provincial accent; and that which was the general law of a kingdom is with difficulty detected by an antiquary in the usages of a few quaint and secluded peasants. Europe has already almost concentrated itself into a heptarchy or octarchy, or into fewer independent states than there were a few years ago in Italy alone. But if, in place of-for example say-seven hundred states, there be only seven, it follows that only the difference of seven instead of seven hundred nations or governments can lead to war, and that all smaller feuds are brought under the cognisance of an impartial judge.

Let us not, however, mistake the consequence. The substitution of civil union for the hostilities incident to a state of natural isolation has neither extinguished warfare, nor has it been for the most part peacefully accomplished. Sword in hand the sovereigns of Europe have extended their dominions, and cut off the belligerent right of independence from their conquered neighbours. And when the supremacy of law has thus been established over wider areas, ousting therein the jurisdiction of force and the original trial by battle, the magnitude of external war bears proportion to the dimensions of the aggrandized states. Hitherto civilization has led, not so much to the extinction of hostilities, as to their disappearance on a small scale, and resumption on a vast one. When the battles of the Saxon heptarchy were finished, England began her battles with Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, followed by her greater struggle with France. Now a duel between two great states calls all the others into the field. And it may be that Asia will one day rise in arms against the intrusion of western civilization, and that a war of hemispheres may precede the submission by mankind of all their differences to legal arbitration.

In societate civili aut lex aut vis valet. The existence of law in civilized society is based upon experience that the natural state of independent human beings is mistrust, violence, and warfare; that they covet the same objects, are not, nor can be just to each other in their competition; and that they are prone to employ the tyranny of force to obtain submission to their partial wills. It is singular that the very politicians who deride the necessity of precautions against foreign aggression are

peculiarly apprehensive of an abuse of the power of the sword by their own government. They admit readily that life and property require protection against the licence of their countrymen; they appear doubtful of the sufficiency of the rigid checks with which the British constitution surrounds the prerogative of their own sovereign; and yet they affirm that we have nothing to apprehend in the most defenceless condition from foreign armies and potentates, over whose movements we have no control of law. They think their fellow-citizens partial, prejudiced, and liable to be swayed by passions and caprice; sometimes even dishonest, and often overbearing. They are urgent against allowing those in high places at home to enforce their own pretensions; yet they ask us to trust implicitly to the fairness and goodwill of people who have, comparatively, few interests and associations in common with us, and some ancient grudges against us. If the chief of another state is capable of shedding the blood of his own subjects for his personal aggrandizement -if he taxes, confiscates, banishes, and imprisons at his arbitrary pleasure in his native territory-if he suffers no voice to be raised against his despotic will among those who have given him all his greatness, is it possible that our wealth, our liberty, our defiant press should never tempt aggression? If it be his manifest policy that all the splendid genius of his nation should be concealed, and only one head figure above the crowd in the eyes of Europe, can he look without jealousy at the celebrity and power of numerous foreigners who thwart his projects and wound his ambition? It is not supposed that we ourselves are just in all our international dealings; that we have done no wrong in Europe, America, or Asia; that we have never invaded a weaker power, and that the most defenceless people are safe from our dictation; and yet we are told that, so far as other nations are concerned, the age of conquest and warfare is gone by. Are Venice, Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Pekin, not prizes which civilized states are eager to grasp, and for which they are likely to contend? What would men have?' says Lord Bacon. 'Do they think that those they employ and deal with are saints? Do they not think they will

have their own ends, and be truer to themselves than to them?'* The course which civilization has pursued is, in truth, so far from having divested society of a military garb, that it has animated the most forward communities with an ambition of aggrandizement, such as the ancient Romans scarcely knew; that passions and principles, new in the world's history, are in tumultuous conflict in the bosom of nations; that the boasted annihilation of distance has brought the armies of Europe so close, that it is but a word, and then a blow; and that we can only hope to avoid war by casting the sharpest sword into the scale of peace.

Is this condition, then, the perpetual destiny of Europe? Shall the sword devour for ever? History, rightly understood, seems to answer, not. For why should the progress of human confederation, and of the rule of law, cease so soon as seven or eight states shall have been compounded of more than as many hundred? There is not, as we have some reason to know, anything sacred or eternal in the numerical proportions of a heptarchy or an octarchy,-nor anything to arrest the action of those natural forces which have extended civic union already from the hamlet to the vast empire. Φύσει πολιτικὸν ζῶον avoρшños. By his whole nature, by his worst and most selfish passions as well as by his best affections, by his weakness as well as by his strength, man is driven into political association with his fellows. Hunger, ambition, avarice, and fear, as well as public spirit, generosity, and genius, have been the architects of civilized society; and war, alike by its conquests, its enthusiasms, and its terrors, has been the greatest peacemaker among mankind. There is, then, in the aggravated perils of Europe, no ground for alarm about its final destinies. Law is not the child of natural justice in men. It is compulsory justice. Violence, quarrel, and the general danger are its parents; as pain and disease have called into existence the physician's art. The more frequent the occasions of international dispute, and the more awful their consequence, the more speedily does legal arbitration naturally, necessarily arise. Already we may discern

Essay on Suspicion.

in the womb of time an infant European senate, and the rudiments of European law. And as the plot thickens, as nations come closer together in order of battle, as they confederate for conquest and defence, European unity gains ground. The fear of France unites Germany; the hatred of Austria consolidates Italy; and the question of the East, even if it must be answered by the sword, promotes the final settlement of the great question of the West-the frame of the future polity of Europe.

Already is Europe more obviously and essentially one country, one state, than France was a few hundred years ago, and more is done for the growth of nations in a generation now than in a century then. The inhabitants of Provence,' says M. Guizot, of Languedoc, Aquitaine, Normandy, Maine, &c., had, it is true, special names, laws, destinies of their own; they were, under the various appellations of Angevins, Manceaux, Normands, Provincaux, &c., so many nations, so many states, distinct from each other, often at war with each other. Yet above all these various territories, above all these petty nations, there hovered a sole and single name, a general idea, the idea of a nation called the French, of a common country called France' It may in like manner be said of Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, &c., that above all these various territories, above all these nations, distinct from each other, often at war with each other, there hovers a sole and single name, a general idea, the idea of a nation called the Europeans, of a common country called Europe.

The people of that great country are even now unconsciously debating about its future institutions. It is for us to provide that Europe shall finally be something nobler than a great shop, something less miserable than a great prison. The citizens of the future Europe will owe the measure of liberty they may enjoy, and the degree of public spirit and generosity with which they may be endowed, partly to the exertions and example of the citizens of Great Britain.

VIII.

NATIONS AND INTERNATIONAL LAW.*

(Fortnightly Review, July 1, 1868.)

Ir is easy,' a French publicist announces, in an essay of remarkable interest, 'to see that the perplexities of modern diplomacy-these still-born congresses dissolved before they are assembled, these treaties torn as soon as concluded, all the disorder, in short, to which international relations are given over—have their ultimate source in the difficulty of bending the new principles of government introduced by the French Revolution into conformity with the rules of the old law of nations. Diplomacy, accustomed to maintain the intercourse of kings, masters of their people, knows not how to bring peoples

* In this Essay, written in 1868, the author, having discussed other aspects of the subject in the two preceding Essays, sought to show that the existence of autocratic government in some of the most powerful Continental States is incompatible with the constant maintenance of peace. He is, however, far from supposing that even the universal establishment of constitutional or republican forms of government would extirpate war. Industry, commerce, morality, and intelligence would not keep the peace between man and man in our own country without an effective system of coercive law, neither can they do so between nation and nation. The Essay had at the same time another -object, contemplated also in other Essays in the volume; namely, to show that law has its stages of development, that in its earlier stages it does not conform to Austin's definition, and that in respect alike of the sources from which it proceeds, and the character of its institutions at different stages, it is subject to law in the scientific sense of natural growth or evolution, and discoverable order and sequence. In part, International Law, so-called, is really inchoate or embryo law, analogous to the customary law existing in countries in which a fully organized sovereign government has not yet been developed.