English Channel and the German Ocean when the first Lord High Admiral, or Tolphan, as he was called, was appointed in the reign of Henry III.,' they would have some conception of what the peaceful merchant owes to the omnipresence of a military and mercantile marine, which, in an age that has to cope with a proletariat more formidable than the world has ever seen, has made the sea safer than the streets. It is England that maintains the police of the planet; and if Continental trade does not flourish, it is not because the humblest skipper of the smallest State in Europe may not engage in it with as much security and freedom as the richest shipowner of London or Liverpool.

It is perfectly true that a fighting navy on anything approaching to the scale of that which we at present keep afloat, is superfluous for this purpose; and nothing can be more disastrous than the race which we run with the whole world in building armoured ships. But it is not England alone that is guilty of this monstrous act of international folly. Relatively to the extent of her colonies and of her trade, the English navy is far from being in excess of the navies of Continental States. It is neither the fault nor the merit of England, as a State, that she has the greatest colonial empire in the world, and the greatest mercantile marine at sea. England in her public capacity does nothing for her trade, and less for her colonies than other States. Look, for example, at what France does, and has all along done, for Algeria. These things have grown up from private enterprise,

1 Lindsay's Merchant Shipping, vol. i. pp. 395, 396. Martens, Droit International, pp. 60, 78.

which she was not entitled to repress, and they have imposed on England not only national but cosmopolitan duties of exceptional magnitude, which can be discharged only by an exceptionally powerful navy. The greatest colonial empire and the greatest mercantile marine necessitate the greatest military marine to protect them. The things are inseparable; and England can no more dispense with her navy than she can abandon her colonies and her trade.

But it is on the relative superiority of her military marine alone that the greater extent of her colonies and of her trade compels her to insist; and it appears to me that there is no direction in which relative disarmament might be carried out with so much ease and such obvious advantage as in the navies of the civilised States of Europe and America. Assuming the present relation between the navies of the different States to correspond to their necessities, let that relation be maintained, and the problems which might result from any conceivable combination for warlike purposes would be unaffected by a proportional reduction of the whole of them say by 50 per cent in tonnage and in guns, whereas the saving to the whole world would be incalculably great. To how many

'homes of one room "1 might a second room be added for the cost of a single ironclad, which the next step in the science of destruction will reduce to the value of old iron? We shall be told, of course, that "the subject is surrounded by difficulties;" but it will scarcely be pretended that it is "surrounded by impossibilities," or even that it is

' Mr Bright's Rectorial Address at Glasgow, 22d March 1883.

excluded from the range of practical politics;" and unless this can be shown, its importance, surely, entitles it to the most serious consideration of diplomatists and ministers of State. It is a subject, at all events, which I do not hesitate to commend to my colleagues of the Institute as one to which their labours might be more fruitfully devoted than to attempting, whilst they recognise the necessity and consequent jural character of war, to rob it of the most merciful weapon which it wields.

CHAPTER XVII.

OF THE PASSIVE ABNORMAL JURAL RELATIONS.

Of jural submission.

That it is necessity alone which brings the active abnormal relations within the pale of jurisprudence has always been admitted. But that the passive abnormal relations are in the same position in this respect, is by no means generally recognised. War, whether for subjective or objective freedom, can be jurally undertaken only after every other expedient has been exhausted; but war, whether in our own behalf or in behalf of our neighbour, it is said, may always be jurally declined or abandoned. The two propositions, however, are manifestly contradictory; for to say that no man can ever be bound to fight, is equivalent to saying that it can never be n'cessary that he should fight. The opinion that in abnormal

circumstances passivity or neutrality, when not imposed by necessity, re-enters the sphere of the normal relations, can be logically held only by a Quaker; and is not held even by all Quakers, it would seem, since Mr Bright, whilst condemning the Egyptian war of 1882, was careful to guard himself against the imputation of holding that there are no circumstances in which he would not admit the necessity of war.1

2

Nor is this the only inconsistency that presents itself when we analyse the prevailing opinion with reference to the passive abnormal relations. It stops short at the duty of self-defence; and thus it is our duties to others, not to ourselves, which are withdrawn from the empire of necessity. If our subjective freedom can be asserted or defended only by war, there is very little disposition to fall back on altruistic precepts of non-resistance. But if it is our neighbour's cheek that has been smitten, then we are told that neutrality is not only jurally in our option, but that we do well to embrace it. There is supposed to be a sort of debatable ground between

1 "Now I have never said that war in all cases can be escaped. I have never said that, under the present circumstances of this world, unless you can come to the time when men, in obedience as they believe to the will of God, will submit to every sacrifice-I do not see myself, and have never said how war can be always escaped. You know that when I preach the doctrine of peace you are told I do not think war can be justified or ought ever to be carried on. I think it was Lord Palmerston in his-I would say rather ignorant manner-who said that what people of my opinion would do in the case of an invasion, would be to bargain with the invader for a round sum, if possible, to go home again. But what I say with regard to war, speaking of it practically, is this-that the case for it should be clear-not a case supported only when men are half crazy, but when they are cool; that the object of it should be sufficient, that the end sought for should be peaceable and should be just, and that there should be some compensation for and justification of the slaughter of hundreds of men."—Speech at Birmingham: Bright Celebration, with Lord Granville in chair, June 14, 1883. 2 Ante, p. 42 et seq.

right and wrong on which we must still defend ourselves, but on which, if another should come to grief, it is no matter of ours. We may help him if we choose, but it is an "imperfect obligation;" and if we prefer to be neutral, the demands of jurisprudence will be satisfied. On this ground, it is with the doctrine of neutrality that we must now be mainly occupied; and a very few words will suffice on the subject of jural passivity in the presence of objective power.

The acceptance of a relation of subjection, which involves the relinquishment of subjective freedom for the time being, like the acceptance of other abnormal relations, may be justified by necessity, on the part even of a community which possesses within it the elements of separate political life, and which is not wholly deprived of the power of physical resistance. Of the point at which this jural necessity emerges, as of the limits of jural self-assertion and self-defence, the community must, in the absence of any central authority, be itself the judge. But probably there are no circumstances in which the interposition of external judgment is more called for than when such a State as Poland, or such provinces as Alsace and Lorraine, have to determine whether their nationality is jurally annihilated or transferred, or whether it is still worth fighting for, as that of Greece and Roumania and Servia have proved to be. It is only where a conflict has run its full course, and ended in the entire exhaustion of one of the combatants, as was in a great measure the case with the Southern States of America, that the acceptance of subordination can be regarded, in the first instance, as more than involuntary and transitory. But assimilation and amalgamation