their respective rights and obligations. It is this enlightenment which the scientific publicist seeks to communicate, and his entire success would, no doubt, take away the necessity for any compulsitor beyond public opinion. England was enlightened enough to accept the decision of the arbitrators of Geneva in 1872, though it rested on a definition of neutrality, drawn up for a special purpose, to which I cannot concede the character of science. Had the common law of nations been followed as the ratio decidendi, perhaps America might have been enlightened enough to have accepted an opposite verdict. But the arbitrators administered a retrospective rule which rested on a treaty, negotiated for a special purpose, and which had no legislative authority external or superior to the present will of the parties to the suit; and the validity of their decision was guaranteed by nothing beyond the might which they could reciprocally bring to bear on each other. Had the question been between England and Greece, or between America and Mexico, does any one imagine either that the antecedent treaty would have been negotiated, or that the award would have been accepted? Or, if either England or America had repudiated it, what alternative was there but war? 1

I am aware that judicious advocates of arbitration, even when regarding it as the only method of adjusting international disagreements by peaceable means, limit their hopes of its action to minor differences. M. Rolin Jaequemyns, in the interesting discourse on the subject of which I have

1 For the valuable suggestions for the preparation of treaties of arbitration drawn up by the Institute, see Appendix No. XV.

already spoken,' excludes from the sphere of arbitration (p. 9) all questions which menace the honour or the existence of States. But if the sphere of arbitration be thus limited, may we not ask whether the class of cases which remain to it be not precisely those which have hitherto been disposed of just as surely and economically and far more quietly by diplomacy? The percentage of international differences which led to war was always limited, and if this percentage cannot be limited still further by referring some of them to arbitration, then arbitration becomes merely a method by which diplomatists may ascertain facts, assess damages, and the like. And this was precisely the role which it played in the great Alabama case, about which so much has been said. It was the negotiation of the Treaty of Washington, not the judgment of the arbitrators, which prevented war between England and America; and the Treaty of Washington would never have been negotiated had not English public opinion already determined that there should be no war.

CHAPTER V.

THE ECONOMICAL SOLUTION.

The third indirect answer to the problem of international organisation, of which Mr Seebohm is by far the ablest exponent, rests on two assumptions:

1 P. 183.

2 Of International Reform, by Fred. Seebohm, 1871.

(a) That the interdependence of progressive States is necessarily progressive.

(b) That progressive recognition de jure of this interdependence de facto will necessarily result from experience of its material effects.

Both of these assumptions I believe to be fundamentally sound; and the second has the merit of pointing out an agent, of no insignificant importance, which is really at work, not in superseding, it is true, but in building up and developing the structure of international organisation. That nations become more dependent on each other for their food-supply as they increase in population and industrial activity, there can be no question; and as nations are no wiser than the individuals who compose them, it is important to bear in mind that the most cogent argument that can be addressed to an empty head is that which proceeds from an empty belly.

But though hunger be a great, it is not an infallible teacher, and it is scarcely one that we would willingly employ. If it explained the remedy for its existence from the first, it would never exist at all; for no man would starve if he saw that he could avoid it by sending to his neighbour for a loaf; and when hunger does explain and point out its own remedy, the opportunity for resorting to it may be past. It is too late to learn that we are dependent on the doctor after we are too weak to go to him, and too poor to pay him for coming to us; and it will be too late for a manufacturing State to go to an agricultural State when it has lost its shipping and has no manufactures to exchange for corn and wine. The great error of the economical theory, indeed, consists in regarding the law

of interdependence as governing the trading relations of States in some exceptional manner, whereas it is the law which governs all human relations whatever-nay, is the very meaning of a relation. Interests are reciprocal and coextensive, just as much as rights and obligations. The buyer is not more dependent on the seller and the seller on the buyer, than is the husband on the wife and the wife on the husband; and if positive law, resting on an organisation guided by reason, not infallible certainly, but independent of ephemeral folly and passion, be necessary to determine matrimonial relations, why should it not be necessary to determine trading relations? Has no State ever run into war, or sunk into anarchy, to the detriment of its material interests ? Has no State ever squandered its resources, and incurred the penalty of starvation?

But free trade

If unimpeded in their action, it is true that the laws of trade will vindicate themselves, and men will buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market. demands freedom; and freedom in the material, as in the moral sphere, can be obtained only by an appeal from the abnormal and exceptional, to the normal and general will, an appeal which demands international, just as much as national organisation. Had Adam Smith been as successful in teaching political philosophy to the English as he was in teaching them political economy, such a book as Mr Seebohm's would not have been written.

CHAPTER VI.

THE RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL SOLUTION.

The indirect solution to our problem which commends itself to the vast majority of those who have no very definite conception of its character, rests on the progress of civilisation to be brought about by religious and secular education. Nations, it is said, will surely soon become enlightened enough to see the ruinous cost of war, and will learn to settle their disputes by peaceful means. Diplomacy in its existing form, or with the addition of voluntary tribunals of arbitration, will then render all further organisation for legislative, judicial, and executive purposes superfluous.

That the progress of civilisation has the effect of narrowing the sphere of positive legislation, and consequently of jurisdiction, is a fact which I have often pointed out. It finds its complete analogue in the restriction of the sphere of medicine which results from the progress of public health. But, then, are not legislation and sanitary arrangements the two most potent factors in producing these effects? And to hope that civilisation and education will act spontaneously, is to look for effects without intelligible causes, and ends without visible means, which is just as absurd in the international sphere as in any other. Unless we can discover some new and unthought-of means, then, our only hope of reaching the end in the international domain which we have reached in the municipal domain, is to