under the pretext of putting down a dangerous spirit of internal revolution and reform, as instances of the same violation of the absolute equality and independence of nations.
Every nation has an undoubted right to provide for its own safety, and to take dueprecaution against distant, as well as impending danger.[1] A rational fear is said to be a justifiable cause of war. Posse vicinum impediri, ne in suo solo, sine alia causa suaque evidenti utilitate, munimentum nobis propinquum extruat, aut aliud quid faciat, unde justa formido periculi oriatur.[2] The danger must be great, distinct and imminent, and not rest on vague and uncertain suspicion. The British government officially declared to the allied powers in 1821,[3] that no government was more prepared than their own, “to uphold the right of any state or states to interfere where their own security or essential interests were seriously endangered by the internal transactions of another state. That the assumption of the right was only to be justified by the strongest necessity, and to be limited and regulated thereby. That it could not reeeire a general and indiscriminate application to all revolutionary movements, without reference to their immediate bearing upon some particular state or states; that its excercise was an exception to general principles of the greatest value and importance, and as one that only properly grows out of the circumstances of the special case; and exceptions of this description could never, without the utmost danger, be so far reduced to rule, as to be incorporated into the ordinary diplomacy of states, or into the institutes of the law of nations.”
The limitation to the right of interference with the internal concerns of other states, wan defined in this instance with uncommon precision; and no form of civil government which a nation may think proper to prescribe for itself, can
