PART I. VINDICATION OF THE NATIONAL FAME FOR PAST NEUTRALITY. - CHAPTER I. Preliminary. The unanimous adoption of General Banks's Report and Bill by the House of Representatives, and the pressure upon the Senate to concur, demand serious inquiry.—The scheme believed to be a crude and hasty one, from which the writer strongly dissents, and which was well checked by Senator Sumner. It is still pending, however, and likely to come up again for discussion shortly. The writer protests against it on five grounds, corresponding to the general divisions of his subject. — Preliminary suggestion of the Report's being written in haste, and with conflicting expressions of sentiment in different parts. - General Banks shares its faults in common with the able and patriotic House who have adopted it; and therefore any criticism on it cannot be thought personal or unfriendly towards him. — Further preliminary approbation of the views of the Report as to the Alabama Indemnity; Hasty Recognition of Rebel Belligerency; and Free Trade in Ships of War as Articles of Commerce.- Summary of General Banks's Report. THE late movement in Congress towards the fundamental repeal of the neutral code of the United States seems to demand the gravest attention of the nation. When such an important measure as that proposed by General Banks, as Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, a few days before the close of the late session at the end of last July, having for its object a new departure in the line of conduct of our foreign relations with the rest of the world, and based on an avowed hostility to the spirit and letter of our present neutral system as its starting-point, -passes the House of Representatives of the United States by a unanimous vote, and is only arrested in the Senate by a persistent enforcement of the usual routine of reference to a committee for consideration, it seems high time to inquire what motives can have prompted such an attempted overthrow of our traditional policy, and whether the country should not arouse itself to prevent the consummation of the proposed coup d'état. Believing, as an humble citizen, that the new scheme is fraught with untold dangers to our present peace and our permanent welfare as an industrial, peace-loving, and simply governed republic, I feel called upon to protest against its further progress, and to challenge the soundness of the reasons and the justice of the motives held out for its adoption by its chief pro moters. As one of General Banks's constituents, (though not indeed of his congressional district,) I desire to express my entire dissent from the general scope and spirit of the new project, as well as from the tenor and effect of most of its details. I conceive, that the Report, Bill, and accompanying debate, so far as they bespeak the moving spirit of that project, all misrepresent the true feeling and love of justice of the American people; and that, when the matter shall again be more candidly considered and more carefully weighed by the House of Representatives themselves, if it shall ever come back to them for reconsideration, both they and the gallant chairman will be ready to acknowledge that they have acted with undue haste, and that they were tempted to put to hazard important public interests, under the excitement of a temporary gust of national passion, or from motives of temporary party policy. Viewed as a measure of legislative enactment, I feel quite sure that the honorable chairman could not have given sufficient study to the framework or to the details of his new law, amidst his other numerous and pressing legislative duties; and that the House were quite unaware of its crudeness and want of scientific accuracy, when they so hastily voted its adoption. Meanwhile, I conceive that the country are under great obligations to Senator Sumner for sturdily standing in the way of this ill-digested and revolutionary legislation, and preventing its passage through the Senate by storm, amid the excitement of the closing hours of the session. As it is, a breathing-time has been given for reflection. Yet, as the new session of Congress is about opening, and as the Bill will shortly be up again for discussion, it is to be hoped that wiser and better counsels will take possession of the minds of Senators, and that they will hear reflected from their constituents a juster and a cooler voice of public opinion than that which seems to have filled the ears and mastered the judgment of the House of Representatives. Hoping to contribute my part, as a lover of international justice, towards awakening the public mind to the importance of the new stroke of state policy, and towards creating a public sentiment which shall make itself felt at the Capitol in its reprobation, I desire to urge some considerations upon the character and probable effects of the new policy, which I hope will tend to convince our legislators and their constituents, that, so far from its being progress and a movement forward, as its friends contend, it is rather retrogression towards barbarism and bruteforce, wholly unchristian and unrepublican, and therefore altogether inexpedient and inadmissible for adoption by the American people. I have to protest, then, against the new movement, upon these five grounds: (I.) That it begins its work with an unjust and unjustifiable disparagement of the country's historic good name and fame. (II.) That it untruly and unfairly characterizes British neutral legislation, which it professes to adopt for its standard of comparison and imitation. (III.) That it virtually amounts to protective legislation in favor of filibusterism and Fenianism. (IV.) That the present legislative embodiment of the scheme is so imperfect and defective a piece of law-making, that it fails of any legal validity and effect, except to express the ultimate and objectionable designs of its originators. (V.) That the whole movement is antagonistic to our truest and best future neutral policy. |