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Modern

Interna. tional

Law.

Import

ance of

authority of writers; and who had argued from such authorities as Grotius, Barbeyrac, Bynkershoeck, Wiquefort, &c. in a case where British authority was silent. The most celebrated collections and codes of maritime law, such as the Consolato del Mare, the Rôles of Oleron, the laws of the Hanseatic league, and, above all, the marine ordinances of Lewis XIV., are also referred to, as containing the most authentic evidence of the immemorial and customary law of Europe.

[That the study of International Jurisprudence has the study. not been neglected since Martens published his Précis du Droit des Gens, is attested by the large and increasing number of writers who have devoted their energies to the investigation of the various topics comprised in it. Of these writers the names of many are familiar to the generality of students of International Jurisprudence; their fame is too well established, their works too well known, and the special merits of each too well understood to require criticism or comment here. It is sufficient to mention the names of Schmalz, of Klüber, of Heffter, of Bluntschli; of De Rayneval, De Hautefeuille, Ortolan, Cauchy, Cussy and Calvo; Lampredi, Azuni, and Count Mamiami; Riquelme and Negrin; of Oke-Manning, Wildman, Reddie, Phillimore, Twiss; and of Kent, Wheaton, Halleck and Woolsey, to shew that in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, England and America the science of International Jurisprudence has not been allowed to stagnate or decay, or that there is any lack of materials for the statesman, the advocate, and the student, to prosecute his enquiries or pursue his studies in this department of law'.]

The dignity and importance of this branch of jurisprudence cannot fail to recommend it to the deep attention of the student: and a thorough knowledge of its principles is necessary to lawyers and statesmen, and highly ornamental to every scholar who wishes to be adorned with the accomplishments of various learning. Many questions arise in the course of commercial transac

[1 For full information as to the scope and plan of the treatises of most of the authors above-mentioned, the reader is referred to Mr Reddie's work on Maritime International Law, and to the 2nd Vol. of Papers of the Juridical Society; Professor Katchenowsky's Articles, and to Calvo, Le Droit International, Introduction.]

study of tional

tions which require for their solution an accurate ac- Importquaintance with the conventional law of Europe and the anceofthe general doctrines of the prize tribunals. Though we may Internaremain in peace, there is always war raging in some part Law. of the globe, and we have at the present moment' neutral rights to exact, and neutral duties to perform, in the course of our American trade. A comprehensive and scientific knowledge of International Law is highly necessary, not only to lawyers practising in our courts, but to every gentleman who is animated by liberal views and a generous ambition to assume stations of high public trust. It would be exceedingly to the discredit of any person who should be called to take a share in the councils of the nation, if he should be found to be deficient in the great leading principles of this law; and no one will venture to deny that elementary learning of the law of nations is not only an essential part of the education of an English lawyer, but is proper to be academically taught. The object, therefore, of some succeeding chapters, will be to discuss all the leading points arising upon the rights and duties of nations in the several relations of peace, of war, and of neutrality'.

1 1864.

[ "International Law is gradually gaining ground in Europe. Great and useful discoveries are made in it. Unequal as may be our talents for the great task lying before us, we should never despair of ameliorating and reforming the International Law of Christian communities." Professor Katchenowsky, Papers of the Juridical Society, Vol. 11. p. 576.]

CHAPTER II.

Equality and Independence of Nations.

Intervention or Interference.

OF THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF NATIONS IN A STATE OF
INDEPENDENCE.

(1) Of Intervention, and of Recognition'.

A VIEW of the external rights and duties of nations in peace will lead us to examine the grounds of national independence, the extent of territorial jurisdiction, the rights of embassy and of commercial intercourse.

In the whole range of the matter discussed in public International Law no proposition has been more explicitly announced or more implicitly accepted than this: that nations are equal in respect to each other, and entitled to claim equal consideration for their rights, whatever their relative dimensions or strength may be, or however they may differ in government, religion, or manners.

As a necessary consequence of this equality it follows not only that each nation has a right to govern itself as it thinks proper, but that no one nation is entitled to dictate to another a form of government or religion or a course of internal policy; nor is any state entitled to take cognizance or notice of the domestic administration of another state, or of what passes within it between the Government and its own subjects. The Spaniards, as Vattel observes, violated all rule of right when they set up a tribunal of their own to judge the Inca of Peru according to their laws. Had he broken the law of nations in respect to

[1 Vattel, Bk. 11. c. 4; Martens' Précis du Droit des Gens, Tome I. Liv. iv. c. 1; Klüber, Droit des Gens, I. p. ii. c. ii.; Schmalz, Livre v. c. iv.; Heffter, §§ 27 and 31; Gerard de Rayneval, Tome 1. Liv. ii. c. 1; Phillimore, International Law, Vol. 1. pt. 3; Wheaton on International Law, by W. B. Lawrence, Vol. 1. pt. 2. cc. 1, 2 and 3; Calvo, T. 1. Livre iii. §§ 90-132, and Bluntschli, §§ 474-480.

tion gene

rally.

them they would have had a right to punish him, but Intervenwhen they undertook to judge of the merits of his own interior administration and to try and punish him for acts committed in the course of it, they were guilty of the grossest injustice. [Whatever value in other respects the histories of the two great nations of antiquity, Greece and Rome, may have, they possess little or none by way of illustration of International Law; and certainly to no part of International Law does this remark apply so exactly as to the present topic, viz. the equality and independence of nations. Among the Greeks the right of one state to interfere in the internal concerns of another seems never to have been questioned,-whilst the policy of the ancient Romans was to lose no chance of turning the contentions of other nations to their own advantage, by an interference in which the pretence that they were taking part with the oppressed against the oppressor was but a cloak to their real object, viz. conquest and dominion'. In this way they dissolved the Achæan league and destroyed the last vestige of Grecian freedom, having, after the defeat of Philip and the conquest of Macedon, made a pretentious proclamation of independence, and a specious gift of liberty franchises and laws to Greece, which they seized the earliest opportunity to set at nought'.]

But it is unnecessary to ransack ancient history for instances of unwarrantable and flagrant violation of the independence of nations. Abundant examples can be found in the history of our own times. The interference of Russia, Prussia, and Austria in the internal affairs of Poland, first dismembering it of large portions of its territory and then finally overturning its constitution and destroying its existence as an independent power, was an aggravated abuse of national right. There were several cases prior to or contemporary with the most violent periods of the French revolution, which were unjustifiable invasions of the right of independent nations to prescribe their own forms of government and to deal in their discretion with their own domestic concerns. Of these instances two of the most memorable are the invasion of Holland by a Prussian corps in 1787, and of France by 1 Niebuhr's Lectures, Vol. 1. p. 150, Bohn's edition, 1852. 2 Livy, Lib. xxxiii. cc. 32, 33.

Interven the Prussian army in 1792, whilst the wars that were tion gene- fomented or declared against all monarchical forms of rally.

Distinction

government by the French rulers during the earlier stages of the revolution, and the inflammatory language of their decrees, [at once attest the intemperate nature of that revolution and the contempt of republican France for the soundest principles of International Law. Nor were these evil examples confined to the turbulent times of revolution or to democratic governments. Indeed, so numerous have been the instances of intervention and interference among the great European nations on various pretexts, that we shall be justified not only in enumerating the principal interventions that have taken place between the year 1818 and the present time, but in examining somewhat closely the subject of intervention or interference and interposition. And here it is well to bear in mind the distinct meaning of these expressions, for much of the Interven- vagueness and confusion that have been imported into discussions connected with this subject may be traced to and Inter- the want of precision in its terminology. By Intervention then, or Interference, for the terms are synonymous in the limited signification we are about to give them, is meant an actual forcible interference (whether by arms or by a hostile attitude only short of armed force) in the internal affairs of another state'; and by Interposition, which, as we shall shew by and by, is not Intervention so much as war, is meant the taking part by one state in a quarrel between two portions of another state or between two other states, whether by or without invitation; and of each of these two operations we shall have instances in the following narrative.

between

tion or In

terference

position.

Congress of Aix-laChapelle.

We begin with the year 1818, because that year saw at Aix-la-Chapelle the foundation of an overpowering alliance between the five great European States, constituting, as Mr Wheaton observes, a sort of superintending authority over the international affairs of Europe, and established with the intention of introducing a perpetual system of intervention. "The close alliance of the monarchs who became parties to the political system. established in 1815," says the declaration of the five powers, "affords Europe the most sacred pledge of its

1 Speech of Earl Russell at Blairgowrie, see Times, Sept. 28,

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