for the existence of the Foreign-Enlistment Act on the British statute-book, and but for our own record of neutral legislation, jurisprudence, and executive action, such as we had made it up to our own credit, in our past rela

tions with Great Britain, I think it is as morally certain the rebel emissaries would have precipitated Great Britain into hostilities with us over the letting-loose of Laird's iron-clads, as that Jefferson Davis and his associates confidently relied upon that firebrand of provocation to light up a war between the two nations.

What effect such a declaration of war on the part of Great Britain against us at the darkest period of our civil struggle would have had upon our national future, it is fortunately quite unnecessary to surmise. Possibly, it might have had the same effect upon us, if England and France had jointly combined with the rebels to attempt to smother our liberties, as it had upon revolutionary France to have united Europe combine to invade her. But short of wading through such a sea of blood as would have flowed from that "engagement for the suppression of liberty" (as Lord John Russell, in his younger days, said of the British prosecution of the American war of 1775), I believe, under Providence, we owe the peaceful continuance of our relations with the British nation during the late Confederate sedition, largely, if not chiefly, to the existence of a common neutrality code in the two governments, and to a wellsettled interpretation of it on this side of the Atlantic, forbidding and frowning on such operations as those drawn in question.

So far at least, I venture to say, we have derived good from the existence of the code under which General Banks and the House of Representatives believe our good nature has been imposed upon; and so far, at least, it is a mistaken basis of fact for the assertion, that Great Britain has paid no respect either to her own laws or to the neutral precedents set her by the United States. Whether Great Britain has in other respects honestly acted up to her own code, and made due account of the debt of neutral honor which she has contracted with the United States at former periods, I have had occasion elsewhere to notice, and shall probably return to the subject in another connection hereafter.

Meanwhile, on this topic of suffering international imposition, General Banks seems to have struck the key-note to his own

opinions, and to those probably of many of his fellow-legislators, when he said in his Report (p. 10),

"We can no longer stand bail for the peace of the world. We have stood guard for other nations long enough.'

And again, in debate (partly cited already) :—

“The question for this House to determine is whether that time has come [foretold by the Adamses] when the people of this country would be able to assert their own right upon the judgment of the people alone, rather than at the dictation or upon the representations of representatives of foreign governments. Sir, I think it has come.

"If we want any thing to prove our power, let us look at the history of this country for the last five years," &c.

Now, if this is intended for a declaration, that it is time to propose a new affirmance of the Monroe doctrine, or a carryingout of that doctrine in some new and as yet undefined direction, I have to reply that the authors and originators of that doctrine never made the taking-down of the barriers of neutral restraints any condition precedent towards applying and carrying it out. On the contrary, as has already been shown, there were no stauncher upholders of the American neutral system as they found it, and warmer advocates of advancing it still further, than Messrs. Monroe and John Quincy Adams. In their view, at any rate, the fulfilment of our duties of impartial neutrality municipally was entirely consistent with a more vigorous assertion of American independence from European intervention, externally and diplomatically. How then can the proposed repeal or emasculation of the neutrality laws do any thing to favor the promotion of the Monroe doctrine, unless upon principles entirely at variance with those professed by its original promoters and godfathers?

Perhaps the new movement proposes to give a greater vitality to the Monroe doctrine, by increasing the facilities of our citizens and others to acquire territory by filibustering; and the consideration given to the subject of Fenianism seems to show, that, in that phase at least of the subject, General Banks and his coadjutors seem ready to take away any legal barriers that would impede our making our intervention in our neighbor's