be taken as an abandonment in the future of the ground heretofore
maintained by that Government.


CONCESSION OF BELLIGERENT RIGHTS TO THE REBELS.

There has been some dissatisfaction with the conduct of our official
communications with Great Britain and France respecting the question on
belligerent rights and neutral obligations which the rebellion has
raised. But there are points of no inconsiderable difficulty and
delicacy involved in these questions, which a great many people, in
their natural displeasure against the English and French, have failed to
consider. Our Government deserves the credit of having consulted the
interests without compromising the dignity of the nation. Admitting the
conduct of the British and French Governments in recognizing the rebels
as belligerents to be as unfriendly and as unrequired by the obligations
of public law as it is generally held to be among us, that would not
make it right or wise for our Government to depart from the tone of
moderation. We can no more make it a matter for official complaint and
demand against these Governments, than we could the unfriendly tone of
many of their newspapers and Parliamentary orators. We might say to
them: We take it as unkindly in you to do as you have done; but if they
will continue to do so, we have nothing for it but to submit. Even if we
could have afforded it, we could not rightly have gone to war with them
for doing what we ourselves--through the necessity of our
circumstances--have been compelled in effect to do, and what they,
though not forced by any such necessity, had yet a right--and in their
own opinion were obliged--by public law to do. We could not have made it
a cause of war, and therefore it would have been worse than idle to
indulge in a style of official representation which means war if it