As long ago as 1645, France offered mediation between what were then called “The Two Crowns of the North,” Sweden and Denmark. This was followed, in 1648, by the famous Peace of Westphalia, the beginning of our present Law of Nations, negotiated under the joint mediation of the Pope and the Republic of Venice, present by nuncio and ambassador. In 1655, the Emperor of Germany offered mediation between Sweden and Poland; but the old historian records that the Swedes suspected him of seeking to increase rather than to arrange pending difficulties; and the effort ended by the withdrawal of the imperial envoy into the Polish camp. Sweden, though often belligerent in those days, was not so always, and, in 1672, when war broke forth between France and England on one side and the Dutch Provinces on the other, we find her proffering mediation, which was promptly accepted by England, who justly rejected a similar proffer most hardily made by the Elector of Brandenburg, ancestor of the kings of Prussia, while marching at the head of his forces to join the Dutch. The English note on this occasion, written in what at the time was called “sufficiently bad French, but in very intelligible terms,” declared that the Electoral proffer, though under the pleasant name of mediation (par le doux nom de médiation), was adjudged to be only arbitration, and that, instead of mediation unarmed and disinterested, it was mediation armed and pledged to the enemies of England.[52]
Such are earlier instances, all of which have their lessons for us. There are modern, also. I allude only to the Triple Alliance, between Great Britain, Prussia, and Holland, which, at the close of the last century, successively intervened, by mediation which could not be resisted, to compel Denmark, while siding with Russia against Sweden, to remain neutral for the rest of the war,—then, in 1791, to dictate terms of peace between Austria and the Porte,—and lastly, in 1792, to constrain Russia into abandonment of her designs upon the Turkish Empire by the Peace of Jassy. On this occasion, the Russian Empress, Catharine the Second, peremptorily refused the mediation of Prussia, and the mediating Alliance made its approaches through Denmark, by whose good offices the Empress was finally induced to accept the treaty. While thus engaged in professed mediation, England, in a note to the French ambassador, declined to act as mediator between France and the Allied Powers, leaving that world-embracing war to proceed. Not only has England refused to act as mediator, but also refused submission to mediation. This was during the last war with the United States, when Russia, at that time the ally of England, proffered mediation between the two belligerents, which was promptly accepted by the United States. Its rejection by England, causing the prolongation of hostilities, was considered by Sir James Mackintosh less justifiable, as “a mediator is a common friend, who counsels both parties with a weight proportioned to their belief in his integrity and their respect for his power; but he is not an arbitrator, to whose decision they submit their differences, and whose award is binding on them.”[53] The Peace of Ghent was concluded at last under Russian mediation. But England has not always been belligerent. When Andrew Jackson menaced letters of marque against France, on account of failure to pay a sum stipulated in a recent treaty with the United States, King William the Fourth proffered mediation; but happily the whole question was already virtually arranged. It appears, also, that, before our war with Mexico, the good offices of England were tendered to the two parties; but neither was willing to accept them, and war took its course.
Such are instances of interference in external affairs; and since International Law is traced in history, they furnish a guide we cannot now neglect, especially when we regard the actual policy of England and France.
(2.) Instances of foreign intervention in the internal affairs of a nation are more pertinent. They are numerous, and not always harmonious, especially if we compare the new with the old. In the earlier times such intervention was regarded with repugnance. But the principle then declared has been sapped on the one side by the conspiracies of tyranny seeking the suppression of liberal institutions, and on the other by a generous sympathy breaking forth from time to time in their support. According to old precedents, most of which are found in the gossipping book of Wicquefort,[54] whence they have been copied by Mr. Wildman, in his “Institutes of International Law,”[55] even foreign intercession was prohibited. Not even in the name of charity could one ruler speak to another on the domestic affairs of his government. Peter, King of Aragon, was astonished at a proposed embassy from Alphonso, King of Castile, entreating mercy for rebels. Charles the Ninth of France, a detestable monarch, in reply to ambassadors of the Protestant princes of Germany, pleading for his Protestant subjects, insolently declared that he required no tutors to teach him how to rule. And yet this same sovereign did not hesitate to ask the Duke of Savoy to receive certain subjects “into his benign favor, and to restore and reëstablish them in their confiscated estates.”[56] In this appeal there was a double inconsistency; for it was not only interference in the affairs of another prince, but it was in behalf of Protestants, only a few months before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Henry the Third, successor of Charles, and another detestable monarch, in reply to the Protestant ambassadors, announced that he was a sovereign prince, and ordered them to leave his dominions. Louis the Thirteenth was of milder nature, and yet, when the English ambassador, the Earl of Carlisle, presumed to speak in favor of the Huguenots, he intimated that no interference between the King of France and his subjects could be approved. The Cardinal Richelieu, who governed France so long, learning that an attempt was made to procure the intercession of the Pope, stopped it by a message to his Holiness, that the King would be displeased by any such interference. The Pope himself, on another recorded occasion, admitted that it would be a pernicious precedent for a subject to negotiate terms of accommodation through a foreign prince. On still another occasion, when the King of France, forgetting his own rule, interposed in behalf of the Barberini family, Innocent the Tenth declared, that, having no desire to interfere in the affairs of France, he trusted his Majesty would not interfere in his. Queen Christina of Sweden, merely hinting a disposition to proffer good offices for the settlement of the unhappy divisions in France, was told by the Queen Regent that she need give herself no trouble about them, and one of her own ministers at Stockholm declared that the overture was properly rejected. Nor were the States General of Holland less sensitive. They even refused audience to the Spanish ambassador seeking to congratulate them on the settlement of a domestic question; and when the French ambassador undertook to plead for Roman Catholics, the States, by formal resolution, denounced his conduct as inconsistent with the peace and constitution of the Republic, all of which was communicated to him by eight deputies, who added in speech whatever the resolution seemed to want in plainness.
Nor is England without similar example. Louis the Thirteenth, shortly after the marriage of his sister Henrietta Maria with Charles the First, consented that the English ambassadors should interpose for French Protestants; but when the French ambassador in England requested the repeal of a law against Roman Catholics, Charles expressed his surprise that the King of France should presume to intermeddle in English affairs. Even as late as 1746, when, after the Battle of Culloden, the Dutch ambassador in France was induced to address the British Government in behalf of the unfortunate Charles Edward, to the effect, that, if taken, he should not be treated as a rebel, it is recorded that this intercession was greatly resented by the British Government, which, not content with apology from the unfortunate official, required that he should be rebuked by his own Government also.[57] And this is British testimony with regard to intervention in a civil war, even when it took the mildest form of intercession for the life of a prince.
In face of such repulses, all these nations, at different times, practised intervention in every variety of form,—sometimes by intercession or “good offices” only, sometimes by mediation, and often by arms. Even these instances attest the intermeddling spirit; for such intervention, however received, was at least attempted.
Two precedents belonging to the earlier period deserve to stand apart, not only for historic importance, but for applicability to our times. The first was the effort to institute mediation between King Charles the First and his Parliament, attempted by Cardinal Mazarin, that powerful minister, who, during the minority of Louis the Fourteenth, swayed France. The civil war had been waged for years; good men on each side had fallen,—Falkland fighting for the King, and Hampden fighting for the Parliament,—and other costliest blood been shed on the fields of Edgehill, Newbury, Marston Moor, and Naseby, when the ambitious Cardinal, wishing to serve the King, promised, as Clarendon relates, “to press the Parliament so imperiously, and to denounce a war against them, if they refused to yield to what was reasonable.”[58] For this important service he selected the famous Pomponne de Bellièvre, of a family tried in public duties,—himself President of the Parliament of Paris and peer of France,—conspicuous in personal qualities as in place, whose beautiful head, preserved by the graver of Nanteuil, is illustrious in Art, and whose dying charity lives still in the great hospital of the Hôtel Dieu, at Paris. Arriving at London, the graceful ambassador presented himself to that Long Parliament which knew so well how to guard English rights. At once every overture was rejected in formal proceedings, from which I copy these words: “We do declare that we ourselves have been careful to improve all occasions to compose these unhappy troubles, yet we have not, neither can we, admit of any mediation or interposing betwixt the King and us by any foreign prince or state. And we desire that his Majesty, the French King, will rest satisfied with this our resolution and answer.”[59] On the committee which drew this reply was John Selden, unsurpassed for learning and ability in the whole splendid history of the English bar, in every book of whose library was written, “Before everything, Liberty,” and also that Harry Vane whom Milton, in one of his most inspired sonnets, addresses as
“Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old,
Than whom a better Senator ne’er held