treated as enemies. Formerly barbarous tribes were conquered under grant from the Pope to make Christians of them. Now great nations do not scruple to seize on islands or coasts with no sufficient pretext, or go to war because a nation of the East, in the exercise of its sovereignty, declines to trade with them. And when war breaks out in such cases, there is no obligation acknowledged to abide by the ordinary rules of humanity, or scarcely of justice. When Constantine was stormed, in 1837, by the French, besides the ordinary pillage of property by the troops, a scientific commission robbed the inhabitants of all the Arabic manuscripts they could lay their hands on.

No cure can be effectual for this evil, until a deeper moral sense and feeling of brotherhood shall dictate rules, humane and just, by which the vessels of civilized nations shall govern their intercourse with the weak and the barbarous parts of the world. Nor even then will lawless crews abstain from outrages, which will be avenged on the next ship, and thus new fuel be applied to kindle up the ferocity of savages. And for every outrage there will be a plea, which will prevail, because the savages cannot tell their own story. We have already remarked (§ 136), that rules of intercourse with such races of men cannot be conformed to our international code, and that punishments must often be summary with them, to be understood. But is justice, is humanity, to be thrown off, as being conventional? Can there be a doubt that, if all the ships of Christian states had dealt kindly and righteously with the islands of the sea, long ago they would have been far more open to Christianity and civilization than they are now.

3. No umpire in controversies.

$ 205.

Another obvious defect of international law, is its weakness in cases of controversy, arising from the sovereignty of nations, and from the fact that they have no national umpire to whom, in entire confidence, they can refer their disputes. It has, indeed, often happened, that a point of controversy has been referred to an arbitrator chosen for the occasion, and that thus wars have been prevented. But there

seem to be difficulties in such a course, owing either to the arbitrator's imperfect acquaintance with the subject-matter referred to him, or to his inclination to "split the difference,' whether through a desire to stand well with both parties, or through his inability to come to a sure decision.

It has been urged with great zeal by benevolent persons, anxious to put an end to war, that a congress of A congress to setnations,—an international court,—can and ought the disputes. to be instituted, to which all controversies should be submitted, and whose decisions would be, by the pledged word of the parties represented, final. There are great difficulties to be overcome, before such a court, with deputies from great and small states, under various forms of government, could be constituted with the requisite powers; and probably others no less formidable would attend its working, and the execution,--by force if necessary,-of its decisions. If such a court or congress could be created, we should hail the event as a sign of the peaceful spirit which was abroad, and which would give the body very little to do.

§ 206.

between nations.

A plan to prevent war was proposed by the Abbé St. Pierre, in 1729, in his " Abregé du projet de paix perpe- Projects of peace tuelle,” of which, as well as of other similar plans, he St. Pierre's. an extended account is given by Dr. Wheaton, in his history of the law of nations.* St. Pierre contemplated a perpetual alliance, or league, of which the states of Europe should be members, having in all, either singly or in groups, twenty votes. The allies should renounce the right of war, and submit their differences to the arbitration of the general assembly of the league, whose decision, if it carried three fourths of the votes, should be final. If one of the allies should refuse to abide by such decision, or make treaties in contravention of it,

* For St. Pierre's, comp. Part 2, § 17; for Bentham's, Part 3, § 21; for Kant's, Part 4, §§ 36, 37. Comp. also Kant, "zum ewigen Frieden," in his works, vol. 5, pp. 411-466 (ed. Leipz. 1838); and Ladd, in Prize Essays on a Congress of Nations, pp. 509-638. (Boston, 1840.)

or make preparations for war, the allies should arm against the refractory member with the view of reducing it to obedience. The representatives of the league were to be empowered to pass, by a plurality of votes, all laws necessary to carry the objects of the alliance into effect, but entire unanimity of the allies was required for changes in the fundamental articles of their confederation.

2. Jeremy Bentham's.

About the year 1789, and just before the great revolutionary outburst in Europe, Jeremy Bentham sketched a plan of a general congress, which was long afterwards published. The nations were first to be led to reduce and fix their military establishments in some fair ratio, and also to abandon their colonies, for which so much blood had been shed. Then a congress was to be established, consisting of two deputies from each state, the agency of which should consist in reporting and circulating its decrees, and in placing refractory states under the ban of Europe. Bentham was willing that a fixed contingent should be furnished by the several states for the purpose of enforcing the decrees of the court, but thought that public opinion and a free press would prevent the necessity of such an extreme measure.

3. Kant's.

In 1795, Immanuel Kant published a short essay inscribed "zum ewigen Frieden,"-" to perpetual peace. Some of his preliminary articles were the following: that no state should be merged by inheritance, exchange, sale or gift in another state; that standing armies should in time cease; that no state debts should be incurred with reference to external politics; that no state should interfere with force in the affairs of another. Then follow the definitive articles, the first of which is, that every state shall have a republican constitution, or one in which all the citizens share in the power of making laws, and deciding on questions of peace and war. The next is, that international law shall be based upon a confederation of free states; and finally, there is to be a citizenship of the world, limited to the notion of the free access of all men to, and their residence in any state upon the earth's surface. The congress which Kant proposes is not to be indissoluble, but is

to be held and to be dissolved according to the pleasure of the members.*

Wm. Ladd's

For the advantages and the feasibleness, according to the views of the authors, of a general congress of nations, the prize essays may be consulted, which essay. were called forth by premiums offered by friends of the American Peace Society, especially the sixth essay written by Mr. William Ladd.

With regard to all such plans for securing perpetual peace, we must take into account (1.) the danger of dissolution, owing to the separate interests and party-feelings of the members; (2.) the danger that great states would control the congress, and make it their instrument; (3.) that if the congress had no means of enforcing its decrees, they would not be respected, and if they had, a general war would break out instead, as it might be, of a particular one.†

§ 207.

What, then, are the sanctions of international law? They are, first, within each separate state municipal laws Sanctions of interconfirming it, and making penal its violation. Such national law. are the laws of the United States which protect the persons of ambassadors, or prohibit offences against neutral rights, and the like. (Comp. § 165.) Secondly, the moral sentiment of each and all the states which have consented to the existing international law. This is a considerable and an increasing force, one which comes into the recesses of palaces and cabinets; and which sometimes speaks in threatening tones against gross wrongs. Thirdly, war. Great as the evil of war is, it is not in the existing condition of mankind the greatest. It would have been a greater evil for the states of Europe to have surrendered their independence to Napoleon, than it was to recover it by the sacrifice of untold treasure and countless

* Comp. Wheaton's Hist. p. 754, and Kant's Rechtlehre, § 61, the end of the treatise.

+ Comp. Bluntschli, Staatsr. II. 18.

lives. Nations are reformed by the sobering influences of war. Nations are exalted by contending in war for something which is good. Let not this dread sanction, then, be thought to be of no use. War often cures the internal maladies which peace has fostered.

Actual progress of intern. law.

$208.

But war often for a time exhausts and demoralizes, it sometimes perpetuates injustice, it is occasionally undertaken against the clearest provisions of the law of nations. Has, then, this law of nations, amid the violations of its code, on the whole made progress? To this question a negative answer can be given only by those who plant their argument on gross offences rising up here and there, as we look down history, but who do not enough take into account the general strain and spirit of the age. When the question is made to embrace a large tract of time, and we search for progress between the eras while the codes of Greece and Rome were living ones, and the present day, no one can hesitate what answer to give to it. But has there been progress between the time of Grotius (1625), or the peace of Westphalia (1648), and the most modern times? An answer by a very competent authority-Dr. Wheaton-at the close of his history, sums up the principal heads of progress as follows:

"That the pacific relations among nations have been maintained by the general establishment of permanent missions, and the general recognition of the immunities of public ministers.

“Although the right of intervention to preserve the balance of power, or to prevent the dangers to which one country may be exposed by the domestic transactions of another, has been frequently assumed; yet no general rules have been discovered by which the occasions which may justify the exercise of this right, or the extent to which it may be carried, can be laid down; and that it remains, therefore, an undefined and undefinable exception to the mutual independence of nations.

"The exclusive dominion, claimed by certain powers over particular seas has been abandoned, as an obsolete pretension of barbarous times; the

* Comp. for a gloomy view of the progress of international law the article (referred to in § 3) in the Edinburgh Review, No. 156, for April, 1843.