J. C. BANCROFT DAVIS, ESQ., Agent of the United States. SIR, We have the honor to hand you herewith the Argument prepared by us as Counsel of the United States, in order that, in pursuance of Article V. of the Treaty of Washington, it may be presented in their behalf to the Tribunal of Arbitration constituted by that Treaty. We have the honor, Sir, To be your obedient servants, C. CUSHING. WM. M. EVARTS. M. R. WAITE. collateral issues, to which the judgment of the Tribunal will need to be applied. In pursuing, therefore, our immediate purpose of attracting the attention of the Tribunal to the elements of the controversy arising between the two Nations, upon the actual events which gave it birth, and as it has been shaped for the investigation and determination of the Tribunal by the contending Parties, in the Treaty by which its jurisdiction is created, we shall have occasion to consider no matters which are either obscure or disputable, and none which may not be drawn with the same confidence from the documents laid before the Tribunal by Great Britain, as from those presented by the United States. I. When [the great social and political interests developed by the institution of slavery, as it existed in the United States, carried their popular agitations beyond the bounds of obedience to the laws and loyalty to the Government of the United States, as set forth in Part II of the Case of Great Britain and Part II of the Case of the United States, it was not long before a great population occupying a large territory was drawn into an armed insurrection, and, as a next step, pushed into a military rebellion against the authority of the Government. The strength and menace of the attempted revolt soon grew to such proportions that the Government had recourse, in dealing with these rebellious hostilities urged against it, to its undoubted right of superadding to its peaceful authority of sovereignty the exercise of belligerent powers. It met the military array of the Rebellion with the loyal forces of the Nation, and used all the means for its suppression which the wealth, the courage, and the patriotism of the people placed at its disposal. Itself a great maritime Power, both in naval strength and commercial prosperity, the resources of the Rebellion included neither. The Government by prompt, adequate and successful exhibition of its naval strength, shut up the whole seaboard of the territory in rebellion by a blockade, and was proceeding to cut it off from all opportunity of establishing foreign commerce, or maintaining maritime hostilities, from its own resources. II. The principles of the law of nations recognize this necessity which the vigor and magnitude of rebel hostilities may impose upon the government of a nation, and attribute to a resort to its belligerent powers, in such case, no consequences affecting the attitude towards each other of the parties to these hostilities. Other nations are, manifestly, no parties to the conflict, and cannot become such parties, unless by choice, which is intervention, or by the enlargement of the theatre of hostilities, or their actual course, forcing upon their notice such questions as specifically arise for solution. The effect of intervention is unequivocal. If attempted in aid of the belligerent sovereign, but without his request, it is officious, and may be unwelcome. If in aid of the rebels, against the sovereign, it is an espousal of their cause, and an act of war against the belligerent sovereign. In such a case, no situation of neutrality arises. But, if a nation abstains from intervention in the conflict between a sovereign nation and its rebels, it is inaccurate to treat this abstinence as neutrality. It is simply an unbroken maintenance of the international relations which subsisted between the two Powers before the domestic peace of one of them suffered disturbance. It would shock the moral sense of civilization, to speak of the United States as standing neutral between Great Britain and the Sepoy rebellion in India, or of Great Britain as standing neutral between the Commune of Paris and the Government of France. But, when the actual hostilities in which a government is engaged in the suppression of a rebellion encroach upon the established relations between it and friendly Powers, the latter have presented to them the question whether they will, each for itself, acquiesce in the exercise of belligerent powers, as sought to be made effective against the rebels, at the cost of interference with the peaceful rights of commerce and intercourse, which subsisted before the nation was brought into this stress by its domestic rebellion. But this question, under the rules governing the subject in the modern law of nations, can have but one answer. The nation which has superadded belligerent rights to those of sovereignty, is entitled so to do, and resistance by other nations to the fair consequences of such rights upon their interests, is a violation of the law of nations, and an unjust intervention in the domestic conflict. In regard to the hostilities prosecuted against the sovereign by the rebel, if they should pass beyond the bounds of intestine war and obtrude themselves upon the notice of other sovereign Powers, the actual occurrences which raise the question of their treatment by such Powers, may be trusted, also, to solve it. If the rebels should exhibit their strength by a blockade of any of the ports of the nation, or should keep the seas with cruisers, and assert the right of search, of capture, and of prize condemnation, against the ships or cargoes of |