_Armed_ recognition is simply _Recognition by Coercion_. It is a belligerent act, constituting war, and can be vindicated only as war. No nation will undertake it, unless ready to assume all the responsibilities of war,--as in the recent cases of Greece and Belgium, not to mention the recognition of the United States by France. But an attempt, under guise of recognition, to coerce the dismemberment or partition of a country is in its nature offensive beyond ordinary war, especially when the country to be sacrificed is a republic, and the plotters against it are crowned heads. Proceeding from the consciousness of brute power, such an attempt is an insult to mankind. If armed recognition at any time can find apology, it is only _where sincerely made for the protection of Human Rights_. It would be hard to condemn that intervention which saved Greece to Freedom. _Unarmed_ recognition is where a foreign power acknowledges in some pacific form the independence of a colony or province against the claim of its original government. Although excluding all idea of _coercion_, yet it cannot be uniformly justified. * * * * * Here we are brought to that question of “time,” on which Mr. Canning so pointedly piqued himself, and to which President Jackson referred, when he suggested that “a premature recognition” might be “looked upon as justifiable cause of war.” Nothing is more clear than that recognition may be favored at one time, while it must be rejected at another. So far as it assumes to determine rights instead of facts, or to anticipate the result of a contest, it is wrongful. No nation can undertake to sit in judgment on the rights of another nation without its consent. Therefore it cannot declare that _de jure_ a colony or province is _entitled_ to independence, but, from the necessity of the case, and that international intercourse may not fail, it must ascertain the facts, carefully and wisely, and, on the actual evidence, it may declare that _de facto_ the colony or province appears _to be in possession_ of independence,--which means, first, that the original government is dispossessed beyond the possibility of recovery, and, secondly, that the new government has achieved a reasonable stability, with fixed limits, giving assurance of solid power. All this is simply fact and nothing more. But just in proportion as a foreign nation anticipates the fact, or imagines the fact, or substitutes its own passions for the fact, it transcends the well-defined bounds of International Law. Without the fact of independence, positive and fixed, there is nothing but a claim. Now nothing is clearer than, that, while the terrible litigation is still pending, and the trial by battle, to which appeal is made, remains undecided, _the fact of independence cannot exist_. There is only a paper independence, which, though reddened with blood, is no better than a paper empire or a paper blockade; and any pretended recognition