According to objections 3 and 4, a guaranteed neutrality would diminish our independence without contributing to lessen our burdens for defence. The truth is, that international law as at present constituted does not permit another power to interfere under any pretext with the internal concerns of a neutral state, and therefore not with anything which affects its system of defence or its measures for preserving its neutrality. With these the neutral State, and it only, can deal. As a proof of this being so, Luxemburg was neutralized in 1867 upon condition that the strong fortress bearing that name should be demolished. But this circumstance, imperative for the general peace of Europe, shows on the other hand that guaranteeing powers do not willingly impose upon a State any serious duty of fortifying itself in order to defend its rights. Nevertheless the powers found it needful to make a supplementary clause to the protocol by which the congress concluded the neutrality of Luxemburg, whereby it was emphasized, as a matter of course, that the article respecting the destruction of the fortress of Luxemburg did not imply any sort of limitation of the right of the neutral State to maintain, or, if it chose, to improve its own works of defence. Belgium did indeed construct the great fortresses around Antwerp long after the country was neutralized. In reference to what one and another has said about the value of the subject, nothing is needed beyond the fact that neutral rights have, even in its present position, been respected in all essentials. That a neutral power must abstain from mixing itself up with the policy of other powers cannot imply a greater limitation of its right to self-regulation than that a guaranteeing power shall abstain from attacking a neutralized State or from making military alliance with it. There is certainly a limitation for both parties, as far as is necessary for adopting an intelligent union between States,--a limitation of physical force and of love of war. The neutral State has not to submit to any guardianship beyond what any man must do and does, when he subjects his passions to the control of a moral purpose.