THE REPUBLICAN DIPLOMATISTS OF THE UNITED STATES.
FISH is, we think, an improvement on Mr. Seward. ill There is no mere buncombe in his despatches, no windy flourishes of the Jefferson-Brick order. He writes like an educated gentleman, and not like a pretentious shopman. But his despatches publishe4 this week on the Alabama question impress us painfully with the inferiority of the new Republican diplomatists in style and in intellectual strength to those of the old democratic party who used to manage the foreign policy of the Union under the various democratic Presidents who preceded Mr. Lincoln, General Cass, Mr. Marcy, and even Mr. Buchanan. There is too much by far of undignified complaint in the tone, too little of reticence on matters of mere sentiment,—on which, whether in the right or not, it is hardly dignified for the executive of a great government to speak at all. What matter is it to the Government of General Grant whether England disappointed the very natural hopes formed in America as to her sympathy with the cause of the North or not ? Precisely just as much, and no more, as it is whether the United States disappointed the hopes formed in England as to their sympathy with us in the Crimean war or not. These matters are matters of policy on which it is precisely as undignified for a government to indulge in public complaints as it would be for a man to write plaintively to the Times that he has been slighted by his uncle or cut by his cousins. So far as we have been wanting in plain international duties, Mr. Fish is quite right to complain and demand reparation. So far as we have only been wanting in appropriate sentiments this complaint is undignified and irrelevant. Mr. Wheaton has no chapter on international emotions. For wounded national feelings and disappointed national affections no legal reparation can be demanded. We should be the last to say that these things are of no importance. We have often protested indignantly against what seemed to us a thoroughly immoral state of international feeling in the ruling classes of England, and predicted that mischief must come of it. It is as true of nations as it is of in- dividuals that "out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders," wars, and all other international sins, and we are by no means making light of any misdirection of English senti- ment, in deprecating these diplomatic complaints against it as
out of place and unfortunate. All we say is that such lamentations are necessarily irrelevant and unfortunate. They are irrelevant, as England and America have a perfect international right to loathe each other instead of loving each other, if they are foolish and blind enough, so long as they commit no unfriendly actions. And such lamentations are unfortunate, because the charges they imply can never be proved, always involve gross injustice to those masses of either nation who have not been in any way open to them, and generally aggravate instead of removing the bad feeling on which they harp. Mr. Fish made the first great mistake of his despatch on the Alabama claims, when he permitted himself to enlarge on the right of the North to anticipate sympathy from England and the bitter disappointment of that expectation.
But Mr. Fish not only commits the error of dwelling too much, and almost with a feminine susceptibility, on sentimental recriminations (which to us appear partly just, in great measure unjust, and wholly off the question), but he also commits the error, for which we were hardly prepared, of reiterating the charge against us founded on what is called the premature recognition of the belligerency of the South. Now, we are not going to argue this matter again. Lord Clarendon in his reply states the case as clearly and unanswerably as possible, and we have explained times out of number why the American Government seems to us in this case to be absurdly conjuring up a grievance out of what was in fact the prompt discharge of a duty imperatively required at our hands by the circumstances in which we were placed. It would be an unjustifiable waste of our own and our readers' time to review the story again. But this we will say, that the American Secretary, whatever may be his own view, is very ill advised to recur to a complaint of this sort, which he perfectly well knows that Great Britain has made up her mind to be utterly groundless, and which she will resist to the utter- most, unless he intends to enforce that complaint by an ulti- matum,—which, of course, he does not. This " prematurity " in the recognition of belligerent rights has been fully discussed between the two Governments. Mr. Fish knows that some of t. most eminent (Northern) American lawyers are not only on our side, but so strongly on our side, that one of the most distinguished of them has said he could not "use too strong language" to describe the "utterly baseless character of this charge." Not only individual lawyers, but the most important judgments of the United States' Courts have sanctioned the view taken by the British Government. Under these circum- stances, no wise diplomatist would merely return to the old accusation. If it is good for anything, it is good either as a ground of quarrel on the one hand, or as a claim which the Ameri- can Government might take to themselves credit for magnan- imity in not again pressing, on the other. An able minister who wished for war might have used this claim, in regard to which, confessedly, we are not in the remotest degree likely to afford the Government of Washington the slightest satisfaction, as an excuse. An able Minister who wished for peace might have made a good deal of the popular favour with which this demand had been regarded in America, and the great forbear- ance and generosity of the Government in waiving that point, not by way of legal concession, but by way of proof of magnani- mous disinclination to press too hard in a case where there is at least a plausible apology to be made for the conduct of the other party to the dispute. But Mr. Fish has not dealt with the matter in either way. He has done the worst he could for himself. He has pressed this (imaginary) grievance with an emphasis which will render it very difficult for him to acquiesce in any settlement that does not include an express reference of this point to arbitration ; and he has surrendered all diplomatic advantage that might have resulted from a cordial waiver. Yet it is inconceivable that Mr. Fish, even from his own point of view, can expect to derive any benefit from pressing this point. With his own country's Courts and the best American lawyers against him, and the mind of British states- men calmly immovable on the matter, he must sooner or later give up his pretensions on this point, and so encounter a morti- fying defeat, unless, indeed, in spite of the strong disavowals of Mr. Motley, he is entering on renewed negotiations only for appearance' sake, and with the deliberate design of their fail- ing and leaving a painful question open between this country and the United States ;—an imputation which would be wholly unjustifiable on our parts. Mr. Fish has, as it seems to us, thrown away all the advantage of his position as a fresh negotiator expressing the views of a new and strong Government after an interval of silence, by harping on the weakest point of his case as pertinaciously as if it were the strongest, and rehears-
ing all the old querulous quavers of discontent, without introducing any new perspective among his complaints, m- adding any clear practical definition to the issue between us.
Lastly, even on the points on which Mr. Fish has the- strongest case, he fails to present it with new force and vigour, while ludicrously over-stating it on one side, and so weaken- ing the effect of what he really does urge with justice. The- escape of the Alabama from the Mersey was, as we believe, due- to a real act of negligence on our part, for which it is not only right on general international principles, but in the highest degree expedient for British interests, that we should be- willing and even eager to make amends. But if this point could be weakly stated, and injured by a false incidental framework of circumstantial detail, Mr. Fish states it weakly, and with these unfortunate accompaniments. His tone is not weighty and practical. He forgets to point out that a. stricter interpretation of the international duties of neutrals with every fresh generation is not only the inevitable- result of physical progress, but one of the highest expediency to England, no less than the United States ; he does not take- a simple and frank tone with reference to the legal excuses. offered by our Government, which he very justly but far to querulously rejects ; he does not say politely, but plainly„ that he has absolutely nothing to do with our reasons for omitting reasonable precautions, but only with the question of jiwt whether we did omit them, and of the consequences to his country, nor hint that if we choose to keep constitu- tional scruples of a superfine kind we must consent to pay- highly for them, as we should certainly insist on others pay- ing highly for them to us,—on all this side of the subject Mr. Fish is in effect right, no doubt, but feeble and plaintive, instead of terse, firm, and commonsensical. And, then, on all the attendant circumstances he exaggerates and enfeebles the- strong part of his case. He speaks as if we had stopped no- single cruiser from sailing, and had permitted the sailing of a whole fleet of the destination of which we had been fully apprised. He treats the case of blockade-runners,--for the capture of which the power which establishes and maintains- the blockade is exclusively responsible,—as if the neutral power from whose ports they sail had any sort of right or responsi- bility for the enterprise, nay, almost as if it were as much bound to prevent such enterprises as it is to prevent the fitting-out of a hostile cruiser in its ports. He exaggerates the helplessness of the Confederates themselves, from whose- own ports, and not from ours, as Lord Clarendon shows, the- Sumter, Nashville, and Florida all three sailed. Finally, Mr. Fish exaggerates absurdly the degree of our responsibility for all the results, which he charges exclusively upon us, though it- is notorious that in two cases, at least, the Federals neglected.
reasonable precautions' for arresting the Alabama's career. On the whole, we must say that both by defect and by excess, this, the least weak part of Mr. Fish's despatch, offends against the principles of sound diplomacy, and gives but a poor conception of Mr. Fish's powers.
The Republican party has yet to produce its breed of statesmen. The oligarchical habits of the Southern party which so long monopolized office before the war, were at least favourable to a commanding tone of political mind, with its evil and its good. The slaie-holding system, like the worse forms of the fagging system at public schools, breeds a thousand diseases, but with them an able though an evil type of statesmanship. As yet, true Republicanism in America has produced no statesmanship at all, except Mr. Lincoln's, which was apparently more a stroke of good fortune- for the party than of party organization. No doubt there is some progress. General Grant is better than Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Fish is better than Mr. Seward, though Mr. Bout- well is vastly inferior both to Mr. Chase and Mr. McCulloch. But the progress is very slow. The tone of mind of the- Republican statesmen is limp, sensitive, confused, tentative, not dignified, clear, firm, commanding. We do not quite- despair of better things from Mr. Fish. But he has not opened his case as we could wish to see a case opened which we believe to have great force in it, and which we regard it as quite as much our own interest as his and his country's to. see brought to a mutually satisfactory conclusion.
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