hetoric
some rash things are sure to be said. One of our statesmen, while
starring it in the Provinces, carelessly throws out the expression that
Jeff Davis has made the South a nation; another says that you are
fighting for Empire, and the South for Independence. Our Prime-Minister
is sometimes offensive in his personal bearing towards you,--as, to our
bitter cost, he has often been towards other nations. On the other hand,
your statesmen have said hard things of England; and one of your
ambassadors to a great Continental state published, not in his private,
but in his official capacity, language which made the Northern party in
England for a moment hang their heads with shame. A virulence,
discreditable to England, has at times broken forth in our House of
Commons,--as a virulence, not creditable to this country, has at times
broken forth in your Congress. But what has the House of Commons done?
Threatening motions were announced in favor of Recognition,--in defence
of the Confederate rams. They were all set aside by the good sense of
the House and of the nation. It ended in a solemn farce,--in the
question being put very formally to the Government whether it intended
to recognize the Confederate States, to which the Government replied
that it did not.

And when the actions of our Government are in question, fair allowance
must be made for the bad state of International Law. The very term
itself is, in fact, as matters at present stand, a dangerous fiction.
There can be no law, in a real sense, where there is no law-giver, no
tribunal, no power of giving legal effect to a sentence,--but where the
party on whose side the law is held to be must after all be left to do
himself right with the strong hand. And one consequence is that
governments are induced to rest in narrow technicalities, and to be
ruled by formal precedents, when the question ought to be decided on the
broadest grounds of right. The decision of Lord Stowell, for example,
that it is lawful for the captor to burn an enemy's vessel at sea rather
than suffer her to escape, though really applying only to a case of
special necessity, has been supposed to cover a system of burning prizes
at sea, which is opposed to the policy and sentiment of all civilized
nations, and which Lord Stowell never could have had in view. And it
must be owned that this war, unexampled in all respects, has been
fruitful of novel questions respecting belligerent rights, on which a
G