reconciliation, there seems to be reasonable certainty that most countries will welcome proposals for treaties of the general character urged in the preceding pages. France and the British Dominions present the most formidable obstacles and the powers of Section 317 will be put upon their mettle in dealing with these extreme cases of commercial individualism and pronounced illiberality.

The Economic Commission of the International Economic Conference held at Genoa in 1922 considered that the peace of the world depended upon the restoration of the commercial treaties which before the World War united the peoples of many lands in a customs system involving equality of treatment, and also upon the resumption of the methods that were followed in the conclusion of those treaties. If any degree of truth is to be conceded to this conclusion, the end in view would seem to justify the most courageous and persistent application of every legitimate means to the advancement of the new American commercial policy and a reconciliation with it of the treaty systems of all countries.

CHAPTER XII

INTERNATIONAL ConferencES AND CONVENTIONS

72. LIMITATIONS OF BI-LATERAL AGREEMENTS

With reference to the celebrated treaty of 1860 between England and France, usually designated as the Cobden Treaty, Gladstone is quoted as saying:

It is the fact that, in concluding that Treaty, we did not give to one a privilege which we withheld from another, but that our Treaty with France was, in fact, a treaty with the world, and wide are the consequences which engagements of that kind carry in their train.1

There can be little doubt that the adoption by the countries of the world generally of unconditional most-favored-nation treaties with all the others would result in a system of fair and equal treatment of commerce which would indeed knit the world together in a sense similar to that in which two countries are bound by their mutual treaty engagements. The Cobden Treaty, as has already been shown,2 led to the adoption of treaties the provisions of which, generalized under the most-favored-nation clause, spread such a system over Europe. Stability of commerce and stimulation of exchange were the result. The policy expressed in Section 317 of the American Tariff Act of 1922 aims at the creationso far as bi-lateral treaties to which the United States is a party can create it-of a world-wide system of a similar kind.

1 Morley, John, The Life of Richard Cobden, vol. ii, p. 345. 'Subdivisions 25(c) and 59, supra.

523]

313

Granted the success of this policy, however, and its full adoption by all other countries, so that an interlacing system of unconditional most-favored-nation agreements would apply to all commerce, there would nevertheless remain unsolved certain important problems of commercial equality and facility: no system of bi-lateral treaties can approximate the advantages of complete uniformity, simplicity and certainty which would be possessed by a single universal convention to which all countries were parties. Moreover, there are other connected problems-such as the interpretation of the language of treaties and the properly recognized limitations upon the absolute application of the most-favorednation clause which can hardly be settled so long as the diversity of form and content inevitable in a multitude of instruments is allowed to persist.

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These considerations, while suggesting the desirability of a general treaty, point also to the need of a world tribunalperhaps the Permanent Court of International Justice— competent to interpret phrases and provisions of treaties and to make its decisions of uniform application everywhere. The present chapter has for its object an examination of some of the efforts that have already been made in this direction and a suggestion in regard to certain further steps that may be required in the future.

73. CUSTOMS QUESTIONS VIEWED AS MATTERS OF INTERNATIONAL CONCERN

The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed a remarkable development of the practice of nations acting together in groups for the accomplishment, through multilateral agreement, of peaceful and constructive purposes.1 Import and export regulations and customs rates were

'The United States is a party to more than forty such agreementslisted in Appendix 4.

among the subjects that occasionally came to be dealt with in this way.

(a) The General Act of Berlin and Subsequent Conventions

The remarkable discoveries of Stanley during the years preceding 1877 led to renewed interest in Africa. The rival claims of the powers in the Congo basin and adjacent areas, extending eastward to the Indian Ocean, were brought before an international conference at Berlin, which adopted a General Act on February 26, 1885, solemnly promising, so far as the fourteen signatory states were concerned, that "the trade of all nations" should "enjoy complete freedom" in those regions. The conference created the Congo Free State, which by treaty of January 24, 1891, pledged to the United States

all the rights, privileges and immunities concerning import and export duties, tariff régime, interior taxes and charges and, in a general manner, all commercial interests, which are or shall be accorded to the signatory Powers of the Act of Berlin, or to the most favored nation.1

By this same treaty the United States assented to the establishment of limited and uniform import duties in the Congo Free State, which had been established for the conventional basin of the Congo by a declaration affixed to the Act of Brussels concluded July 2, 1890. The declaration provided, among other things,

That in applying the customs system which may be agreed upon, each power will undertake to simplify formalities as much as possible, and to facilitate trade operations.2

1Article XII. Malloy, Treaties, p. 332.

2 Hertslet, Commercial Treaties, vol. xix, p. 304. See table of principal sources at the beginning of this monograph.

The United States, though not a party to the declaration, signed the Act, which contained, as incidental to its purpose of repressing the slave trade, provision for the restriction of import of firearms and intoxicants. On September 10, 1919, a convention revising the general Acts of Berlin and of Brussels was signed at St. Germain, providing for equal treatment in the Congo region to the commerce of the signatory states only, instead of to that of all countries as in the earlier instruments.1

(b) The International Sugar Convention

Primarily European problems would seem comparatively susceptible to solution by general convention because of vicinage and the resulting similarity of interest and necessity for cooperation. Not unnaturally, therefore, what is perhaps the most interesting and far-reaching example-so far as cooperative control of national tariff matters is concerned -of multilateral treaties affecting customs was originally concluded to meet an emergency among European states.

At the end of the nineteenth century a number of continental European states had developed systems of bounties to encourage the domestic production of sugar. As the financial burden began to appear intolerable a way out of the difficulty without exposing the producers of any one state to competition with bounty-fed sugar from others became an imperative necessity. Great Britain produced no sugar, but feared the bounty system would destroy its colonial plantations and eventually develop monopolies and resulting high

The treaty of 1919 has never been put into effect. In the Fourth Assembly of the League of Nations a resolution looking toward a new convention to replace it was proposed. The United States was to be invited to cooperate in preparing the draft.

In 1899 France and Great Britain entered into a treaty pledging for thirty years equality of commercial treatment in their respective colonies on the Gulf of Guinea.