best understood the art of political transplantation. She has her apoikiai and her klerouchiai; she has learned lessons from Phoenicia and Carthage and Rome. In her dependent States almost every race and language and religion is able to thrive; her administration is at home. in every latitude; she knows how to pay tribute and send missions to suzerain courts; her judges enforce the civil codes of France and Holland, and exact obedience to the laws (even to the inhuman customs) of Mahomedans and Hindoos. Yet, for all the skill and subtlety of her statecraft, Great Britain has not invariably succeeded in acclimatizing her own forms of government in the lands which have passed under her rule. In some of the oldest of her colonies, notably in the West Indies, representative institutions have been replaced by what in other settlements has been the transitory expedient of nominated councils. There may, indeed, be two opinions as to the necessity for this retrogressive step, but it is perhaps sufficiently warranted, or accounted for, by the industrial depression of the old slave-worked plantations.

Such are a few of the more evident lessons impressed upon the mind by a rapid survey of the various governments of the world-lessons which it will be convenient to remember when we are considering the constitution of each particular State in greater detail. For whatever we may think of the actual value and ultimate efficacy of popular government in one country or another, it is manifest that all countries are not equally able to turn it to the best account. In Japan a most interesting experiment is about to be tried, and there is no reason why we should be very sceptical as to its success. In Turkey and Egypt abortive attempts were made to acclimatize representative

institutions, concerning which it seemed almost absurd beforehand to anticipate anything but failure. In many other countries the same institutions are distinctly on their trial, and it is impossible to regard the effort with an equal degree of hopefulness in all cases. The tendency in some countries is towards further and more liberal developments; in other countries there is at any rate a danger of restriction and reaction. It is only by following events from year to year, and by noting the indications of success or failure as they arise, that we can retain an intelligent and comprehensive idea of the general scheme of human organization.

II. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS.

It would not be very satisfactory to set forth a bare account of the various governments of the world, unless we advanced beyond that stage to consider the government of the world as a whole, or at any rate to inquire in what sense the world has progressed towards harmonious government, and on what principles the mutual relations of States are, or are likely to be, conducted. As public law and order have grown up in a nation by the interaction of its citizens upon each other, until the nation could not exist without the observance of such law and order, so do States, which have been called the personalities of the world, produce amongst themselves an international law, and a common basis of order, without which the world would be continually at the mercy of the strongest. There are some who say that there is no exact or necessary international law, and that virtually the world is at the mercy of the strongest. But history teaches us from year to year that there is something stronger than the force of arms-that piratical and predatory nations are

constantly (though not universally) defeated, either by combinations of other States acting in diplomatic concert, or by moral conviction as the result of public opinion, or by the passive force of a spirit of nationality which refuses to be suppressed, or even by the jealousies and conflicting interests of several States, which prevent either of them from doing violence to a people otherwise defenceless.

There is, then, a law-there are at all events certain rights and guarantees, which must be founded upon underlying principles, whether these principles exist in the antecedent nature of things, or whether they are the mere expression of conclusions deduced from experience. It may be serviceable to introduce here, in brief outline, the principles of international law as they are generally accepted. It will of course be understood that wherever these principles are not generated, or justified, by the common assent of the great civilized Powers, they rest for the time on no stronger basis than the authority of the publicists who have enunciated them.

It

International law is the embodiment of principles which regulate the relations of States amongst themselves.* will perhaps be equally just to add that it has its origin in experience, which supplies motives for international conduct, based on mutual advantage and self-preservation. The rights of States, which of course precede the law, are elicited and impressed by this experience, until at length it becomes possible to define them in a code. It is no

The whole subject may be studied in Sir Robert Phillimore's "Commentaries upon International Law"; or in "Das Moderne Voelkerrecht der Civilisirten Staten" of Bluntschli; or in the enlarged French version of the same work, edited by M. Lardy. The last volume forms the basis of the following sketch.

objection to this statement to say that there is no tribunal ready for the code, and no executive sufficiently strong to insure its being respected. The principles do not depend upon their observance, nor the rights upon their codification, nor even the code upon its tribunal. If the world is at present without a legislator, at any rate it is awaiting him.

Though the Jus Gentium of Grotius was written two hundred and fifty years ago, and though Puffendorf subsequently maintained the necessity and universal applicability of in-. ternational law, the principles laid down by them and others were never formally recognized by the great European Powers. The Holy Alliance, indeed, took under its patronage certain maxims which it regarded as worthy of acceptation within the limits of Christendom. But the Holy Alliance was a sort of cousinly contract of crowned heads, and has little value as a precedent. Turkey had to wait forty-one years before it was admitted to the concert of European Powers, established in 1815. It is now usually allowed that religion neither involves nor defines the obligation to respect international law. Whilst the Holy Alliance made the limits of its system too narrow in one sense, it pushed them too far in another. Anxious to secure peace after an almost continous warfare of over half a century, the three emperors considered that the best way of attaining their object would be to defend the Christian sovereigns against their subjects; and hence the interventions in Spain and Italy, which suppressed the popular movements in those countries. The refusal of Great Britain to take part in or sanction the acts of this Alliance was due to the fact that she already discriminated between international right and the public right of particular nations, and saw that international law is properly concerned with the mutual relations of States, but

not (save by rare exception) with the internal affairs of any one State.

The suppression of the slave trade was distinctly a work of international concert, resolving its acts into law. The awakened conscience of Europe found expression at the Congress of Vienna. A generation later, Great Britain invited the Powers to agree to the right of search, which was embodied in the treaty of December 20, 1841. By this treaty, followed by an Anglo-American convention in 1842, the slave trade received its death-blow. The Russian emancipation of 1861, and the American abolition of 1865, put an end to human slavery in civilized countries, and completed one of the greatest victories hitherto achieved by international methods. Right of search, it will be observed, implies interference by one nation with the subjects of another-but only when these subjects have violated the public law of their own country. Another case of intervention, perhaps less strictly unobjectionable in its character, but manifestly justifiable in its results, is that which has been exercised by the European Powers on behalf of the Christian subjects of Turkey. The justification in this case is not so much in the maintenance of religious freedom (though this has been recognized as a legitimate concern of international law) as in the vindication of individual liberties against a Government which persistently refused to listen to the counsels of its more civilized neighbours, and in the mutual protection of these neighbours against dangers having their source in the misgoverned country.

The methods and machinery by which diplomacy now conducts the relations between State and State are not much more than two centuries old, and they apparently had their origin in the turn of Louis XIV. and his minis