of it is a wrongful intervention, inconsistent with just neutrality, since the obvious effect must be to encourage the insurgent party. Such has been the declared judgment of our country, and its practice, even under circumstances tempting in another direction; and such, also, was the declared judgment and practice of Great Britain with reference to Spanish America. The conclusion, then, is clear. To justify recognition, it must appear beyond doubt that _de facto_ the contest is finished, and that _de facto_ the new government is established secure within fixed limits. _These are conditions precedent_, not to be avoided without open offence to a friendly power, and open violation of that International Law which is the guardian of the world’s peace, even if there be not _another condition precedent_ which civilization in this age will require. Do you ask now if foreign powers can acknowledge our Rebel embryo as an independent nation? There is madness in the thought. Recognition accompanied by the breaking of the blockade would be war, impious war, against the United States, where Slavemongers would be the allies and Slavery the inspiration. Of all wars in history, none more accursed, none more sure to draw down upon its authors the judgment alike of God and man. But the thought of recognition, under existing circumstances, while the contest is still pending, even without any breaking of the blockade or attempted coercion, is a Satanic absurdity, hardly less impious than the other. It would assume unblushingly, that, already Rebel Slavery had succeeded in establishing an independent nation with an untroubled government and a secure conformation of territory, when, _in fact_, nothing is established, nothing untroubled, nothing secure, not even a single boundary-line, and there is no element of independence except the audacious attempt,--when, _in fact_, the conflict is still waged on numerous battle-fields, and these pretenders to independence have been driven from State to State, driven away from the Mississippi which parts them, driven back from the sea which surrounds them, and shut up in the interior or in blockaded ports, so that only by stealth can they communicate with the outward world. Any recognition of such a pretension, existing only as pretension, scouted and denied by a whole people with invincible armies and navies embattled against it, would be a mockery of truth. It would assert independence as _a fact_, when notoriously it was not _a fact_. It would be an enormous lie. Naturally a power thus guilty would expect to support the lie by arms. IV.