is clearly susceptible, -but for the purpose of denying it as founded upon any well-established principles of international law, and, if it had such a foundation, of denying its applicability to the political condition of this continent. To enter fully into the examination of this important subject would require more time than it would be proper for me to devote to it. I propose only to pass rapidly over a few of the principal considerations it suggests.

The declaration of M. Guizot was the first public and official intimation, by a European government, of an intention to interfere with the political condition of the independent communities on the continent of America, and to influence by moral, if not by physical agencies, their relations to each other. And if it had been presented in any other form than that of an abstract declaration, not necessarily to be followed by any overt act, it would have behooved us to inquire, in the most formal manner, whether this asserted right of interposition derived any justification from the usages of nations, or from the recognized principles of international law; or whether it was not an assumption wholly unsupported by authority, and an encroachment on the independence of sovereign states, which it would have been their duty to themselves and the civilized world to resent as an injury and a wrong.

Am I in error in supposing this subject derives new importance from our existing relations with Mexico, one of the states of Spanish origin, which M. Guizot grouped together as constituting one of the great political forces of this continent, among which the “ equilibrium was to be maintained? Sir, more than once, in the progress of the war, the governments of Europe have been invoked, by leading organs of public opinion abroad, to interpose between us and Mexico. Is it not, then, appropriate briefly to state what this right of intervention is, as it has been asserted in Europe, what it has been in practice, and what it would be likely to become, if applied to the states of this continent? I trust it will be so considered.

The doctrine of intervention, to maintain the balance of power, is essentially of modern origin. From the earliest ages, it is true, occasional combinations have been formed by particular states for mutual protection against the aggressions of a powerful neighbor. History is full of these examples. Such a coöperation is dictated by the plainest principles of self-preservation, for the purpose of guarding against the danger of being destroyed in detail; and it is founded upon such obvious maxims of common sense, that it would have been remarkable if it had not been resorted to from the moment human society assumed a regular form of organization. These defensive alliances were deficient in the permanence and methodical arrangements which distinguish the modern system of intervention. Hume saw, or fancied he saw, in them the principle of the right of intervention to preserve the balance of power which is asserted at the present day. But it could only have been the principle which was developed; they certainly never attained the maturity or the efficient force of a regular system.

The modern doctrine of intervention in the affairs of other states, which has sprung up within the last two centuries, is far more comprehensive in its scope. It has grown into a practical system of supervision on the part of the principal European powers over their own relative forces and those of the other states of Europe; and though it may, in some instances, have been productive of beneficial effects in maintaining the public tranquillity, it has as frequently been an instrument of the grossest injustice and tyranny. From the first extensive coalition of this nature, which was formed during the long series of wars terminated by the peace of Westphalia, in 1648, down to the interference of Great Britain, Prussia, Austria, and France, in the contest between the Sultan and Mehemet Ali, in 1840, a period of nearly two centuries, an interference designed, in some degree. to prevent what was regarded as a dangerous protectorate over the affairs of the Porte by Russia, the exercise of

the right has been placed, theoretically, on the same high ground of regard for the tranquillity of Europe and the independence of states. Practically, it has often been perverted to the worst purposes of aggrandizement and cupidity.

If we look into the writers on international law, I think we shall find no sufficient ground for the right of intervention. Grotius, who wrote in the early part of the seventeenth century, denied its existence. Fenelon, who wrote about half a century later, denied it, except as a means of self-preservation, and then only when the danger was real and imminent. Vattel, who wrote nearly a century after Fenelon, and a century before our own times, regarded the states of Europe as forming a political system, and he restricted the right of entering into confederacies and alliances for the purpose of intervention in the affairs of each other to cases in which such combinations were necessary to curb the ambition of any power, which, from its superiority in physical strength, and its designs of oppression or conquest, threatened to become dangerous to its neighbors. De Martens, who wrote half a century ago, acknowledges, with Vattel, the existence of the right under certain conditions, though he hardly admits it to be well settled as a rule of international law; and he limits its exercise to neighboring states, or states occupying the same quarter of the globe. But, according to the last two writers, who have perhaps gone as far as any other public jurists, of equal eminence, towards a formal recognition of the right, it only justifies a union of inferior states within the same immediate sphere of action, to prevent an accumulation of power in the hands of a single sovereign which would be too great for the common liberty.

I am confident, Mr. President, that no one can rise from a review of the history of modern Europe, and from an examination of the writings of her public jurists, without being satisfied that the right of intervention, as recognized by civilized nations, is what I have stated it to be, a mere right,

on the part of weaker states, to combine for the purpose of preventing the subversion of their independence, and the alienation of their territories, by a designing and powerful neighbor; a right to be exercised only in cases of urgent and immediate danger. It is simply a right of self-preservation, undefined, undefinable, having no settled or permanent foundation in public law, to be asserted only in extreme necessity, and, when arbitrarily applied to practice, a most fruitful source of abuse, injustice, and oppression. One clear and certain limitation it happily possesses, a limitation which, amid all its encroachments upon the independence of sovereign states, has never until our day been overpassed. By universal consent, by the unvarying testimony of abuse itself, it is not to be exercised beyond the immediate sphere of the nations concerned. It pertains rigidly and exclusively to states within the same circle of political action. It is only by neighbors, for the protection of neighbors against neighbors, that it can, even upon the broadest principles, be rightfully employed. When it traverses oceans, and looks to the regulation of the political concerns of other continents, it becomes a gigantic assumption, which, for the independence of nations, for the interests of humanity, for the tranquillity of the old world and the new, should be significantly repelled.

Mr. President, a review of the history of Europe during the last two centuries will bring with it another conviction in respect to the right of intervention, that no reliance can be placed on its restriction in practice to the objects to which it is limited by every public jurist who admits its existence at all; and that nothing could be so discouraging to the friends of free government as an extension of the system to this continent, if the power existed to introduce it here. Though the combinations it is claimed to authorize may, in some instances, have protected the coalescing parties from the danger of being overrun by conquering armies, the cases are perhaps as numerous in which their interposition has

been lent to break down the independence of states, and to throw whole communities of men into the arms of governments to which their feelings and principles were alike averse. The right, as has been seen, (and it cannot be too often repeated,) with the utmost latitude claimed for it by any public jurist, goes no further than to authorize a league on the part of two or more weaker states to protect themselves against the designs of an ambitious and powerful neighbor. In its practical application, it has more frequently resulted in a combination of powerful states to destroy their weaker neighbors, for the augmentation of their own dominions or those of their allies. From a mere right to combine for self-preservation, they have made it in practice a right to divide, dismember, and partition states at their pleasure, not for the purpose of diminishing the strength of a powerful adversary, but under the pretence of creating a system of balances, which is artificial in its structure, and, in some degree, incongruous in its elements, and which a single political convulsion may overturn and destroy. Do we need examples of the abuse of the power, I will not call it a right? They will be found in the dismemberment of Saxony, the annexation of the republic of Genoa to the kingdom of Sardinia, and the absorption of Venice by Austria. There is another and a more aggravated case of abuse to which recent events have given new prominence. In 1772, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, under the pretence that the disturbed condition of Poland was dangerous to their own tranquillity, seized upon about one third of her territories, and divided it among themselves. In 1793, notwithstanding her diminished proportions, she had become more dangerous, and they seized half of what they had left to her by the first partition. Sir, she continued to grow dangerous as she grew weak; and in two years after the second partition, they stripped her of all that remained. In 1815, the five great powers, at the Congress of Vienna, from motives of policy, and not from a returning sense of justice, organized the city of Cracow and