New Orleans Republican., 1875-11-23
OUR RIGHTS OF MORAL INTERVENTION.

States has to regard in its policy toward
friendly nation when such policy come
in sharp conflict with that which th'
United States has pursued for herself ant
desires to see established throughout the
American continent.
The treaty of amity, commerce and
limits between the United States anG
Spain has now stood for more than three
fourths of a century with little or nc
modification or change, The rights Of
American citizens have been thousand
times outraged under the colonial govern.
ments of Mexico and other Spanish Amer
ican States, and these cases have been a
subject of protest and of pecuniary recla'
nation. American citizens have been
thrust into the classmates Of San Juan de
Ulloa transferred to the prisons of Cadiz
others have been suddenly deported from
Caracas and Mexico, with the utter loss
of all their vested interests, and in some
cases with loss of life directly attributa-
BILE to the expulsion and exposure of the
| epidemics of the coast ports There is,
| perhaps, no more abuse of this comfy
which should unite contracting nations
| than heretofore. but there can not be a
more proper time for making that ''re-
view" of these old treaties, which Presi-
dent Grant recommended some three or
| four years since. From this reasoning,
there is no reason to apprehend war
with Spain, unless Spain chooses to COM
! mence it, and in such case there can be
no reason why the United States should
abstain from maintaining the rights of
some citizens, least it should thereby in
jure the interests of others. We should
scorn to see the ground taken by the gov
ernment, in the case of Martin Koszta,
surrendered by Republican administra-
ton, Should, however, any one choose
to calculate the profit and loss of a
Spanish war, it will be found that to ex-
tinguish the annual tariff tribute of forty
or fifty millions of dollars, by the loss of
any probable amount of American car
goes captured, would be proftao,e bar
gain.
We prefer, however, to consider the
question of national right to discuss the
domestic situation and policy of
neighbor and friendly power. Some of
the Democratic press quote with much
unction the London Times and Standard
on the insincerity and ambition of the
American government, and the "genius
for tilibustering" of the American people.
We no more expect to see the right of the
American government to declare its own
policy allowed by European diplomacy
than that the Democracy of Louisiana
would permit the Republican party to
exercise equal rights with the Democracy.
The right of civilized powers to inter-
vene by moral or even physical agencies
and prohibit any power from violating any
principle of common faith among those na-
tions is too well established to need COM
ment England has given her arms and in
fluence to prevent the spread of slavery as
an institution abhorrent to her ideas of
civilization. The conflicting doctrines of
Christian faith have often constituted
grounds of European Intervention Tur-
key was driven out of Greece by the COM
bined powers of Russia England and
France because of her ruthless persecu-
ton of her Christian subjects in that
province. American statesmen advocated |
Intervention on the chivalrous ground
that Greece was the mother Of liberty and
the arts
Very recently We hear the Turkish pro-
vince of Herzegovina has revolted, and |
already the great powers are discussing
the right of Intervention in protection of |
the Christian faith against Moslem VEN
geance.
There is as much jealousy in the United |
States. Of despotism and slavery as there is
is the governments of Europe against any
of Mahometanism upon
Christianity. Even in our own State of
Louisiana the propriety of federal resist
ance to Spanish colonial policy has been
affirmed. Our Legislature in 1854 adopted
a joint resolution which regarded ''the
policy recently inaugurated by the gov
of Spain in the island of Cuba
as tending to ''the abolition of slavery
and the sacrifice of the white race, with
its arts, commerce and civilization, to a
barbarous and nefarious race" 1t was
then thought ''that the contamination of
this policy will exercise most pernicious
effect upon the institutions and interests,
social, commercial and political, of the
United States, and it is resolved, that in
the judgment of the Louisiana Legisla-
ture, the time has arrived twenty years
ago1 when the federal government should
adopt the most decisive and energetic
to thwart and defeat a policy
conceived in hatred to this republic, and
to retard her progress and
This is a distinct recognition of the
principle that foreign power has right
to protest against the policy in an ada
cent territory which will affect the safety
Of principle cherished by the protesting
power Twenty years ago Louisiana pro-