Church was in the least danger from the administration. Moreover, his counsel evaded rather than met the charges. Upon the right of nations in any case to resist their sovereign the language of the Church had been unequivocal; royalty was so eminently a divine institution, they had claimed, that no tyranny could justify resistance. But Sacheverell's Tory defenders admitted the right of resistance in extreme cases, and one of them even maintained, in direct opposition to Tory theology, the supremacy of Parlia

ment.

In the great case of Lord George Gordon, in 1780 (21 St. Tr. 485), the doctrine of constructive treason received a blow from which it never recovered. Lord Gordon was an enthusiastic and erratic young Scotch nobleman who had been elected president of the Protestant Association, an organization designed to secure the repeal of the lately enacted statutes relieving Roman Catholics from some of the onerous penalties to which they had long been subject. As president of the association Lord Gordon brought about a gathering of some forty thousand adherents in London on June 2, 1780, and led them to the Parliament House to present a petition for the repeal of the obnoxious acts. This great concourse of people blocked all the avenues to Parliament; they were not armed and most of them were orderly, although individuals among them insulted some members of Parliment who were passing into the building, requiring them to put blue cockades on their hats and to cry "no popery." Lord Gordon presented the petition to the House of Commons, but it was promptly rejected by a vote of 192 to 6. When this vote was announced the crowd became disorderly, and the whole affair assumed a serious turn. The proceedings of the next few days have been made familiar by Dickens' Barnaby Rudge. The Catholic chapels at the residences of the foreign ministers were demolished; the city prisons were

broken open; thirty-six fires were started at various points throughout the city; Lord Mansfield's house and all its priceless contents were destroyed; breweries and distilleries were broken open, and for several days the city was at the mercy of an infuriated mob. When at length order was restored, nearly five hundred persons had been killed or wounded. Lord Gordon was promptly arraigned for high treason. Lord Mansfield presided at the trial; Erskine and Kenyon defended the prisoner. The prosecution contended that the prisoner, in assembling the multitude, if he did so with a view to overawe and intimidate Parliament, was guilty of levying war, within the terms of the statute of treason-a doctrine which was fully confirmed by the court. Moreover, it was contended that the overt acts proved might fairly be construed into such a design; they were, in fact, the only evidence by which a treasonable design could be shown. On behalf of the defendant considerable evidence was introduced to show the prisoner's loyalty and orderly demeanor. It appeared that he had counselled order and had suggested that riotous persons should be delivered to the constable. It was proved that the bulk of the people around Parliament House and in the lobby were idlers, vagabonds and pickpockets who had thrust themselves into the assembly. The Earl of Lonsdale, who took Gordon home in his carriage, testified that Gordon, in reply to inquiries from the great multitude as to the fate of the petition, answered that it was uncertain, and earnestly entreated them to retire to their homes and remain quiet. Long after midnight Erskine made his remarkable maiden speech to a jury in defence of the prisoner. He did not take direct issue with the authorities as to what constituted treason. "If it had been proved," he said, "that the same multitude, under the direction of Lord George Gordon, had afterwards attacked the bank, broken open the prisons and set London in a conflagra

AS

S commerce and trade and intercourse, fostered by ever increasing means of transportation and communication, were above everything else the great factors in bringing the semi-independent commonwealths of the "united states" of the Articles of Confederation into the "more perfect Union" of the Constitution, and the still to a great degree isolated and jealous States of the earlier decades of the nineteenth century into the real nation of today, so under the same influences the nations of the world are coming into closer contact with one another, are becoming more and more closely associated, if not as one State, yet as one great organism with a common welfare and common interests.

But the closer and more complex this association becomes, the more frequent are the opportunities for quarrels and conflicts which not only retard its development, but threaten its very existence. The only safeguard against this danger lies in a corresponding development and observance of the customs and rules which regulate the intercourse and dealings of nations with one another, just as the increasing complexities of social and business life demand a corresponding development of municipal law in order that present advantages be maintained and progress made possible.

Indeed, in many respects the character and conditions of International Law today are identical with the character and conditions of Municipal Law in the earlier stages of its existence.

Customs observed for purposes of mutual convenience and good neighborhood and enforced by no sanction other than that of the ability of the individual or of his family

to avenge his injuries seem always to have preceded any attempts on the part of the community or State to regulate the relations between its constituent members, and when such attempts were first made in order to prevent the disorganization resulting from quarrels and feuds that tended to become ever fiercer in intensity and more far-reaching, they aimed simply to the setting of a limit to the punishment that the injured person or his kin could inflict; necessarily involved in this, however, was the determining whether the act complained of justified the infliction of any punishment at all. From such conditions was evolved Municipal Law, as "a rule of conduct prescribed by the supreme power of a State."

That International Law will ever acquire the character possessed by Municipal Law today; i. e., that there ever will be a federation of the nations sufficiently complete to compel its constituent members to observe established and recognized principles of justice in their dealings with one another, is scarcely to be hoped, if indeed, it is to be desired; but on the other hand, it may reasonably be expected, and is of the greatest moment to the interests of peace and the progress of civilization the world over, that the rules and principles embodied in International Law should develop in scope and obligatory character as international relations become more extensive and more intimate, and as the observance or non-observance of such rules and principles more vitally affect human welfare and happiness.

Since the day of Grotius, International Law has, in the main, been steadily developing in scope and, in many respects, in definiteness. Publicists, jurists, treaties, and

more recently, international conferences and congresses, the Institute of International Law, arbitral tribunals, prize courts, and courts of law generally, have all tended to keep it in harmony with advancing civilization and to extend its doctrines that they may meet as fully as may be the exigencies which arise from the increasing complexity of international relations.

But, on the other hand, there has been no corresponding development in the obligatory character of International Law as such, or in its administration by those to whom the immediate guidance of the affairs of State is confided; as affecting international relations its rules are still observed from the standpoint of convenience or of present advantage, rather than from that of abstract justice, and as yet have no sanction other than that of the compelling or avenging power of the nation that holds itself injured or threatened with injury by the breach of them.

The doctrines of International Law, the work of jurists and other learned men, are, in the main, in harmony with the twentieth century civilization, but the administration of them in what we might term the political relations between the nations is an anachronism, is of an age of barbarism. In this respect, the situation is much the same as if our present highly developed system of municipal law should be relegated to individuals for its enforcement.

The problem is, then, not so much to develop the scope of International Law, as to make its rules and doctrines a greater force in determining international relations,-to impress upon the minds of intelligent people the world over that these rules and doctrines are based on great principles of right, that unfair dealing, dishonesty, and injustice between nation and nation are no less shameful, no less to be deplored than they would be between man and man.

When Grotius in his epoch-making work,

De Jure Belli ac Pacis, laid the foundation and built a large part of the present structure of International Law, he made the major premise of his discussion the equality of nations before the law; adopting the Roman doctrine of a Lex Naturae, the great Dutchman held that Nature has conferred certain rights and imposed corresponding obligations upon nations no less than upon

men.

Whether such rights and obligations are established by Nature, or whether they are to be deduced from the fact of association, or society, they exist; and as a failure to recognize and respect them in a society of individuals would mean degeneration and anarchy, so in the association of nations it would mean confusion and the rule of brute force.

Publicists, text-writers, and jurists have but with few exceptions followed the example of Grotius in insisting upon the legal equality of nations, for on no other basis would it be possible to build up a logical body of doctrines consistent with definite ideas of right and justice.. For a like reason, arbitral tribunals have reasoned from the same premise, as have courts of law when questions involving international relations have come before them.

This principle does not involve the idea. that no nation shall be restricted in its freedom of action by others, or shall suffer any special disabilities. On the contrary, just as persons may, under wise and just provisions of the municipal law be placed under guardianship for various purposes, so individual States may for the general good be limited in regard to certain powers, or denied the right to exercise them at all, or be obliged to suffer interference in matters generally regarded as purely internal and, hence, not subject to interference from outside.

But aside from these restrictions, which may justly be made by the Powers collectively for the general good, and occasional