[Speech of William M. Evarts at the sixty-seventh anniversary banquet of
the New England Society in the City of New York, December 23, 1872.
The President, Elliot C. Cowden, occupied the chair. Introducing the
speaker, he said: "I now ask your attention to the eighth regular
toast: 'The Geneva Tribunal of Arbitration, a victory of peace,
demonstrating that the statesman's wisdom is mightier than the
warrior's sword.' This sentiment will be responded to by one who has
added a new lustre to a fame already achieved by his consummate
argument in defence of our claims before the late Tribunal of
Arbitration, your honored ex-President, Mr. Evarts."]
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY:--It
has, I believe, in the history of our race, never been permitted that a
great nation should pass through the perils of a serious internal
conflict without suffering, in some form or other, an intervention in
its affairs by other nations that would not have been permitted, or been
possible, but for the distraction of its power, or the stress to which
it was exposed by its intestine strifes. And when, in our modern
civilization, a nation so great as ours was pressed by so great a stress
as our Civil War imposed upon us, we could not escape this common fate
in human affairs. It has rarely, in the history of our race, been
permitted to a nation that has suffered this foreign intervention, in
whatever form, to preserve its peace and the peace of the world, and yet
settle its account with the nations which had interposed in its affairs.
[Applause.]
When the great power of France seized upon the occasion of our Civil War
to renew a European possession upon our boundaries, and when England,
upon the same opportunity, swept the seas of our commerce; properly to
deal with those forms of intervention, when our domestic troubles were
ended by the triumph of our arms, called for the exercise of the highest
statesmanship and the most powerful diplomacy. It was at this juncture
that our great minister of foreign affairs (than whom no greater has
been seen in our country, and than whom no greater has been presented in
the service of any foreign nation) was able, without war, to drive the
French from Mexico, and to establish the _principle_ of arbitration, for
the settlement of our controversy with England. [Applause.] It was
reserved for the present administration to extricate the imperfect work
of the adjustment of the differences between England and the United
States from a difficulty of the gravest character, and to place the
negotiations upon a footing satisfactory to the public sense of our
people by the illustrious work of the Joint High Commission at
Washington. It was reserved for that administration to complete, within
its first term of power, the absolute extinction of all antecedent
causes, occasions or opportunities for future contention between our
nation and the mother country, by the actual result of the Geneva
arbitration. [Applause.]
And now, gentlemen, I think we may well be proud of that self-contained,
yet adequate, appreciation of our power, of our right, and of our duty,
that could thus, while abating not one jot or tittle of our rights,
compose such grave differences by the wisdom of statesmanship, instead
of renewing the struggles of war. I may, I think, recognize in the
general appreciation by our countrymen of the excellence of this great
adjustment between England and the United States, their satisfaction
with this settlement, which, without in the least abating the dignity or
disturbing the peace of England, has maintained the dignity and made
secure the peace of the United States. [Applause.] I think I may
recognize in this general satisfaction of our countrymen, their
conviction that the result of the Geneva arbitration has secured for us
every point that was important as indemnity for the past, and yet has so
adjusted the difficult question between neutrality and belligerency as
to make it safe for us, in maintaining our natural, and, as we hope, our
perpetual, position in the future, of a neutral, and not a belligerent.
The gentlemen to whom were entrusted, by the favor of the President of
the United States, the representation of our country in this great
forensic controversy, have been somewhat differently situated from
lawyers, in ordinary lawsuits, charged with the interests of clients.
For, as we all know, the interest of the client and the duty of the
lawyer are, for the most part, limited to success in the particular
controversy that is being agitated, and, therein, the whole power of the
lawyer and all his resources may be properly directed to secure the
completest victory in the particular suit. But, when a nation is a
party, and when the lawsuit is but an incident, in its perpetual duty
and its perpetual interests, in which it must expect to change sides, in
the changing circumstances of human affairs, it is very plainly its
interest, and the duty of those to whom its interests are entrusted, to
see to it, that in the zeal of the particular contest there shall be no
triumph that shall disturb, embarrass, or burden its future relations
with foreign nations. [Applause.] In other words, when our government
was calling to account a neutral which had interfered with our rights as
belligerents, it was of very great importance that we should insist upon
neither a measure of right nor a measure of indemnity, that we could
not, wisely and safely, submit to in the future ourselves. [Applause.]
While, then, there was a preliminary question of gravest importance to
be determined in this arbitration--this peaceful substitute for
war--"the terrible litigation of States"--no less than this, how widely
and how heavily we should press the question of accountability against a
neutral, and how far the question should be pressed, in the future,
against us, I must congratulate the country for having received, at the
outset of the deliberations at Geneva, a determination from the
Tribunal, upon the general principles of public law, that when peaceful
adjustments in redress of wrongs are attempted between friendly States,
no measure of indemnity can be claimed which at all savors of the
exactions made only by a victorious over a beaten foe. [Applause.]
And when we come to the final award of this High Tribunal, I think the
country may be congratulated, and the world may be congratulated, that
while we have secured a judgment of able and impartial publicists in
favor of the propositions of international law on which we had
insisted, and have received amends by its judgment for the wrongs we had
suffered from Great Britain, we have also secured great principles in
favor of neutrality in the future, making it easier, instead of harder,
for nations to repress the sympathies, the passions and the enlistments
of their people, and to keep, during the pendency of war, the action of
a neutral State within and subject to the dictates of duty and of law.
For we have there established that the duty of a neutral government to
preserve its subjects from interference with belligerent rights is in
proportion to the magnitude of the evils that will be suffered by the
nation against whom, and at whose cost, the infraction of neutrality is
provoked. We have made it apparent, also, that a powerful nation, in the
advanced civilization of our age, cannot escape from an accountability
upon the rough calculation, upon which so much reliance has doubtless
been placed in the past, upon the unwillingness of the offended and
injured nation, in the correction of its wrongs, to rush into the costs
and sacrifices of war. And we have made it apparent to the proudest
power in the world (and there is none prouder than our own nation,) that
there must be a peaceful accounting for errors and wrongs, in which
justice shall be done without the effusion of blood. [Prolonged
applause.] Practically, too, we have established principles of great
importance in aid of the efforts of every Government to preserve its
neutrality in trying and difficult situations of sympathy. An error long
provided, that if a vessel, in violation of neutrality, should escape to
commit its ravages upon the sea, and should once secure the protection
of a commission from the offending belligerent, that that was an end of
it, and all the nations of the world must bow their heads before these
bastard flags of belligerency. But the tribunal has determined, as the
public law of the world, that a commission from a belligerent gives no
protection to a vessel that owes its power and place upon the seas to a
violation of neutrality. [Applause.] The consequence is, that so far
from our success in this arbitration having exposed us, as a neutral
nation, in the future, to greater difficulties, we have established
principles of law that are to aid our Government, and every other
Government, to restrain our people and every other people, in the
future, from such infractions of neutrality.
And now, gentlemen, is it too much for us to say that, coming out from a
strife with our own blood and kindred, upon the many hard-fought fields
of our Civil War, with our government confirmed, with the principles of
our confederation made secure forever, we have also come out from this
peaceful contest with a great power of the world, with important
principles established between this nation and our principal rival in
the business affairs of the world, and with an established conviction,
alike prevalent in both countries, that, hereafter, each must do its
duty to the other, and that each must be held accountable for that duty?
I give you, gentlemen, in conclusion, this sentiment: "The little
Court-room at Geneva--where our royal mother England, and her proud
though untitled daughter, alike bent their heads to the majesty of Law
and accepted Justice as a greater and better arbiter than Power."
[Prolonged applause.]
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