The helm of Rome, when gowns, not arms, repelled
The fierce Epirot and the African bold.”
The answer of such men is a precedent for us, especially should England, taking up the rejected policy of Mazarin, presumptuously send any ambassador to stay the Republic in its war with Slavery.
The same heart of oak, so strenuous to repel intervention of France between King and Parliament, was not less strenuous the other way, when intervention could serve the rights of England or the principles of religious liberty. Such was England when ruled by the great Protector, called in his own day “chief of men.” No nation so powerful as to be exempt from that irresistible intercession, where, beneath the garb of peace, was a gleam of arms. From France, even under the rule of Mazarin, he claimed respect for the Protestant name, which he insisted upon making great and glorious. From Spain, on whose extended empire the sun did not cease to shine, he required that no Englishman should be subject to the Inquisition. Reading to his Council a despatch from Admiral Blake, announcing justice obtained from the Viceroy of Malaga, Cromwell said, that “he hoped to make the name of Englishman as great as ever that of Roman had been.”[60] In this same exalted mood he turned to propose mediation between Protestant Sweden and Protestant Bremen, “chiefly bewailing, that, being both his friends, they should so despitefully combat one against another,” offering his assistance to “a commodious accommodation on both sides,” and exhorting them “by no means to refuse any honest conditions of reconciliation.”[61] Here was intervention between nation and nation; but it was soon followed by intervention in the internal affairs of a distant country, which of all the acts of Cromwell is the most touching and sublime. The French ambassador, while at Whitehall, urging the signature of a treaty, was unexpectedly interrupted by news from a secluded valley of the Alps, far away among mountain torrents, affluents of the Po, that a company of pious Protestants, for centuries gathered there, keeping the truth pure, “when all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,” were suffering terrible persecution from their sovereign, Emanuel of Savoy. Despoiled of all possessions and liberties, brutally driven from their homes, given over to licentious and infuriate violence, and then turning in self-defence, they had been “slain by the bloody Piemontese, that rolled mother with infant down the rocks”; and it was reported that French troops took part in the dismal transaction. The Protector heard the story, and his pity flashed into anger. He would not sign the treaty until France united with him in securing justice to these humble sufferers, whom he called the Lord’s people. For their relief he contributed out of his own purse two thousand pounds, and authorized a general collection throughout England, which reached a large sum; but besides money, he set apart a day of humiliation and prayer for them. Nor was this all. “I should be glad,” wrote his Secretary, Thurloe, “to have a most particular account of that business, and to know what is become of those poor people, for whom our very souls here do bleed.”[62] But a pen mightier than that of any plodding secretary was enlisted in this pious intervention. It was John Milton, glowing with that indignation which his sonnet “On the Massacre in Piemont” makes immortal in the heart of man, who wrote the magnificent despatches, where the English nation of that day, after declaring itself “linked together” with its distant brethren, “not only by the same tie of humanity, but by joint communion of the same religion,” naturally and grandly insisted that “both this edict and whatsoever may be decreed to their disturbance upon the account of the Reformed Religion” should be abrogated, “and that an end be put to their oppressions.”[63] Not content with this call upon the Duke of Savoy, the Protector appealed to Louis the Fourteenth and his Cardinal Minister, to the States General of Holland, the Protestant Cantons of Switzerland, the King of Denmark, the King of Sweden, and even to the Protestant Reformed Prince of remote Transylvania,—and always by the pen of Milton,—rallying these princes and powers in joint entreaty and intervention, and, if need were, to “some other course to be speedily taken, that such a numerous multitude of our innocent brethren may not miserably perish for want of succor and assistance.”[64] The Regent of Savoy, daughter of Henry the Fourth, professed to be affected by this English charity, and announced for her Protestant subjects a free pardon, and also “such privileges and graces as could not but give the Lord Protector a sufficient evidence how great a respect they bare both to his person and mediation.”[65] But there was still delay. Meanwhile Cromwell began to inquire where in the Prince’s territories English troops might debark, and Mazarin, anxious to complete the yet unfinished treaty, joined in requiring immediate pacification of the Valleys and the restoration of these persecuted people to their ancient liberties. It was done. Such is the grandest intervention of English history, inspired by Milton, enforced by Cromwell, and sustained by Louis the Fourteenth with his Cardinal Minister by his side, while foreign nations watched the scene.
This great instance, constituting an inseparable part of the Protector’s glory, is not the last where England intervened for Protestant liberties. Troubles, beginning in France with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, broke forth in the rebellion of the Camisards, smarting under the Revocation. Sheltered by the mountains of the Cevennes, and nerved by a good cause, with the device “Liberty of Conscience” on their standards, they made head against two successive marshals of France, and perplexed the old age of Louis the Fourteenth, whose arms were already enfeebled by foreign war. At last, through the mediation of England, the great monarch made terms with his Protestant rebels, and this civil war was brought to a close.[66]
Intervention, more often armed than unarmed, showed itself in the middle of the last century. All decency was set aside, when Frederick of Prussia, Catharine of Russia, and Maria Theresa of Austria invaded and partitioned Poland, under pretext of suppressing anarchy. Here was intervention with a vengeance, and on the side of arbitrary power. Such is human inconsistency, almost at the same time was another intervention in the opposite direction. It was the armed intervention of France, followed by that of Spain and Holland, in behalf of American Independence. Spain began by offer of mediation with a truce, which was accepted by France on condition that meanwhile the United States should be independent in fact.[67] Then came, in 1788, the armed intervention of Prussia to sustain the Orange faction in Holland, followed soon by the compact between Great Britain, Prussia, and Holland, known as the Triple Alliance, which entered upon the business of its copartnership by armed intervention to reconcile the insurgent provinces of Belgium with the German Emperor and their ancient Constitution. As France began to shake with domestic troubles, mediation in her affairs was proposed. Among the papers of Burke, in 1791, is the draught of a memorial, in the name of the British Government, offering what he calls “this healing mediation.”[68] Then came the vast coalition for armed intervention in France to put down the Republic. This dreary cloud was for a moment brightened by a British attempt in Parliament, through successive debates, to institute an intercession for Lafayette, immured in the dungeons of European despotism. “It is reported,” said one of the orators, “that America has solicited the liberation of her unfortunate adopted fellow-citizen.… Let British magnanimity be called to the aid of American gratitude, and exhibit to mankind a noble proof, that, wherever the principles of genuine liberty prevail, they never fail to inspire sentiments of generosity, feelings of humanity, and a detestation of oppression.”[69]
Meanwhile France, against whom all Europe intervened, played her part of intervention, and the scene was Switzerland. In the unhappy disputes between the aristocratic and democratic parties by which this Republic was distracted, French mediation became chronic, beginning in 1738, when it found partial apology in the invitation of several cantons and of Geneva; occurring again in 1768, and again in 1782. The mountain Republic, breathing the air of Freedom, was naturally moved by the convulsions of the French Revolution. Civil war ensued, and grew in bitterness. At last, when France herself was composed under the powerful arm of the First Consul, we find him turning to compose Swiss troubles. He was a military ruler, and always acted under the instincts of military power. By proclamation, dated at the palace of St. Cloud, September 30, 1802, Bonaparte declared that for three years the Swiss had been slaying each other, and that, if left to themselves, they would continue to slay each other for three years more, without reaching any understanding; that, at first, he had resolved not to interfere, but that he now changed his mind, and announced himself as mediator of their difficulties, proclaiming confidently that his mediation would be efficacious, as became the great people in whose name he spoke. Deputies from the cantons, together with the chief citizens, were summoned to declare the means of restoring the Union, securing peace, and reconciling all parties.[70] This was armed mediation; but Switzerland was weak and France strong, while the declared object was union, peace, and reconciliation. I know not if all this ensued, but the civil war was stifled, and the Constitution was established by what is entitled in history the Act of Mediation.
From that period down to the present moment, intervention in the internal affairs of other nations has been a prevailing practice, now cautiously and peaceably, now offensively and forcibly. Sometimes it was against the rights of men, sometimes it was in their favor. Sometimes England and France stood aloof, sometimes they took part. The Congress of Vienna, which undertook to settle the map of Europe, organized universal and perpetual intervention in the interest of monarchical institutions and existing dynasties. This compact was renewed at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1818, with the explanatory declaration, that the five great powers would never assume jurisdiction over questions concerning the rights and interests of another power, except at its request, and without inviting such power to take part in the conference,—a concession obviously adverse to any liberal movement. Meanwhile appeared the Holy Alliance, specially to watch and control the revolutionary tendencies of the age; but into this combination England most honorably declined to enter. The other powers were sufficiently active. Austria, Russia, and Prussia did not hesitate at the Congress of Laybach, in 1821, to institute armed intervention for the suppression of liberal principles in Naples; and again, two years later, at the Congress of Verona, these same powers, together with France, instituted another armed intervention to suppress liberal principles in Spain, which ultimately led to the invasion of that kingdom and the overthrow of its Constitution. France was the belligerent agent, and would not be turned aside, although the Duke of Wellington at Verona, and Mr. Canning at home, sought to arrest her armies by the mediation of Great Britain, which was directly sought by Spain and directly refused by France. The British Government, in admirable letters, composed with unsurpassed skill, and constituting a noble page of International Law, “disclaimed for itself, and denied for other powers, the right of requiring any changes in the internal institutions of independent states, with the menace of hostile attack in case of refusal”; and bravely declared to the imperial and royal interventionists, that, “so long as the struggles and disturbances of Spain should be confined within the circle of her own territory, they could not be admitted by the British Government to afford any plea of foreign interference”; and in still another note repeated that a “menace of direct and imminent danger could alone, in exception to the general rule, justify foreign interference.”[71] These were the words of Mr. Canning; but even Lord Castlereagh, in an earlier note, asserted the same limitation, which, at a later day, had the unqualified support of Lord Grey, and also of Lord Aberdeen. Justly interpreted, they leave no apology for armed intervention, except in case of direct and imminent danger, when a nation, like an individual, may be thrown upon the great right of self-defence.
Great Britain bore testimony by what she did, as well as by what she refused to do. Even while resisting the armed intervention of the great conspiracy, her Government intervened sometimes by mediation and sometimes by arms. Early in the contest between Spain and her colonies she consented to act as mediator, on the invitation of the former, in hope of effecting reconciliation; but Spain declined the mediation she had invited. From 1812 to 1823, Great Britain constantly repeated her offer. In the case of Portugal she went further. Under the counsels of Mr. Canning, whose speech on the occasion was of the most memorable character, she intervened by landing troops at Lisbon; but this intervention was vindicated by the obligations of treaty. Next came the greater instance of Greece, when the Christian powers of Europe intervened to arrest a protracted struggle and to save this classic land from Turkish tyranny. Here the first step was a pressing invitation from the Greeks to the British and French Governments for their mediation with the Ottoman Porte. These powers united with Russia in proffering the much desired intervention, which the Greeks at once accepted and the Turks rejected. Already battle raged fiercely, reddened by barbarous massacre. Without delay, the allied forces were directed to compel the cessation of hostilities, which was accomplished by the destruction of the Turkish fleet at Navarino and the occupation of the Morea by French troops. At last, under the continued mediation of these powers, the independence of Greece was recognized by the Ottoman Porte, and another commonwealth consecrated to Freedom took its place in the Family of Nations. But mediation in Turkish affairs did not stop. The example of Greece was followed by Egypt, whose provincial chief, Mehemet Ali, rebelled, and by genius for war succeeded in dispossessing the Ottoman Porte not only of Egypt, but of other possessions also. This civil war was first arrested by temporary arrangement at Kutaieh, in 1833, under the mediation of Great Britain and France, and finally ended by an armed mediation in 1840, when, after elaborate and irritating discussions threatening to involve Europe, a treaty was concluded at London between Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, by which the Pacha was compelled to relinquish his conquests, while he was secured in the Government of Egypt as perpetual vassal of the Porte. France, dissatisfied with the terms of this adjustment, stood aloof from the treaty, which found apology, such as it had, first, in the invitation of the Sultan, and, secondly, in the desire to preserve the integrity of the Turkish Empire, as essential to the balance of power and the peace of Europe, to which may also be added the desire to stop effusion of blood.