em as piratical.
If vessels of war even, they would by this conduct have justly
forfeited all courtesies in ports of neutral nations. Manned by
foreign seamen, armed by foreign guns, entering no home port, and
waiting no judicial condemnation of prizes, they have already
devastated and destroyed our commerce to an extent, as compared
with their number, beyond any thing known in the records of
privateering."

It would seem impossible that such a state of things could be the
result of the impartial administration of an honest neutrality.
It must be attributed to one of two causes;--either the municipal
law of foreign countries was not sufficient to enable the governments
to control the selfishness or the sentiment of their people,--to
which the reply is obvious that the weakness and incompetence of
municipal law cannot diminish or excuse international obligations:
or it must have been due to a misconception of the obligations
which international law imposes. How far there may have been a
motive for this misconception, how far the wish was father to the
thought of such misconstruction, it is perhaps needless now to
inquire. The theory of international law maintained by the foreign
Powers may be fairly stated in two propositions:--

1. That foreign Powers had the right, and in due regard to their
own interests were bound, to recognize belligerency as a fact.

2. That belligerents once recognized, were equals and must be
treated with the same perfect neutrality.

It is not necessary to deny these propositions, but simply to
ascertain their real meaning. In its primary and simple application,
the law of belligerency referred to two or more belligerents,
equally independent. Its application to the case of insurgents
against an established and recognized government is later, involves
other and in some respects different considerations, and cannot
even now be regarded as settled. To recognize an insurgent as a
belligerent is not to recognize him as fully the equal of the
government from which he secedes. This would be simply to recognize
his independence. The limitation which international law places
upon this recognition is stated in the English phrase, "the right
to recognize belligerency as a fact;"--that is, to recognize the
belligerent to the extent of his war capacity but no farther. The
neutral cannot on this principle recognize in the belligerent the
possession of any power which he does not actually pos