The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-06 00:00:00

THE CONFEDERATE STATES.

(From the Times' Special Correspondent.)
RICHMOND, Nov. 27, 1864.
There is no branch of international law with
which the treatise of Wheaton, the well-known
American publicist, deals so frankly and unreservedly
as that delicate question, the right of intervention
by one Power in the affairs of another, which he de-

dares to be "an undefined and undefinable excep-

Lion to the mutual independence of nations." De-
served compliments were paid to Mr. Wheaton upon
the first appearance of his " Elements of Interna-
tional Law" in 1836 by writers of authority in Lon-
don and Paris, in regard to his frankness about a
subject on which his predecessors had equivocated
or maintained profound silence. It is impossible
even to glance at the works of Phillimore, Twiss,
Hautefeuille, Masse, Ortolan, and Heffter, who are
justly esteemed the ablest modern European expo-
nents of international jurisprudence, without assign-
ing to 'Wheaton's work the very highest authority,
by reason of the respect with which it is always
named by the above distinguished publicists, and of
the frequent citations they make from it. Never-
theless, it is still more impossible to read Mr.
Wheaton's remarks about the interference of neu-
tral nations between belligerents, or to study the
precedents set during the last 80 years by the prac-
tice of the Government at Washington, without
coming to the conclusion that neither Wheaton nor
any of the many American Secretaries of State who
have deftly wielded the pen ever contemplated the
possibility of the.application of their words to a war
upon the American continent between two sections
of the late American Union.

This is not the place for an essay upon those topics
which were so Voluminously treated a few months
ago in the columns of the Times by " Historicus"
and others. Neither is there much credit to be
gained by pointing out (than which nothing is easier)
the glaring inconsistencies between the professed
code of the Washington Government when it is a
neutral and its practice when it is a belligerent. But
I cannot forbear briefly noticing a few of the
axioms Mid down by great American authorities,

when justifying the action of their Government to-
wards belligerents whose position in reference to the
Washington Cabinet was analogous to that now oc-
cupied, by the Federal and Confederate States in re-

ference to the Governments of England and France.
Read by the light of their axioms, the recent seizure
of the Florida in neutral waters by a Federal cruiser
and Mr. Seward's arrogant interdicts against any
comments on the part of European nations in refe-
rence to this colossal family quarrel in America,
may well provoke indignant surprise. It may be
stated without fear of contradiction, that there has
never during the last half century been an open in-
surrectionary movement or change of Government
in .Europe which the American Republic has not
been swift to encourage by recognition, or (as in
the case of Hungary in 1849) by investing an agent
in Europe with power to declare the Republic's wil-
lingness to recognise the new State in the event of
its ability to sustain itself. I have not space to cite
in this letter the record of the great Republic's po-
licy,. and of its public expressions of opinion in refe-
rence to the Spanish American Republics, Greece,
Bqgium, Portugal, Poland, and the sepoy mutiny
in Hindustan, though I may mention, par parenther,
that in American journals there was much more
commendation of the sepoy insurgents as of men re-
belling against; intolerable tyranny, than abhorrence
of the enormities which they stained humanity by
committing. But I will detain your readers by
.
briefly noticing two precedents set by the Washing-
ton Government, which will suffice to show the prin-
ciples which have guided its action in all analogous

CA STS.

I may premise that the first of these instances,
inasmuch as it refers merely to a change of Govern-
ment, and not to the dismemberment of a State, is
quoted solely with a view to- giving the principle
laid down by three American Secretaries of State.
Some of your readers will. remember that upon the
expulsion of Louis Philippe from the French
Throne upon February 24th, 1848, and upon the
simultaneous establishment by the French people of
a Republic, the new Government was recognised by
the American Minister in Paris, Mr. Rush, upon
February 28. It is needless to state that Mr. Rush
acted on his own responsibility, and without instruc-
tions from Washington. Those of your readers who
are interested in reading an entertaining narrative
of the French Revolution of 1818, and of the mo-
tiveS which impelled Mi. Rush to such swift action,
may turn with profit to a book entitled " Rash's
Occasional Productions." Approbation of Mr. Rush's
action on the part of. the Washington Government
wits not long. delayed. Upon March 31, 1848, Mr.
Buchanan, the American Secretary of State, wrote
to,Mr. Rush as- follows
It vias ' right and proper that the Minister Plenipoten-
tiary 'of the United States should be the first to recognise
Oise Provisional' Government of the French Republic. In
the intercourse with foreign nations the Government of the
United States has from its origin always recognised de facto
Governments: We recognise the right of all nations to
create and reform their political institutions according to
their- omin will and pleasure. We do not go behind their
existing Government to involve ourselves in questions of
legitimacy. It is sufficient for us to know that a Govern-
aunt exists capable of maintaining itself, and then its re-
cognition on our part inevitably follows. This principle
of action, resulting from our sacred regard for the indepen-
dence of nations has occasioned some strange anomalies in
our history. The Pope, the Emperor of Russia, and Presi-
dent Jackson were the only authorities which ever recog-
nised Don Miguel as King of Portugal."
The alacrity displayed by Mr. Rush and Mr.
Buchanan in recognising the: transference of the
French Government from a monarchical to a repub-
lican form is easily intelligible. But in the case of
the change in the French- Constitution which. pre-
ceded the 'elevation to supreme power of the Empe-
ror Napoleon 111. the following instructions, betray.
ing less empressement, though affirmative of the
same principle as Mr. Buchanan's, was sent in Jan.,
1852, by Mr. Webster, then Secretary of State, to
Mr. Rives, the American Minister in Paris :
" From President Washington's time clown to the pre-
sent it has been a principle- always acknowledged by the
United States that every nation possesses a right to govern
itself according to its own will ; to change its institutions
at discretion; and to transact its business through what-
- ever agents it may think proper to employ. If the French
people have now made substantially another change we
have no choice but to acknowledge that also ; and as the
diplomatic representative of your country in France, you
will adhere to what appears to be settled national autho-

ri,ty,
Writing upon the same subject on Feb. 17, 1853,
Mr. Everett, who succeeded Mr. Webster as Secre-
tary of State, thus instructs Mr. Rives :
" It is the fundamental law of the American Republic
that the will of the people is the ultimate principle of go-
vernment ; and it seems quiet evident that the people of
France have, with a near approach to unanimity, decided
the restoration of the Empire."
The other instance to which I desire to call atten-
tion bears more analogy to the position now occu-
pied by the Federal and Confederate Governments
in relation
to European Powers. Your readers
will remember that in 1848 a provisional Govern-
ment was formed in Hu followed in 1849 by
an effort to dissolve n-arY,
and the Austrianconnection between that king-
dom Empire. The assistance
given to Austria by pu •
ia
brave exertions of therevolutionaryrendered nugatory the
but its failure was not
dueto Government,
encou-
ragement from the great American
Republic. "With
a view to enabling
first to welcome Hungary into States to be the
the family
of
na-
tions, Mr: A. Dudley Mann (now a confederate
official in Europe] was sent as an agent to -
Hungary
to watch .the struggle and to declare the v,illingnese,
of his Government to recognise the new State if able
to maintain itself. I may remark in passing that it
is affirmed by Mr. Bancroft and others that the
American Government has never been a propagand-
ist in advocating its own forin of polity. How does
Mr. Bancroft explain the eager and importunate
presence of American officials wherever a revolution
is going on, and the welcome offered by their pre-
sence to the struggling insurgents to enter the com-
munity of nations? Is not this a direct invitation to
the insurgents, if successful, to assume a Republican
form of Government? How does Mr. Bancroft ex-
plain such passages as the following, which abound
in the pages of his countrymen? I quote from Mr.
Lawrence's Preface to " Wheaton's International
Law," prefixed to the edition of 1863. He speaks
thus of the war now raging in this country
An internecine war, in many cases literally between