Captain Semmes, of the Alabama, has given us this week
a letter, in all but its last paragraph temperate, and not without ability, to prove that England, as a neutral Power, instead of prohibiting both belligerents from bringing prizes into her ports, ought to have permitted both belligerents to do so. His argument is that neutrality means impartiality, that impartiality means a policy tending to help or injure neither belligerent more than the other, that a policy which denies neutral ports to the prizes of a bellige- rent with blockaded coasts, and therefore without ports of its own, does tend to injure that belligerent much more than her rival which commands the sea, and that therefore it is not the policy of a neutral. Of course the great blunder is in supposing that a neutral policy really aims at equalizing the effect of its decisions on both belligerents. In truth it aims simply at treating them both alike, whatever for its own interest it decides to do. Captain Semmes has imported into his definition of a neutral disposition a wish to redress the balance of advantage, to diminish the advantages of the stronger to increase those of the weaker. No motive could be less neutral. Neutrality is a policy of indifference. The wish, out of two apparently neutral courses to select the one which will do most to redress the balance of natural advantage, is not indiffer- ence, but covert alliance.
Previous page
