their emissary to be treated as a spy.' A spy is a person sent by one belligerent to gain secret information of the forces and defenses of the other, to be used for hostile purposes. According to practice, he may use deception, under the penalty of being lawfully hanged if detected. To give this odious name and character to a confidential agent of a neutral power, bearing the commission of his country, and sent for a purpose fully warranted by the law of nations, is not only to abuse language, but also to confound all just ideas, and to announce the wildest and most extravagant notions, such as certainly were not to have been expected in a grave diplomatic paper; and the President directs the undersigned to say to Mr. Hülsemann that the American Government would regard such an imputation upon it by the cabinet of Austria, as that it employs spies, and that in a quarrel none of its own, as distinctly offensive, if it did not presume, as it is willing to presume, that the word used in the original German was not of equivalent meaning with 'spy' in the English language, or that in some other way the employment of such an opprobrious term may be explained. Had the Imperial Government of Austria subjected Mr. Mann to the treatment of a spy, it would have placed itself without the pale of civilization, and the cabinet of Vienna may be assured that if it had carried, or attempted to carry, any such lawless purpose into effect in the case of an authorized agent of this Government the spirit of the people of this country would have demanded immediate hostilities to be waged by the utmost exertion of the power of the Republic— military and naval. "Mr. Hülsemann proceeds to remark that this extremely painful incident, therefore, might have been passed over without any written evidence being left on our part in the archives of the United States had not General Taylor thought proper to revive the whole subject by communicating to the Senate, in his message of the 18th [28th] of last March, the instructions with which Mr. Mann had been furnished on the occasion of his mission to Vienna. The publicity which has been given to that document has placed the Imperial Government under the necessity of entering a formal protest, through its official representative, against the proceedings of the American Government lest that Government should construe our silence into approbation, or toleration even, of the principles which appear to have guided its action and the means it has adopted.' The undersigned reasserts to Mr. Hülsemann and to the cabinet of Vienna, and in the presence of the world, that the steps taken by President Taylor, now protested against by the Austrian Government, were warranted by the law of nations and agreeable to the usages of civilized states. With respect to the communication of Mr. Mann's instructions to the Senate, and the language in which they are couched, it has already been said-and Mr. Hülsemann must feel the justice of the remark-that these are domestic affairs, in reference to which the Government of the United States can not admit the slightest responsibility to the Government of His Imperial Majesty. No state deserving the appellation of independent can permit the language in which it may instruct its own officers in the discharge of their duties. to itself to be called in question under any pretext by a foreign power; but even if this were not so, Mr. Hülsemann is in error in stating that the Austrian Government is called an iron rule' in Mr. Mann's instructions. That phrase is not found in the paper, and in respect to the honorary epithet bestowed in Mr. Mann's instructions on the late chief of the revolutionary government of Hungary, Mr. Hülsemann will bear in mind that the Government of the United States can not justly be expected, in a confidential communication to its own agent, to withhold from an individual an epithet of distinction of which a great part of the world thinks him worthy merely on the ground that his own Government regards him as a rebel. At an early stage of the American Revolution, while Washington was considered by the English Government as a rebel chief, he was regarded on the continent of Europe as an illustrious hero; but the undersigned will take the liberty of bringing the cabinet of Vienna into the presence of its own predecessors, and of citing for its consideration the conduct of the Imperial Government itself. In the year 1777 the war of the American Revolution was raging all over these United States. England was prosecuting that war with a most resolute determination, and by the exertion of all her military means to the fullest extent. Germany was at that time at peace with England, and yet an agent of that Congress, which was looked upon by England in no other light than that of a body in open rebellion, was not only received with great respect by the embassador of the Empress Queen at Paris, and by the minister of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who afterwards mounted the imperial throne, but resided in Vienna for a considerable time-not, indeed, officially acknowledged, but treated with courtesy and respect, and the Emperor suffered himself to be persuaded by that agent to exert himself to prevent the German powers from furnishing troops to England to enable her to suppress the rebellion in America. Neither Mr. Hülsemann nor the cabinet of Vienna it is presumed will undertake to say that anything said or done by this Government in regard to the recent war between Austria and Hungary is not borne out, and much more than borne out, by this example of the imperial court. It is believed that the Emperor, Joseph the Second, habitually spoke in terms of respect and admiration of the character of Washington, as he is known to have done of that of Franklin, and he deemed it no infraction of neutrality to inform himself of the progress of the Revolutionary struggle in America, nor to express his deep sense of the merits and the talents of those illustrious men who were then leading their country to independence and renown. The undersigned may add that in 1781 the courts of Russia and Austria proposed a diplo matic congress of the belligerent powers, to which the commissioners of the United States should be admitted. "Mr. Hülsemann thinks that in Mr. Mann's instructions improper expressions are introduced in regard to Russia, but the undersigned has no reason to suppose that Russia herself is of that opinion. The only observation made in those instructions about Russia is that she 'has chosen to assume an attitude of interference, and her immense preparations for invading and reducing the Hungarians to the rule of Austria, from which they desire to be released, gave so serious a character to the contest as to awaken the most painful solicitude in the minds of Americans.' The undersigned can not but consider the Austrian cabinet as unnecessarily susceptible in looking upon language like this as a 'hostile demonstration.' If we remember that it was addressed by the Government to its own agent, and has received publicity only through a communication from one Department of the American Government to another, the language quoted must be deemed moderate and inoffensive. The comity of nations would hardly forbid its being addressed to the two imperial powers themselves. It is scarcely neces sary for the undersigned to say that the relations of the United States with Russia have always been of the most friendly kind, and have never been deemed by either party to require any compromise of their peculiar views upon subjects of domestic or foreign policy or the true origin of governments. At any rate, the fact that Austria in her contest with Hungary had an intimate and faithful ally in Russia can not alter the real nature of the question between Austria and Hungary, nor in any way affect the neutral rights and duties of the Government of the United States or the justifiable sympathies of the American people. It is, indeed, easy to conceive that favor toward struggling Hungary would be not diminished, but increased, when it was seen that the arm of Austria was strengthened and upheld by a power whose assistance threatened to be, and which in the end proved to be, overwhelmingly destructive of all her hopes. "Toward the conclusion of his note Mr. Hülsemann remarks that 'if the Government of the United States were to think it proper to take an indirect part in the political movements of Europe, American policy would be exposed to acts of retaliation and to certain inconveniences which would not fail to affect the commerce and industry of the two hemispheres.' As to this possible fortune-this hypothetical retaliation-the Government and people of the United States are quite willing to take their chances and abide their destiny. Taking neither a direct nor an indirect part in the domestic or intestine movements of Europe, they have no fear of events of the nature alluded to by Mr. Hülsemann. It would be idle now to discuss with Mr. Hülsemann those acts of retaliation which he imagines may possibly take place at some indefinite time hereafter. Those questions will be discussed when they arise, and Mr. Hülsemann and the cabinet at Vienna may rest assured that, in the meantime, while performing with strict and exact fidelity all their neutral duties, nothing will deter either the Government or the people of the United States from exercising, at their own discretion, the rights belonging to them as an independent nation, and of forming and expressing their own opinions, freely and at all times, upon the great political events which may transpire among the civilized nations of the earth. Their own institutions stand upon the broadest principles of civil liberty, and believing those principles and the fundamental laws in which they are embodied to be eminently favorable to the prosperity of statesto be, in fact, the only principles of government which meet the demands of the present enlightened age-the President has perceived with great satisfaction that, in the constitution recently introduced into the Austrian Empire, many of these great principles are recognized and applied, and he cherishes a sincere wish that they may produce the same happy effects throughout his Austrian Majesty's ertensive dominions that they have done in the United States." Mr. Webster, Sec. of State, to Mr. Hülsemann, Dec. 21, 1850, S. Ex. Doc. 43, 31 Cong. 1 Sess.; Br. & For. State Papers, XXXVIII. (1849, 1850) 273; Webster's Works, VI. 491. A fictitious reply to the note of Mr. Webster, said to have been made by Mr. Mr. Rhodes criticises the note as "hardly more than a stump speech under diplo- "As regards the government which has recently been set up by the white settlers in the name of King Thakombau [in Fiji], I have in another dispatch informed you that as long as this newly constituted government exercises actual authority you should deal with it as a de facto government, so far as concerns the districts which may acknowledge its rule, but that Her Majesty's Government are not prepared to give any opinion as to the propriety of formally recognizing it without much fuller information as to its character and prospects." (Earl of Kimberly, Colonial Secretary, to the Earl of Belmore, November 3, 1871, C. 509, March, 1872, 2.) Unofficial communi cations. 2. OF NEW GOVERNMENTS. § 73. That the recognition of a government is not necessarily to be implied from the fact of holding communication, whether oral or written, with it, is a principle of which numerous illustrations may be found in the precedents heretofore discussed, in connection with the recognition of new governments; and the same principle has been seen to be applicable to intercourse with the authorities of new states claiming to be recognized as independent. In the case of new governments, however, a situation usually exists which does not arise in the case of new states. In the latter case special agents are, where there is occasion for them, employed, since the dispatch of a minister to a new state is one of the acts from which its recognition is necessarily implied; but, in the case of a new government, the question of recognition as a rule practically concerns only the powers that have already recognized the state and established regular diplomatic relations with it. There has thus arisen a certain right of diplomatic representation; and the sending of a new minister or the retention of an old one, while it implies continued recognition of the state, does not constitute a recognition of the new government, so long as there is no formal presentation of credentials and communications bear only an unofficial character. This distinction is tacitly assumed, if not expressed, in some of the utterances quoted in this section. Venezuela. "This Government has, and it must insist on, the right to determine for itself when new authorities, established in a foreign state, can claim from it a formal recognition of them as an established power. The regulation of the exercise of that right upon principles of justice and according to facts established, with an absence of all favor and caprice, is hardly more important to the universal interests of society than it is to those of the United States themselves. "This Government has, at the same time under the law of nations and by treaty, a clear right to have its properly appointed agents residing in Venezuela, although the authorities with which it has heretofore |