The Invasion of Cuba—The Proclamation of the President

The day is rapidly passing away, for the world at large—as it has already passed away for America in particular—when the political dogmas of Great Britain are to be taken as the universal law. England has ceased to be the sole arbiter amongst contending nations. Her old supremacy is gone. Not so much, perhaps, because her power has declined, as because other nations have overtaken her in her march, and now stand in the same rank with herself—her equals and her rivals. France, Austria, Russia, the United States, are first-rate powers. Their voice will always be heard, on great questions of continental policy, upon their respective continents. The interests of humanity demand it—interests which have ceased to be the mere spoil of English cupidity throughout the globe, and which must now be arraigned for final judgment before the grand jury of the world. Hereafter, the cry of the oppressed will be heard and respected. National atrocities can no longer be perpetrated in a corner. Spanish galleons, laden with treasure, can no longer be stopped with impunity, and robbed upon the high seas by English navies. Capitals can no longer be sacked and burnt, with unpunished audacity, as Copenhagen was burnt by English squadrons. The cause of one is the cause of all; and the cause of all disposes all to adopt the great principles of common sense and national equity, as the true basis of international law. We shall have no more orders on Council, blockading a continent with a handful of ships. Such outrages are already of an antediluvian order of things, which has passed away. The world would not tolerate their resuscitation for a moment. Most of the ex cathedral dicta, which England, partly by sophistry, and chiefly by force, has sought to incorporate in the international code of Christendom, have been settled against her; and, amongst these, her dicta touching the rights of neutral flags, and the right of citizens of any government to relinquish their allegiance. The English doctrine was, as to the latter point, “Nemo potest exuere patrium.” The guns of the United States, the Hornet, and the Essex, and the rifles of New Orleans, (rather cogent arguments in their way,) laid this matter at rest.

Such, at least since the war of 1812, has been unanimous sense of the people of this nation. But for the recent proclamation of the President, we should have considered this point a res adjudicata—a thing disposed of—settled—not open for any further discussion.

But, amazing as it may appear, a proclamation is issued by the President of the United States, supported by a cabinet consisting almost entirely of lawyers which threatens not only to rip up these established decisions, but to introduce a practice, in relation to them, utterly hostile to the known feelings of the people. It is our boast, that the timid and odious policy of European governments, with all their miserable machinery of passports, espionage, and domiciliary visits, constitutes no part of our system. Here men are free. They can come and go when they please. No inquisition stops them at every shore and at every boundary line, and, with a timorous dread of mischief or a rapacious exercise of power, demands of them the purport of their errand. If men wish to leave this country, and adopt another, they have an undoubted right to leave it. Their government has no right whatever to pursue them, and to thrust her jurisdiction upon them. She has never pretended to exercise that right. She has no business with their motives, unless those motives be an avowed infringement of her laws. We do not say that an organized and unprovoked attack upon a friendly neighbor, if instigated by the government, is not a violation of a treaty of peace and we do not say that a treaty of peace is not the law of the land. But we put it directly to the Republic, and to the National Intelligencer, whether solicited assistance, rendered to a suffering people, in the net of conspiracy and on the brink of rebellion, is such an attack upon a friendly power as to warrant official interference?

If the United States government lent her troops, her stores, or her fleets—if she lent her co-operation officially, in the most minute particular—she would certainly be amenable to Spain, and to the world, for the violation of her honor. But here is one man, a private citizen, and there are ten, scampering over the boundary line, with muskets in their hands. Their cry is “Cuba,” or “Sierra Madre.” Well, whose business is it! They go at their peril. Buy such an act, they have thrown off their allegiance to their country, and forfeited its protection. Their country is no longer bound for their acts. She need neither notice nor intermeddle with them; and it is no part of the duty of a government like our pimp and pry into their proceedings. Does the Republic undertake to say that this government can and ought to check the indomitable sympathies with which a people like ours, full of wild energies, contemplate the revolutionary efforts of a neighbor? Does the Intelligencer boldly assert that it is the legitimate function of this government to keep all its citizens upon our own soil, by force of sums, merely because a decrepid neighbor, in the nightmare of her dreams, arise out in terror! Does any political economist, no matter what his creed—and admitting all the alleged data of this question, presume to say that any administration in this country can, without deep discredit, exert itself to deprive Cuba, or the Sierra Madre, of our active sympathies? Do they imagine then any administration could hope to survive such a policy? Moreover, what was the creed and what the conduct of our revolutionary chiefs? Where was Kosciasko born? Where Lafayette, the friend of Washington? Which of the colonies gave birth to Steuben?

But we weary with such arguments. We detest, from the bottom of our souls, that miserable cant—that wretched hypocrisy, in which governments are so accustomed to dress themselves, when they have neither reason nor policy with them, and when, from a want of courage or a want of principle, they dare not avow the real motives of their conduct.