The available Foreign Office papers disclose no evidence of any further action that may have been taken in this matter .sx No proclamation of neutrality appears to have been issued , and it is probable that the course of events made it unnecessary for any decision to be taken .sx In 1865 the Spaniards finally abandoned their attempt to subdue the insurrection , and San Domingo resumed its status as an independent republic .sx SECTION IX :sx SPAIN , 1874 .sx The general principles of the doctrine of belligerent recognition were fully established by the experience of the American Civil War , and they are clearly set forth in the opinion of the Law Officers given to Lord Stanley in 1867 and printed at the beginning of this chapter .sx For this reason it seems unnecessary to multiply examples of the application of these principles in the nineteenth century .sx But the question of belligerent recognition is closely connected with that of recognition in general , for in many cases the recognition of insurgents is merely the first step towards the de jure recognition of a new state or government .sx The problems presented by the Spanish disorders of the years 1868 to 1875 have already been discussed in the previous chapter , and for this .sx reason it seems desirable to print a short extract dealing with the question of the recognition of the Carlists as belligerents .sx On the 13th February , 1874 , Lord Granville sent a telegram to Mr. Layard at Madrid , the draft in the Record Office being marked as " Seen by Mr. Gladstone and the Lord " :sx - .sx It will be recalled that at this time the Serrano regime was still unrecognised , and Granville did not recognise it until September 1874 .sx In point of fact the proposed blockade never took effect .sx On the 14th February , Comyn , the unofficial Spanish agent in London , forwarded to the Foreign Office a copy of the blockade decree , and on the same day the Spanish Consulate-General caused a notice of the blockade to be inserted in The Times .sx No official notice of the decree was published by the British government .sx On the 20th February the Spanish government .sx announced that the operation of the blockade would be .sx postponed to the 5th March , and on the 2nd March a .sx further decree announced that it was " suspended until .sx further " .sx Actually the project was abandoned .sx The facts summarised in the last two paragraphs are .sx taken from a Foreign Office memorandum prepared by Hertslet some years later .sx The text of this memorandum , which deals historically with the right of a state to blockade its own coasts , will be printed in a later volume under the title " Blockade" .sx SECTION X :sx END OF BELLIGERENT RECOGNITION .sx The recognition of insurgents as belligerents is necessarily a provisional measure , and its continuance must depend upon the course of the military operations .sx If the rebellion succeeds , a time must come when other states are presented with an accomplished fact and must then consider whether they are prepared to admit the new state or government into the full comity of nations .sx On the other hand , it is equally true that the definite military failure of the insurgents may present other states with a situation in which the conditions that compelled them to concede belligerent recognition no longer exist .sx The question of the withdrawal of recognition is purely one of policy considered in the light of existing facts and for our purpose it may be sufficiently illustrated by a couple of papers dealing with the close of the .sx American Civil War .sx Lee and his army surrendered to Grant at Appomattox on the 9th April , 1865 , and on the 26th Johnson signed a convention by which he surrendered to Sherman the Confederate forces under his command .sx Jefferson Davis and the civil members of his government for a few weeks professed to consider the possibility of further resistance , but on the 20th May they were captured at Irwinville in Georgia .sx The remaining Confederate armies surrendered to their respective opponents at various times in the month of May .sx On the 16th May Sir Frederick Bruce wrote to Lord Russell from Washington in the following terms :sx - While this letter was on its way to England the Foreign Office consulted the Law Officers ( Palmer , Collier , and Phillimore ) , and on the 20th May they rendered an opinion giving the legal grounds for the withdrawal of belligerent recognition .sx The termination of the matter was not wholly satisfactory , for the United States did not adopt the procedure suggested of formally renouncing their claim to exercise belligerent rights at sea .sx On the 2nd June Russell wrote to Seward acknowledging the President's proclamation and saying that Great Britain now considered the war to be de facto at an end .sx Confederate warships would therefore no longer be entitled to belligerent privileges on admission to British ports , but warships already in port would , " for the last " , be granted the privilege of a twenty-four hours' start before pursuit by a Federal ship from the same port .sx Seward accepted this reservation under protest , and refused to grant the usual peace-time facilities to British warships until complete reciprocity was established .sx On the 23rd June the blockade was terminated by proclamation of the President , and the normal relations of peace were fully restored in October .sx SECTION XI :sx LEGAL CONSEQUENCE OF BELLIGERENT RECOGNITION .sx Once the decision has been taken to recognise an insurgent government as belligerent , the legal consequences of the decision are not limited to the concession of belligerent rights .sx So long as it maintains an independent existence , the insurgent government is considered to have all the normal rights and liabilities of a state .sx Its legal position is not merely that of a military occupant , as defined by the Hague Convention No .sx IV of 1907 .sx The following papers deal with various matters incidental to the recognition of belligerency .sx The first is an opinion submitted by the King's Advocate ( Termer ) to Palmerston on the 29th July , 1834 , and relates to the Peruvian insurrection then in progress .sx Lima was in .sx possession of the " de facto " and Callao of the " legitimate " government .sx Jenner advises in effect that customs duties could not be levied twice upon the same goods at the port of Callao , but that goods which had paid tax at Callao might be taxed again upon transmission to Lima .sx With this we may compare the following opinion ( 8th June , 1861 ) , rendered by Harding to Russell with regard to the revolution in New Grenada .sx In this case the rebels held the coast , the " legitimate " government remaining in possession of the capital .sx The opinion deals with various matters , and it will be noted that Harding denies the right of the insurgent government to annul the contracts entered into by its predecessor .sx Another opinion of Harding's ( 14th April , 1858 ) is interesting for its clear enunciation of the principle that an insurgent government , whose belligerent status has been recognised , is entitled " to exercise complete sovereign authority within the territory actually within its " .sx The letter is addressed to Lord Malmesbury and deals with an insurrection in San Domingo .sx The following paper illustrates again the principle that a government which has been granted belligerent recognition is bound to conform to the accepted rules of international law .sx The opinion , which is dated 21st September , 1863 , and signed by Atherton , Palmer , and Phillimore , relates to the attempt of the Confederate government during the American Civil War to enforce conscription upon British subjects .sx In December , 1863 , Mr. Crawford , the British Consul-General in Cuba , was instructed to go to Richmond and protest against the enforcement of the Confederate conscription laws against British subjects .sx He was further instructed to protest against the violation of British neutrality involved in the use of British ports for the building and equipment of Confederate vessels of war .sx Although the government to which belligerent recognition has been granted is entitled to exercise all rights of a state during the period of civil war , the final determination of its rights and liabilities must necessarily depend upon the issue of the conflict .sx If a new and .sx permanent state emerges from the struggle , that state must then accept full responsibility for the acts done by the belligerent government during the period of hostilities .sx This principle is illustrated by the following opinion given by Atherton and Palmer on the 12th July , 1862 .sx In the course of the American Civil War numerous cases arose in which it became necessary to insist that the Confederate government should accept the general principles of state responsibility .sx Of these cases it will be sufficient to cite one .sx In March , 1861 , the master of a Southern schooner kidnapped a young negro named John Stirrup in the territorial waters of the Bahamas .sx Stirrup was sold into slavery in Georgia , but seems to have subsequently escaped and presented a claim for compensation through the Colonial Office .sx Upon this case the Law Officers ( Atherton , Palmer , and Phillimore ) advised Russell as follows ( 12th September , 1863) :sx - .sx As we have already seen , President Davis refused to acknowledge the authority of consuls in Confederate territory accredited to the United States , and Russell , acting on the advice of the Law Officers , acknowledged his right to cancel their exequaturs .sx But the Confederate government appears to have been willing to allow these officers to remain at their posts , and to correspond with them informally , provided that they received their instructions , not from Lord Lyons at Washington , but directly from the British government .sx CHAPTER V .sx SUCCESSION OF STATES AND .sx GOVERNMENTS .sx SECTION I :sx GENERAL .sx THE problem of state succession is generally recognised to be one of the most complex and difficult problems of international law .sx In the standard textbooks the treatment of this question is usually too brief to be satisfactory , for the complexity and variety of the problems which arise in practice are such as to preclude accurate and complete analysis within narrow limits .sx Furthermore , the practice of nations gives evidence of much inconsistency , and until practice becomes reasonably well settled it is premature to expect any scientific doctrinal analysis .sx Questions of succession arise out of the re-groupings which from time to time take place within the family of nations , and these re-groupings may be approximately classified under five heads .sx The first class of cases consists of those in which one state is wholly absorbed in and identified with another , whether by subjugation or by voluntary cession .sx In these cases the annexing state retains its identity and continuity , while the annexed state wholly disappears .sx Secondly , a number of independent states may federate or unite into one , in which case , although the original units have lost their international identity , the resulting federation or union forms a new international person and cannot be identified with any one of its component members .sx Thirdly , a portion of one state may split off from another , but the proportionsof the two are such that the identity of the original state is preserved , while a new unit is formed out of a part of its former territory .sx Fourthly , the disruption of a state may be such that its original identity completely disappears , and each of the states into which it has been divided enters as a new person into the international family .sx Lastly , questions of succession may arise in cases where there has been merely a transfer of territory from one state to another , but no creation or extinction of any international unit .sx All these are cases of what we may call re-grouping or distribution .sx One more problem remains the problem of succession as between two governments in the same state .sx In practice this only causes difficulty in cases where the change of government has been effected by violence or revolution .sx Each of these circumstances may affect the solution of any given problem , but the matter is further complicated by the diversity of the subject-matter .sx This may relate to treaty obligations , territorial " servitudes " and other rights , public debts , private rights of property , the nationality of individuals , etc. In the present state of international practice it is quite impossible to codify all these questions into some neat and completely consistent doctrinal statement .sx To attempt to do so is to commit the error of confounding the law as it is with the law as it ought .sx to be .sx