(11) When the Senate shall deliberate upon anything pressing and imperative for the security of the Society, either to prevent or quell sedition, the question may be decided by a majority of votes provisionally, and, before it is deliberated upon, they shall begin by deciding, by majority, whether the matter is imperative.

(12) None of the eleven fundamental Articles above-named shall be in any point altered, without the UNANIMOUS consent of all the members; but as for the other Articles, the Society may always, by three-fourths of the votes, add or diminish, for the common good, whatever it shall think fit.

7

The good Abbé was anxious lest England should anticipate France. "I have an inexpressible dread," he said, "lest human reason should go faster at London than at Paris, where, for the present, demonstrated truths have more difficulty in embodying themselves into institutions." The Abbé's friend, Cardinal Fleury (then Bishop of Fréjus), did not share this fear. When the Abbé's plan was submitted to him he said, "You have forgotten the most essential article that of sending forth a troop of missionaries to persuade the hearts of princes and induce them to accept your views." 8

7 William Maccall, "The Abbé de Saint-Pierre," in Foreign Biographies, Vol. I, p. 125.

8 Ibid., p. 119.

Leibnitz, in 1715, published a paper on the Abbé's project. He notes that "there was no provision for the hearing of the complaints of subjects against their sovereigns." Rousseau, writing in 1756, raises the same objection: "It is impossible to guarantee the prince against the rebellion of his subjects without at the same time securing the subjects against the tyranny of the prince; . . . without this, the Federation could not possibly endure. And I ask whether there is in the whole world a single Sovereign who, finding himself thus bridled forever in his most cherished designs, would endure without indignation the very thought of seeing himself forced to be just not only with the foreigner, but even with his own subjects?" 10 Jeremy Bentham, writing between 1786 and 1789, prepared a plan for a universal and perpetual peace, which called for limited armaments and emancipation of distant colonies, and provided for a "common court of judicature" which, apparently, was to be both a court and a congress. While the decisions of this court or congress were not directly supported by coercive power, Bentham relied upon the force of public opinion

• Introduction to William Ladd's Essay on a Congress of Nations, by James Brown Scott, p. xxix; cf. Darby's International Tribunals, pp. 98 ff.

10 Jean Jacques Rousseau, A Lasting Peace, translated by C. E. Vaughan, p. 96.

to bring about compliance with the judgments of the court and "contemplated that as a last resort" troops might be furnished by the several States."1

Rousseau evidently believed that Henry IV might have carried out his design: “A war, destined to be the end of all wars, was about to usher in eternal peace, when a deed, the horror of which is only increased by its mystery, came to quench for ever the last hope of the world. The blow which cut short the days of this good king also plunged Europe back into ceaseless wars, of which she can now never hope to see the end." 12 Edward Everett Hale also lamented that the plan of Henry IV was never tested. Writing in 1871, in the shadow of the Franco-Prussian War, he says: "It was to have made real, perhaps for centuries, the dying prayer of the Saviour of the World, that 'they all may be one'; and, at the blow of a crazed fanatic this hope vanished for wellnigh three centuries." 13

Henry IV was an able and inspiring leader, with a well-trained army and a strong war-chest. One may, nevertheless, be permitted to doubt

11 The Works of Jeremy Bentham, edited by John Bowring, Part VIII, pp. 546-560; cf. also Darby's International Tribunals, pp. 146-148.

12 Rousseau, op. cit., pp. 110-111.

18 The Great Design of Henry IV, edited by E. D. Mead, p. 87.

whether his design could ever have been carried out, or whether, if it had succeeded, it would not have meant the retarding of the world. It would be hard to-day to justify the division of Europe along the lines then contemplated, especially as the people of the world were to be placed in a religious strait-jacket upon the expressed principle that "there is nothing in all respects so pernicious as a liberty of belief." 14 Moreover, if Austria and Spain had accepted the offered bribe of American territory, Virginia and Massachusetts, which were then awaiting the Cavalier and the Puritan, would have been dedicated to seventeenth-century Spain. It would have been a high price to pay even for peace.

It is idle to speculate now as to whether or no Henry IV could have made a permanent peace by his plan. We do have, however, the record of another powerful prince who believed in the Great Design, and who tried to put it into effect. And this brings us to a consideration of the attempted Confederation of Europe after 1815.15

14 The Great Design of Henry IV, p. 22.

15 The contributions of Kant to the solution of the problems of war and peace are dealt with below in Chap. VIII.

32

BIBLIOGRAPHY

W. E. DARBY, International Tribunals. Fourth edi

tion, 1904.

IMMANUEL KANT, Perpetual Peace, edited by M. Campbell Smith, Introduction.

WILLIAM LADD, Essay on a Congress of Nations, edited by James Brown Scott, Introduction. WALTER ALISON PHILLIPS, The Confederation of Europe, Chapter I, pp. 3-40.

JOHN BASSETT MOORE, "The Peace Problem," Columbia University Quarterly, June, 1916; reprinted in the North American Review, July

1916

SIR WILLIAM COLLINS, "A League of Nations,” in Publications of the American Association for International Conciliation, January, 1919, pp. 36-54.

L. OPPENHEIM, The League of Nations and Its Problems, First Lecture.

J. H. ROSE, Nationality in Modern History, Lecture X.

RAMSAY MUIR, Nationalism and Internationalism. A. F. POLLARD, The League of Nations in History. OGG and BEARD, National Governments and the World War, Chapter XXVIII.