Too much have I spoken for your patience, if not enough for the cause. But there is yet another topic, which I have reserved to the last, because logically it belongs there, or at least can be best considered in the gathered light of the previous discussion. Its immediate practical interest is great. I refer to the _Concession of Belligerent Rights_, being the first stage to independence. Great Britain led the way in acknowledging the embryo government as belligerent on sea as well as land, and by proclamation of the Queen declared neutrality between the two parties,--thus lifting an embryo, which was nothing else than animate Slavery, to equality _on sea_ as well as land with its ancient ally, the National Government. Here was a blunder, if not a crime, not merely in the alacrity with which it was done, but in doing it at all. It was followed immediately by France, and then by Spain, Holland, and Brazil. The concession of belligerent rights on land was a name and nothing more, therefore I say nothing about it. But the concession of _belligerent rights on the ocean_ is of widely different character, and the two reasons against the recognition of independence are equally applicable to this concession: _first_, the embryo government has no _maritime_ or _naval_ belligerent rights _de facto_, and, _secondly_, an embryo of Rebel Slavery cannot have the character _de facto_ which would justify the concession of _maritime_ or _naval_ belligerence; so that, were the concession vindicated on the first ground, it must fail on the second. * * * * * The concession of _ocean_ belligerence is a letter of license from consenting powers to every Slavemonger cruiser, or rather it is the countersign of these powers to the commission of every such cruiser. Without such countersign the cruiser would be an outlaw, with no right to enter a foreign port. The declaration of belligerence imparts legal competence, and the right to testify by flag and arms. Without such competence there would be no flag and no right to bear arms on the ocean. Burke sententiously describes it as an “intermediate treaty _which puts rebels in possession of the Law of Nations with regard to war_.”[142] And this is plainly true.