from each canton. A federal council of seven, chosen by the legislature for three years, has charge of foreign affairs and certain executive duties, and is responsible to the legislature, in which its members have seats and a voice. The confederacy has charge of foreign affairs, posts, public roads, currency, weights and measures, and matters arising between the cantons. The distribution of jurisdiction between the cantons and the confederacy remains substantially as stated in the text. The confederacy has no army, but can organize and govern the contingents of the cantons when called into service. Annuaire des deux Mondes, 1850, p. 37. Constitution Fédérale Suisse.

Neufchatel, as has been seen (ante, note 25), is now, by the treaty of 26th May, 1857, a regular canton of the confederacy; and the authority of the King of Prussia over it is abrogated.] - D.

PART SECOND.

ABSOLUTE INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS OF STATES.

CHAPTER I.

RIGHT OF SELF-PRESERVATION AND INDEPENDENCE.

Rights of

sovereign

§ 60. THE rights, which sovereign States enjoy with regard to one another, may be divided into rights of States, with two sorts: primitive, or absolute rights; conditional, or one another. hypothetical rights. (a)

respect to

Every State has certain sovereign rights, to which it is entitled as an independent moral being; in other words, because it is a State. These rights are called the absolute international rights of States, because they are not limited to particular circumstances.

The rights to which sovereign States are entitled, under particular circumstances, in their relations with others, may be termed their conditional international rights; and they cease with the circumstances which gave rise to them. They are consequences of a quality of a sovereign State, but consequences which are not permanent, and which are only produced under particular circumstances. Thus war, for example, confers on belligerent or neutral States certain rights, which cease with the existence of the war.34

§ 61. Of the absolute international rights of States, one Right of of the most essential and important, and that which lies vation.

(a) Klüber, Droit des Gens Moderne de l'Europe, § 36.

self-preser

[** Is this distinction any thing more than the objective distinction between the permanent and the occasional? Self-preservation is classed by the author among absolute rights; and war, and all done by virtue of war, may be treated as only instances of the exercise of powers derived from the "absolute right" of self-preservation.] — D.

-

at the foundation of all the rest, is the right of self-preservation. It is not only a right with respect to other States, but a duty with respect to its own members, and the most solemn and important which the State owes to them. This right necessarily involves all other incidental rights, which are essential as means to give effect to the principal end.

§ 62. Among these is the right of self-defence. This Right of self-defence again involves the right to require the military service of modified by the equal all its people, to levy troops and maintain a naval force, rights of other States, to build fortifications, and to impose and collect taxes or by treaty. for all these purposes. It is evident that the exercise of these absolute sovereign rights can be controlled only by the equal correspondent rights of other States, or by special compacts freely entered into with others, to modify the exercise of these rights."

In the exercise of these means of defence, no independent State can be restricted by any foreign power. But another nation may, by virtue of its own right of self-preservation, if it sees in these preparations an occasion for alarm, or if it anticipates any possible danger of aggression, demand explanations; and good faith, as well as sound policy, requires that these inquiries, when they are reasonable and made with good intentions, should be satisfactorily answered.

Thus, the absolute right to erect fortifications within the territory of the State has sometimes been modified by treaties, where the erection of such fortifications has been deemed to threaten the safety of other communities, or where such a concession has been extorted in the pride of victory, by a power strong enough to dictate the conditions of peace to its enemy. Thus, by the treaty of Utrecht, between Great Britain and France, confirmed by that of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, and of Paris, in 1763, the French government engaged to demolish the fortifications of Dunkirk. This stipulation, so humiliating to France, was effaced in the treaty of peace concluded between the two countries, in 1783, after the war of the American Revolution. By the treaty signed at Paris, in 1815, between the Allied Powers and France, it was stipulated that the fortifications of Huningen, within the French territory, which had been constantly a subject of uneasiness to the city of Basle, in the Helvetic Confederation, should be demolished, and should never be renewed or replaced by other fortifi

cations, at a distance of less than three leagues from the city of Basle. (a) 35

intervention

or interfer

§ 63. The right of every independent State to increase Right of its national dominions, wealth, population, and power, by all innocent and lawful means; such as the pacific acqui- ence. ̧ sition of new territory, the discovery and settlement of new countries, the extension of its navigation and fisheries, the improvement of its revenues, arts, agriculture, and commerce, the increase of its military and naval force; is an incontrovertible right of sovereignty, generally recognized by the usage and opinion of nations. It can be limited in its exercise only by the equal correspondent rights of other States, growing out of the same primeval right of self-preservation. Where the exercise of this right, by any of these means, directly affects the security of others, as where it immediately interferes with the actual exercise of the sovereign rights of other States, there is no difficulty in assigning its precise limits. But where it merely involves a supposed contingent danger to the safety of others, arising out of the undue aggrandizement of a particular State, or the disturbance of what has been called the balance of power, questions of the greatest difficulty arise, which belong rather to the science of politics than of public law.

The occasions on which the right of forcible interference has been exercised, in order to prevent the undue aggrandizement of a particular State, by such innocent and lawful means as those above mentioned, are comparatively few, and cannot be justified in any case, except in that where an excessive augmentation of its military and naval forces may give just ground of alarm to its neighbors. The internal development of the resources of a country, or its acquisition of colonies and dependencies at a distance from Europe, has never been considered a just motive for such interference. It seems to be felt, with respect to the latter, that distant colonies and dependencies generally weaken, and always render more vulnerable the metropolitan State. And with respect to the former, although the wealth and population of a country is the most effectual means by which its power can be augmented, such an augmentation is too gradual to excite alarm. To which

(a) Martens, Recueil de Traites, tom. ii. p. 469.

[By the treaty of Paris, of 30 March, 1856, Russia and the Sultan agree not to establish or continue any marine arsenals on the shores of the Black Sea.] — D.

it must be added that the injustice and mischief of admitting that nations have a right to use force, for the express purpose of retarding the civilization and diminishing the prosperity of their inoffensive neighbors, are too revolting to allow such a right to be inserted in the international code. Interferences, therefore, to preserve the balance of power, have been generally confined to prevent a sovereign, already powerful, from incorporating conquered provinces into his territory, or increasing his dominions by marriage or inheritance, or exercising a dictatorial influence over the councils and conduct of other independent States. (a)

Each member of the great society of nations being entirely independent of every other, and living in what has been called a state of nature in respect to others, acknowledging no common sovereign, arbiter, or judge; the law which prevails between nations being deficient in those external sanctions by which the laws of civil society are enforced among individuals; and the performance of the duties of international law being compelled by moral sanctions only, by fear on the part. of nations of provoking general hostility, and incurring its probable evils in case they should violate this law; an apprehension of the possible consequences of the undue aggrandizement of any one nation upon the independence and the safety of others, has induced the States of modern Europe to observe, with systematic vigilance, every material disturbance in the equilibrium of their respective forces. This preventive policy has been the pretext of the most bloody and destructive wars waged in modern times, some of which have certainly originated in well-founded apprehensions of peril to the independence of weaker States, but the greater part have been founded upon insufficient reasons, disguising the real motives by which princes and cabinets have been influenced. Wherever the spirit of encroachment has really threatened the general security, it has commonly broken out in such overt acts as not only plainly indicated the ambitious purpose, but also furnished substantive grounds in themselves sufficient to justify a resort to Wars of arms by other nations. Such were the grounds of the confederacies created, and the wars undertaken to check the aggrandizement of Spain and the house of Austria, under Charles V. and his successors;-an object finally accomplished by the treaty of Westphalia, which so long constituted the written (a) Senior, Edinb. Rev. No. 156, art. 1, p. 329.

the Refor

mation.