“Perhaps the international feature of this transaction is the most grave one for the consideration of Congress. It is a matter of notorious public history that war was being carried on in the years 1865 and 1866 between the Government of Spain, on the one hand, and the Governments of Peru and Chili, on the other. During the pendency of hostilities, applications were made to obtain possession of these vessels for one of the belligerents. If the Government of the United States had been privy to any arrangement by which these vessels of war should be delivered to the agents of a belligerent, either in our own ports or upon the high seas, it would certainly have violated its international obligations. Of course, when Congress authorized the sale of these vessels, it was known that individuals had no use for them; yet it might have assumed, as in the case of the Dunderberg and the Onondaga,”—
Now mark the words, if you please,—
“that the Executive Department would take care that any individual who should purchase with a view to a resale to some foreign power would not be permitted to violate the obligations of the United States as a neutral nation.”[9]
Observe, if you please, the language employed. If the Government of the United States had been “privy” to any arrangement for the delivery of these vessels to the agents of a belligerent, it would certainly have violated its international obligations. This is undoubtedly correct. Then comes the assumption “that the Executive Department would take care that any individual who should purchase with a view to a resale to some foreign power would not be permitted to violate the obligations of the United States as a neutral nation.” Here again is the true rule. The Executive is bound to take care that there shall be no sale with a view to a resale in violation of neutral duties.
All this is so entirely reasonable, indeed so absolutely essential to the simplest performance of international duty, that I feel humbled even in stating it. The case is too clear. It is like arguing the Ten Commandments or the Multiplication Table. International Law is nothing but international morality for the guidance of nations. And be assured, Sir, that interpretation is the truest which subjects the nation most completely to the Moral Law. “Thou shalt not sell arms to a belligerent,” is a commandment addressed to nations, and to be obeyed precisely as that other commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” No temptation of money, no proffer of cash, no chink of “the almighty dollar,” can excuse any departure from this supreme law; nor can any intervening man-of-straw have any other effect than to augment the offence by the shame of a trick.
Here, Sir, I am sensitive for my country. I can imagine no pecuniary profits, no millions poured into the Treasury, that can compensate for a departure from that international honesty which is at once the best policy and the highest duty. The dishonesty of a nation is illimitable in its operation. How true are the words,—
“’Twill be recorded for a precedent;
And many an error, by the same example,