s intercourse with foreign
nations and its management and administration of internal affairs.

Nations, like individuals in a state of nature, are equal and
independent, possessing certain rights and owing certain duties to
each other, arising from their necessary and unavoidable relations;
which rights and duties there is no common human authority to protect
and enforce. Still, they are rights and duties, binding in morals, in
conscience, and in honor, although there is no tribunal to which an
injured party can appeal but the disinterested judgment of mankind,
and ultimately the arbitrament of the sword.

Among the acknowledged rights of nations is that which each possesses
of establishing that form of government which it may deem most
conducive to the happiness and prosperity of its own citizens, of
changing that form as circumstances may require, and of managing its
internal affairs according to its own will. The people of the United
States claim this right for themselves, and they readily concede it to
others. Hence it becomes an imperative duty not to interfere in the
government or internal policy of other nations; and although we may
sympathize with the unfortunate or the oppressed everywhere in their
struggles for freedom, our principles forbid us from taking any part
in such foreign contests. We make no wars to promote or to prevent
successions to thrones, to maintain any theory of a balance of power,
or to suppress the actual government which any country chooses to
establish for itself. We instigate no revolutions, nor suffer any
hostile military expeditions to be fitted out in the United States
to invade the territory or provinces of a friendly nation. The great
law of morality ought to have a national as well as a personal and
individual application. We should act toward other nations as we wish
them to act toward us, and justice and conscience should form the rule
of conduct between governments, instead of mere power, self-interest,
or the desire of aggrandizement. To maintain a strict neutrality in
foreign wars, to cultivate friendly relations, to reciprocate every
noble and generous act, and to perform punctually and scrupulously
every treaty obligation--these are the duties which we owe to other
states, and by the performance of which we best entitle ourselves to
like treatment from them; or, if that, in any case, be refused, we can
enforce our own rights with justice and a clear conscience.

In our do