rs to abstain from any act of
pretended neutrality which would give material advantage or moral
encouragement to the organized forces of the rebellion.

Before Mr. Adams could cross the Atlantic the British Government,
although aware of his mission and its object, decided upon its own
course, in concerted action with France, and without reference to
the views or wishes or interest of the United States. On the day
before Mr. Adams's arrival in England, as if to give him offensive
warning how little his representations would be regarded, Her
Majesty's Government issued a proclamation recognizing the confederated
Southern States as belligerents. It is entirely unnecessary to
discuss the question of the right to recognize belligerency. The
great powers of Europe had the same right to recognize the Southern
Confederacy as a belligerent that they had to recognize it as an
established nationality, and with the same consequences,--all
dependent upon whether the fact so recognized were indeed a fact.
But the recognition of belligerency or independence may be the
means to achieve a result, and not simply an impartial acquiescence
in a result already achieved. The question therefore was not
whether foreign powers had a right to recognize, but whether the
time and method of such recognition were not distinctly hostile,--
whether they were not the efficient and coldly calculated means to
strengthen the hands of the Rebellion.

Events proved that if the English Government had postponed this
action until the Government of the United States had been allowed
a frank discussion of its policy, no possible injury to English
interests could have resulted. It was but a very short time before
the rebellion assumed proportions that led to the recognition of
the Confederacy as a belligerent by the civil, judicial, and military
authorities of the Union; a recognition by foreign powers would
then have been simply an act of impartial neutrality. But, declared
with such precipitancy, recognition could be regarded only as an
act of unfriendliness to the United States. The proof of this is
inherent in the case:--

1. The purpose of the secession, openly avowed from the beginning,
was the dissolution of the Union and the establishment of an
independent slave-empire; and the joint recognition was a declaration
that such a result, fraught with ruin to us, was not antagonistic
to the feelings or to the supposed interests of Europe, and that