To ask the Nation sprung from the successful revolt of the thirteen colonies to acknowledge and act on an immoral doctrine like that, was, indeed, ingenuous--or audacious.
Whitelaw Reid
The Public Record
Whitelaw Reid was an American politician, diplomat and newspaper editor, as well as the author of Ohio in the War, a popular work of history.
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The American Commissioners pronounced it alike repugnant to common sense and menacing to liberty and civilization.
Loans for the prosecution of unjust wars will be more sharply scrutinized in the money markets of the world, and will find less ready takers, however extravagant the rates.
It may even happen that oppressing nations, in the increasing difficulty of floating such loans, will find it easier to relax the rigors of their rule and promote the orderly development of more liberal institutions among their subjects.
Far from being an encouragement, therefore, to repudiation, the American rejection of the so-called Cuban debt was a distinct contribution to international morality, and will probably furnish an important addition to International Law.
That is what a pirate could have done, and would have compelled the intervention of European governments for the protection of their own citizens.
Privateering is and remains abolished," not in International Law, but merely between the Powers that signed that clause in the Declaration of Paris in 1856.
But the greatest commercial nation, as well as the most powerful, that withheld its signature was the United States.
Obviously its adhesion to the principle would bring more weight to the general acceptance among civilized nations, which is the essential for admission in International Law, than that of all the other dissenting nations.
The moral effect of this volunteer action of the United States, with no offset of any active dissent by its opponent, becomes almost equivalent to completing that custom and assent of the civilized world which create International Law.
Practically all governments may henceforth regard privateering as under international ban, and no one of the states yet refraining from assent--Spain, Mexico, Venezuela, or China--is likely to defy the ban.
It will make an end forever of Spain in this hemisphere.