Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/440

412 412 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. drawn out by the frequent enlistments of British subjects in the Greek revolution. The date of the proclamation was September 30, 1825, four years after the declaration of independence by Greece. " Whereas the Ottoman Porte, a power at peace with His Majesty, is and has been for some years past engaged in a con- test with the Greeks, in which contest His Majesty has observed a strict and impartial neutrality," and now certain British subjects were threatening to enlist under the Greek flag, they were warned not to take service with either party.^ The Turkish government remonstrated on the ground that — " The British government allowed to the Greeks a belligerent char- acter, and observed that it appeared to forget that to subjects in rebellion no national character could properly belong. But the British government informed Mr. Stratford Canning that ' the character of belligerency was not so much a principle as a fact ; that a certain degree of force and con- sistency acquired by any mass of population engaged in war entitled that population to be treated as a belligerent, and even if their title were ques- tionable, rendered it the interest well understood of all civilized nations so to treat them ; for what was the alternative ? A power or a community (call it which you will) which was at war with another, and which covered the sea with its cruisers, must either be acknowledged as a belligerent or dealt with as a pirate ; ' which latter character as applied to the Greeks was loudly disclaimed." ^ The next recognition by Great Britain of a foreign civil war was on May 13, 1861, when the Confederate States were recognized as belligerents. "Whereas hostilities have unhappily commenced between the government of the United States of America and certain States styling themselves the Confederate States of America, and whereas we . . . have declared our royal determination to maintain a strict and impartial neutrality in the contest between the said contend- ing parties," all subjects of the Queen were warned to observe a strict neutrality, and not to enter the service of either party, and to respect a blockade lawfully established by either party of the ports of the other.^ 1 12 Br. & For. St. Pap. 525. 2 Quoted in Lord Russell's speech, May 6, 1861, Hansard, vol. 162, p. 1566. I find it in Bemis, Rebel Belligerency, p. 6. 8 51 Br. & For. St. Pap. 165.