CHAPTER VI. NATIONAL INTERVENTION. IN assigning a title to this chapter, we have intentionally abstained from giving the subject of which it treats the denomination adopted by some of the latest writers on the law of nations, such as Professor Heffter of the university of Berlin, in 1844, and Dr Wheaton in the last edition of his Elemens du Droit International, published at Leipsic in 1848-namely, the "Right of Intervention;" for we humbly conceive no such primitive or primary absolute right of intervention exists among sovereign independent nations. And it may be worth while shortly to inquire, whether there is any ground for recognising such a right of intervention: first, in point of legal or juridical principle; secondly, in point of usage and traditional authority; thirdly, in point of general expediency. First, then, such a pretended original or primitive and positive right of intervention will be found, upon inquiry, to be inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the law of sovereign states, as universally recognised. In general, no such right of intervention can exist with regard to those matters which it belongs to each state to arrange, in virtue of its freedom and independencenamely, the constitution and administration of its internal government. No state can legally impose upon another any particular constitution, or promote or oppose changes therein, or exercise any legislative, executive, or judicial power, civil or criminal. As little can any state exercise over another any external sovereignty. And the principle of non-intervention is thus manifestly the general rule, and intervention merely the exception. The chief primary or original, and absolute or unconditional, rights of a sovereign state, are-self-preservation and independence; legislative, executive, and judicial powers, civil and criminal; right of progress or advancement, and of promoting its own prosperity, consistently with the similar right of other nations, and involving equality in point of right; right of territory and property, right of binding by treaty, right of defence by war. But the right of intervention cannot be ranked in the same order, or placed in the same class, with these rights; it falls under the right of self-preservation and defence. It can be justified only, upon legal grounds, by such previous acts of aggression on the part of other states, or such aggrandisement of other states, through conquest or succession, as actually to endanger the safety of the neighbouring state, and to warrant what has been denominated, in modern Europe, the maintenance of the balance of power among the nations of this quarter of the globe. It does not appear that intervention can be legalised by the mere increase of the wealth or population of a country, or by its sending out a portion of its population to other parts of the globe, and forming colonies for colonies frequently weaken, as much as strengthen, the mother country; and, in their natural progress, colonies seem entitled and destined ultimately to detach themselves from the parent state, and to obtain self-government. In the second place, with regard to usages or traditional authority, it is plain that mere aggressive acts can never be rendered legal by continued repetition for any period, however long. There can be no prescription of criminal acts of violence. And non-intervention being obviously, in point of principle, the general rule of international law applicable to sovereign independent states, and intervention merely the exception, it accordingly appears that the earlier modern writers on the law of nations, such as Grotius, Pufendorff, and Rachelius, have not specially or expressly recognised any such primary positive right of intervention. Vattel, indeed, the populariser and improver of Wolff, from the vague and indefinite conception which he seems to have formed of international law, in his otherwise excellent work, Le Droit des Gens, includes not only the internal law of states, public or constitutional, municipal and private, but also the ethics or morality of nations in relation to each other. And not distinguishing the marked difference between the negative virtue of justice, and the positive virtues of benevolence and beneficence, inasmuch as the former are susceptible of enforcement by human means, consistently with the common sense and moral feelings of all mankind, and with general or universal expediency, while the latter do not admit of any such enforcement, he seems to follow many preceding jurists, in holding the latter of these moral obligations, as well as the former, to be productive of corresponding right. And he is thus led, or in a manner reduced to the necessity, of dividing rights, like many of his predecessors, into perfect and imperfect; the latter of which cannot be enforced, and are, therefore, no rights at all, in a legal or juridical |