Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell.”
The Rebellion is Slavery in arms, Slavery on horseback, Slavery on foot, Slavery raging on the battle-field, Slavery savage on the quarter-deck, robbing, destroying, burning, killing, to uphold this candidate power. Its legislation is simply Slavery in statutes, Slavery in chapters, Slavery in sections, with an enacting clause. Its diplomacy is Slavery in pretended ambassadors, Slavery in cunning letters, Slavery in cozening promises, Slavery in persistent negotiation,—all to secure for the candidate power its much desired welcome. Say what you will, try to avoid it, if you can, you are compelled to admit that the candidate power is nothing else than organized Slavery, now, in its madness, surrounded by its criminal clan, and led by its felon chieftains, braving the civilization of the age. Any recognition of Slavery is bad enough; but this will be recognition with welcome and benediction, imparting new consideration and respectability, and, worse still, securing new opportunity and foothold for the supremacy it openly proclaims.
In ancient days the candidate was robed in white, while at the Capitol and in the Forum he canvassed the people for their votes. The candidate nation, unashamed of Slavery, should be robed in black, while it conducts the great canvass, and asks the votes of the Christian powers. “Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night,” as the outrage proceeds; for the candidate gravely asks international recognition of the claim to hold property in man, to sell wife away from husband, to sell child away from parent, to shut the gates of knowledge, to appropriate all the fruits of another’s labor. The candidate proceeds in the canvass, notwithstanding all history declares Slavery essentially barbarous, and that whatever it touches it changes to itself,—that it barbarizes laws, barbarizes business, barbarizes manners, barbarizes social life, and makes the people who cherish it barbarians. And still the candidate proceeds, although it is known to the Christian powers that the partisans of Slavery are naturally “filibusters,” always apt for lawless incursion and for robbery; that, during later years, under their instigation and to advance their pretensions, expeditions identical in motive with the present Rebellion were let loose in the Gulf of Mexico, twice against Cuba, and twice, also, against Nicaragua, breaking the peace of the United States and threatening the repose of the world, so that Lopez and Walker were but predecessors of Beauregard and Jefferson Davis. And yet the candidate proceeds, although it is obvious that the recognition urged will be nothing less than solemn sanction by the Christian powers of Slavery everywhere throughout the new jurisdiction, on land or sea, so that every ship, being part of the floating territory, will be Slave Territory. And yet, with the phantasy that man can hold property in man shooting from his lips, with the shackle and lash in his hands, with barbarism on his forehead, with filibusterism in his recorded life, and with Slavery woven in his flag wherever it floats on land and sea, the candidate clamors for independent recognition. It is sad to think that there is delay in repelling the insufferable canvass. Can Christian nations longer hesitate? To detest and combat such an accursed pretension it is not necessary even to be a Christian,—it is sufficient to be a man.
If the recognition of a de facto power were a duty imposed upon other nations by International Law, there would be no opportunity for objections founded on principle or policy. But there is no such duty. International Law leaves to each nation, precisely as the Municipal Law leaves to each citizen, what company to keep or what copartnership to form. No company and no copartnership can be forced upon a nation. It is all a question of free choice and acceptance. International Law on this head is like the Constitution of the United States, which declares, “New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union.” Not must, but may,—it being in the discretion of Congress to determine whether the State shall be admitted. Accordingly, in the exercise of this discretion, Congress for a long time refused to admit Missouri as a Slave State. And now the old Missouri Question, in more outrageous form, on vaster theatre, with “monarchs to behold the swelling scene,” is presented to the Christian powers of the world. If it was right to exclude Missouri, having only few slaves, and regarding Slavery merely as a temporary condition, it must be right to exclude a pretended nation, which not only boasts millions of slaves, but passionately proclaims the perpetuity and propagation of Slavery as the cause and object of its separate existence.
Practical statesmen have always treated recognition as a question of policy, to be determined on the whole case, even where the power is de facto established,—as amply appears in the Parliamentary debates on the recognition of Spanish America. If we go behind the practical statesmen and consult the earliest oracles of International Law, we find, that, according to their most approved utterances, not only may recognition be refused, but there are considerations of duty this way which cannot be evaded. It is not enough that a pretender has the form of a commonwealth. “A people,” says Cicero, in a definition copied by most jurists, “is not every body of men, howsoever congregated, but a gathered multitude associated through agreement in right and community of interest.”[110] Again, he goes so far as to say, “When the king is unjust, or the aristocracy, or the people itself, the commonwealth is not vicious, but null.”[111] Of course a commonwealth that is null cannot be recognized. This same lofty standard is of frequent recurrence in the testimony of the great Roman. But he is not alone. Grotius, who speaks always with the magistral voice of learning and genius, furnishes the just conclusion, when, after declaring that a state is “a complete body of freemen associated for the enjoyment of right and for their common benefit,”[112] he exposes the distinction between a body of men, who, being already a recognized commonwealth, are guilty of systematic crime,—as, for instance, piracy,—and another body of men, who, not yet recognized as a commonwealth, band together for this purpose,—sceleris causâ coeunt. The latter, by happy discrimination, he places beyond the pale of recognition.[113] When before, in all history, have creatures wearing the human form proclaimed the criminal principle of their association with the audacity of our Slavemongers? And yet there is hesitation to place them beyond the pale of recognition. A recent English authority on the Law of Nations adopts the same distinction. I quote Mr. Phillimore, who, after alluding to societies united for the sake of crime, says: “All agree to class such bodies amongst those of whose corporate existence the law takes no cognizance (qui civitatem non faciunt), and therefore as not entitled to international rights either in peace or war.”[114]
It might be argued, on grounds of reason and authority even, that the declared principle of the pretended power was a violation of International Law. Eminent magistrates have solemnly ruled, that, in the development of civilization, the Slave-Trade has become illegal by a law higher than any statute. Sir William Grant, an ornament of the British bench, whose elegant mind was governed always by practical sense, adjudged that this trade “cannot, abstractedly speaking, be said to have a legitimate existence”;[115] and our own great authority, Mr. Justice Story, in a remarkable judgment, declared himself constrained “to consider the trade an offence against the universal law of society”;[116] and the highest professional authorities of our country adopted the same conclusion: I refer especially to the late William Pinkney and Jeremiah Mason.[117] But arguments which are strong against any recognition of the Slave-Trade are strong also against any recognition of Slavery itself, especially when it is the foundation of a new power.
In the determination of present duty, it is not necessary to assume that Slavery or the Slave-Trade is positively forbidden by existing International Law. It is enough to show, that, according to the spirit of that sovereign law which “sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill,” and also according to those commanding principles of justice and humanity which cannot be set at nought without shock to human nature itself, so foul a wrong as Slavery can receive no voluntary support from the Commonwealth of Nations. It is not a question of Law, but of Morality. The Rule of Law is sometimes less comprehensive than the Rule of Morality, so that the latter may positively condemn what the former silently tolerates. But within its own domain Morality cannot be less authoritative than Law. It is, indeed, nothing less than the Law of Nature, which is the Law of God. If we listen again to heathen teaching, we shall confess its truth. “Law,” says Cicero, “is the highest reason, implanted in nature, which prescribes those things which ought to be done, and forbids the contrary.”[118] This law is an essential part of International Law, as is also Christianity itself, and where treaties fail and usage is silent it is the only law between nations. Jurists of all ages and countries have delighted to acknowledge its authority, if it spoke only in the still, small voice of conscience. A celebrated professor of Germany in our own day, Savigny, whose name is honored by students of jurisprudence everywhere, touches upon this monitor of nations, when he declares that “there may exist between different nations a common consciousness of right similar to that which engenders the positive law of particular nations.”[119] This common consciousness of right is identical with that law, which, according to Cicero, is “the highest reason, implanted in nature.” Such is the Rule of Morality.
The Rule of Morality differs from the Rule of Law in this respect,—that the former finds support in the human conscience, the latter in the sanctions of public force. But moral power prevails with a good man as much as if it were physical. I know no different rule for a good nation than for a good man. I am sure that a good nation will not do what a good man would scorn to do.
There is a Rule of Prudence superadded to the Rule of Morality. Grotius, in discussing treaties, does not forget the wisdom of Solomon, who, in not a few places, warns against fellowship with the wicked,—although he adds, that these are maxims of prudence, and not of law.[120] And he reminds us of the saying of Alexander, “that those grievously offend who enter the service of barbarians.”[121] Better still are the words of the wise historian of classical antiquity, who enjoins upon a commonwealth the duty of considering carefully, when sued for assistance, “whether what is sought is sufficiently pious, safe, glorious, or whether it is unbecoming”;[122] and also those words of the Hebrew king, who, after rebuking an alliance with Ahab, asks with scorn, “Shouldest thou help the ungodly?”[123]