It has been said that if a new dictionary were now to be published
in England, another definition of neutrality would have to be
given. Certain it is that much of what has taken place on the other
side of the ocean during this unhappy war comports little with our
previous understanding of the duties of neutrals. And yet strict
neutrality between belligerents is enjoined as much by philanthropy
as by national honor; for while it protects national independence it
restricts the limits of war. It is thus a rule alike of justice and
of prudence. It springs from principles which lie at the foundation
of international law; that is to say, the independence and the
equality of nations. But there is another rule which springs from
the same principles, and which is as old and as strong as that of
neutrality, and is sometimes confounded with it--that is, the duty
of every nation to abstain from any interference with the internal
concerns of another. To be neutral between two belligerents is to
help neither; to make, or help to make, two belligerents out of the
same nation is to interfere in its internal relations. If it be said
that this is but to recognize and declare a fact, I answer that the
nation itself, as it is equal and independent, is the sole judge of
the fact. The relation of the different parts with each other is
a domestic concern. To assume to recognize and declare relations
which it does not first recognize and declare, is, equally with the
violation of neutrality, a departure from that courtesy and deference
which are due from one nation to another. Both depend upon that public
law of the world which is as old as governments and as eternal as
equity. No nation is so ancient or mighty as to be above it; none so
young or weak as to be below it. Each, as it takes its place in the
family of nations, assumes it in all its plenitude. These rules the
Government of this country has followed at all times and under all
circumstances. Whatever may have been the sympathies of our people,
whatever may have been the moral aspects of the foreign wars on which
they have looked, and however much they have desired the success of
one party over the other, they have inflexibly refused to throw their
powers into the scale, or to allow any of their citizens to violate
the neutrality which the Government enjoined. From the administration
of Washington to the administration of Lincoln, through all the wars
of the French Republic and the French empire, through the struggles
of mastery in Eastern Europe, through the great civil wars in Poland,
in Hungary and in India, we have steadily asserted the policy of
non-interference, and maintained it in practice. And we have never
resorted to the paltry evasion of doing secretly what we professed
openly to avoid. What we said we meant, and what we meant we said. We
have held the obligation to be paramount and universal. We complain
of England and France, first for the proclamation or profession
of neutrality, and then for the violation of the neutrality thus
professed. This is not the place to enter upon the reasons which
justify these complaints. The loyal people of this country have made
up their opinions on both these subjects. They are convinced that
England and France have wronged them in both respects, and are just
as strongly convinced that Russia, whose naval officers are our
guests to-night, has acted differently; has done us no injury; has
conformed her conduct to the solemn injunctions of the law of nations,
in accounting us competent to manage our own affairs; treating the
established and recognized Government of the country as the only
lawful belligerent, and holding no relations whatever with the rebels.
It is impossible to mistake the settled convictions of the American
people. They will never forget, through all the changes of future
years, that in their mortal struggle the Czar has been true to them,
and in the exercise of his great office has been inflexible in his
adherence to the grand and salutary principles of public law. And
they will just as surely never cease to believe that the Governments
of England and France have desired the disruption of the republic,
and have hastened unjustly to lift the rebels into the condition of
legal belligerents; have offensively professed neutrality between
the lawful and the rebel forces, and, after all, have evaded that
professed neutrality by every species of indirect assistance which it
was possible to give short of engaging in hostilities. _These things
will never be forgotten so long as Americans can read and remember.
And, more than this, the men of this generation, who have smarted
under these wrongs, will not rest until some of them are righted._
We see the ground fresh with graves, half of which would never have
been opened but for the countenance which England and France have
given to the rebellion; and, whether it shall be procured from
their apprehension of the consequences, or their sense of justice,
_reparation must be made, or the seed which has been sown in these
three years will ripen into an iron harvest of future war, of which no
man can foresee the end_.