The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-12-28

neutrality.
1t is plain to see that Mr.. Carpenter ap-
preciated at the outset the difficulty of main
tanning his thesis, growing out of the fact
that no department of the Government of the
United States had recognized war in Cuba,
and accorded to each of the parties thereto
what are popularly known as belligerent
rights.
He begins this portion of his speech by a
general discussion of what neutrality is, cites
DR.. Phillimore for English doctrine in that
relation, and gives the two following circum-
stances, in which, in the opinion of this dis
tinguished English publicist, the relation of
neutrality consists
l. Entire abstinence from any participation
in the war.
q Impartiality of conduct towards both
belligerents.
Very ignorantly, or very disingenuously,
the Senator seeks to apply this definition of
neutrality-which DR.. Phillimore in his trea-
tise discusses only in its relation to two ad-
mitted and recognized belligerents-to the
condition of things existing in Cuba; and in
the application insists that, even if neutrality
permits both belligerents to purchase, in the
neutral country, contraband of war, under
circumstances which do not give one an ad-
vantage over the other, still this rule of
neutral right must be so modified from time
to time, and otherwise administered that the
result will be practically the same to each
belligerent; or if, for any reason one bellige-
rent cannot avail itself of its admitted right
to purchase contraband of war of the neutral,
then the latter must preclude the other bel
ligerent from purchases. This certainly is
new doctrine.
Mr.. Carpenter quotes from Mr.. Wheaton's
account of what took place in the British
Parliament in 1919 and 1928, in respect to
the Foreign Enlistment act of that country,
as evidence that Great Britain acts, or has
acted, upon this theory His effort by the
quotation is to create the impression that,
when the revolt first broke out in the South
American colonies, England prohibited both
the insurgents and the parent country from
exporting arms from its Jurisdiction, and
therefore we ought to do the same as to Cuba.
The unfairness of the use which he makes of
the quotation inheres in the fact that he does
not narrate all the surrounding circumstances,
as furnished by other portions of the text.
The Senator ought to have known, or at least
ought to have stated, that the condition of
things existing in South America at the time
referred to in the quotation bore no possible
similitude, in law or fact, to the condition of
things nOl0 existing in Cuba.
Mr.. Wheaton is narrating, in the text from
which the quotation is taken, the substance
of the debates in Parliament between Sir j.
Macintosh and MIR. Canning, the former at
tacking and the latter upholding the British
Foreign Enlistment act. The object of Mr..
Canning was to meet the suggestion of his
antagonist, that the proposed law operated in
favor of one belligerent party; and the former
accomplished the result by explaining the
circumstances of the treaty between Great
Britain and Spain in 1914, by which the former
bound herself not to furnish any muni-
tions of war to the revolving colonies
of Spain in South America. BY and by
he said, those colonies became States de- fGctO
independent of the mother country 1t
became, therefore, necessary in 1919 to treat
these dc jurG colonies but de fact0 States ac-
cording to their true condition. They had
come to be belligerent powers, entitled to
belligerent rights, and therefore, in order to
| put the two warning parties of Spain and the
provinces on equal footing, the parent coun-
try, as well as the colonies, was prohibited
from purchasing supplies in England. But
when war became probable between France
and Spain, the condition of things was COM
plicated by the necessity of treating both
these latter powers alike, and this necessity
was met by removing the prohibition of ex-
porting arms and ammunition both as to Spain
and as to the de tacto independent States of
South America.
1t is therefore inexact to say that, during
the time referred to by Wheaton, the pro-
vinces of South America bore the same legal
and political relation to Spain that the Ces.
pedes revolters in Cuba do, at this time, to
that Government; for the South American
provinces we're then in the domain of inter
national law-as much belligerent powers as
were England and Russia respectively during
! the Crimean war.
OFFICIAL INFORMATION ABOUT CUBA.
| From the ". Y. Sun.
| When the statement is read in the Presi
dents message that the contest now pending
in Cuba has at no time assumed the cond