New York, December 27, 1861.
I wrote to you yesterday, my dear Sumner, and now intend to
reply to your letter of the 24th. I must overcome a feeling of restraint,
arising from the consciousness that I may present views which, by the time they
reach you in your central position, may prove wholly out of the question. The
difference of our positions makes the short distance from New York to
Washington as long as that which separates a governor-general of the East
Indies from the cabinet of St. James. My morning paper reports you to have said
that all will come out right as to the “Trent.” If this be true, and if you had
arbitration in view, you have probably found reason in your intercourse with
Lord Lyons to modify your opinion on the infeasibility of arbitration, expressed
in your letter to me.
Civilization will yet arrive, one of these days, at
something like an international application of the principle of the Athenians,
when Themistocles said that he knew something very useful to Athens, but
doubtful as to justice, and they appointed Aristides to receive the secret and
to decide what they should do. I wrote to Mr. Cushing at the time of our Oregon
troubles, — when we behaved like schoolboys, and the English like men (very
different from now), — what a blessed and simple thing it would be if nations
could be brought to lay such things before the law faculty of some foreign high
university; as some German States sent, in last appeal, important cases to the
law faculty of some university not in the country. What, indeed, does an
arbitrating monarch do? He gives, of course, the case to his Minister of
Justice; and he again, if he is honest, gives it to some eminent jurists. How
much more direct — ay, and dignified as well as truthful — would it be to
appoint two jurists, with the injunction to elect jointly a third, to decide on
knotty international questions! You know I am very positively against a
permanent international court of arbitration, in the present state of our
civilization. However, all this may be Utopian in the present case. If, then,
decision by appeal to reason be still possible, I say, as I said to you before,
take Prussia. Everything points to her. If Napoleon has really offered himself,
it complicates matters. France would be, in this very case, an inadmissible
judge; yet France would take the preference of Prussia, after Napoleon's offer,
as a slight. There never was a case inherently more fit for high adjudication. . . . Well, let us argue the case in court, —
a high, impartial court, — and settle a principle. International law is the
greatest blessing of modern civilization, and every settlement of a principle
in the law of nations is a distinct, plain step in the progress of humanity.
The Duke of Orleans said to Cardinal Dubois, when he commenced his regency, Un
peu de droiture, mon ami. I wish I could say to the Americans and
the English, Un peu de raison, mes
amis, un peu de raison. Pardon me that I quoted a scamp. . . . As to that international commission, or
congress, of which I spoke, I did not mean it as in the least connected with
the Trent business. I only meant that this business — when a captain of ours
thought it clearly and honestly his duty, and the right of his country to do
what he did, and when he executed it really with international delicacy —
having brought nations to the brink of war, and seemingly bewildered the people
of Great Britain, this would be a fair occasion to propose a congress of all
maritime nations, European and American, to settle some more canons of the law
of nations than were settled at the Peace of Paris, — canons chiefly or
exclusively relating to the rights and duties of belligerents and neutrals on
the sea; for there lies the chief difficulty. The sea belongs to all; hence the
difficulty of the sea police, because there all are equals. I mean no
codification of international law; I mean that such a congress, avowedly
convened for such a purpose, should take some more canons out of the cloudy
realm of precedents than the Peace of Paris did, almost incidentally. Suppose
Russia, Austria, Italy, Prussia, France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden,
England, the United States, Brazil, Turkey,—all could be induced to send, each
power, two jurists (with naval advisers if they chose), does any one, who knows
how swelling civilization courses in our history, doubt that their debates and
resolutions would remain useless, —even though the whole should lead, this
time, to no more than an experiment? All those ideas that are now great and
large blessings of our race, having wrought themselves into constitutions or
law systems, belonged once to Utopia. Have I ever told you that I always direct
the attention of my hearers to a branch of political science which I term
Utopiology, — the knowledge of all the Utopias of philosophers, with their
advance-guard ideas and their errors? To respect private property at sea, even
in peace, was once very Utopian, even when Greece flourished in Periclean
splendor. I go farther still, and say that even such a proposition, if made
with dignity and simplicity, in a dignified place, free from all influence of “socictics,”
but in a manly, statesmanlike way, would be of use, though not adopted. The
history of ideas in our civilization points almost always to very narrow
incipiencies, like the beginning of the Osman empire, — a standard planted
before a tent, and an Osman that did it. There is a historical embryology that
is very instructive. I can imagine some twenty canons settled by such a
congress, — formulations like those of the Peace of Paris, — that would save
much blood, much treasure, much anger. There is no sickly philanthropy in this;
you know that I have no morbid feeling about war; what I wish, I wish as an
earnest publicist, and in the name of international statesmanship.
SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and
Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 323-5
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