tracted by a nation when represented to the rest of the world by the executive of a limited Monarchy, is equally binding upon her when she has fallen under the rule of an Oligarchy.

CXXVII. This vital principle of International Law is a necessary and principal consequence flowing from the doctrine of the moral personality and actual intercommunion of States. The Legion, the Roman jurist said, is the same though the members of it are changed; the Ship is the same though the planks of it are renewed; the Individual is the same though the particles of his body may not be the same in his youth as in his old 66 and so age, Populum eundem hoc tempore putari qui abhinc centum annis fuisset."

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CXXVIII. The learned and wise Savigny, discussing the proper manner of cultivating and improving the municipal law of a country, expresses an opinion pregnant with true philosophy, when he observes that there is no such thing as the entirely individual and severed existence of mankind; but that, as every individual man must be considered as the member of a family, a people, and a State, so every age of a people must be regarded as the continuance and development of times that are past (b). Every age does not produce its own world according to its own arbitrary will and for itself only, but it does this in indissoluble intercommunion with the whole past (c). Every age, therefore, must acknowledge,

(b) Shakspere puts this reasoning into the mouth of the Duke of York:

"Take Hereford's rights away, and take from Time
His charters and his customary rights;
Let not to-morrow then ensue to-day;
Be not thyself; for how art thou a king
But by fair sequence and succession ?”

Rich. II. act ii. sc. 1.

(c) "Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry, with the order of the world and with the mode of existence, decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts; wherein by the disposition of a Stupendous Wisdom, so moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole at one time is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable constancy moves on through the varied tenour of perpetual decay, fall,

as it were, certain data, the inheritance of necessity, and yet not imposed upon it by force: a necessary inheritance, in so far as they are not dependent upon the arbitrary will of the particular present; not imposed upon it by force, because they are not, like the command of a master to a slave, dependent upon the arbitrary will of any particular foreign influence; but, on the contrary, are the free produce of the higher part of the nature of a people, parts of one whole continually existing and continually developing itself. Of this higher part of a people the present age is a member, which wills and acts in and with that whole; so that what is transmitted to us from that whole may be said to be freely produced by this particular member of it. History, Savigny concludes, is not therefore a mere collection of examples, but the only way to the true knowledge of our own actual status (d). Hooker had long before arrived at Savigny's conclusion: "To be commanded," he says, "we "do consent when that Society whereof we are part hath "at any time before consented, without revoking the same "after by the like universal agreement: wherefore as any "man's deed past is good as long as himself continueth; so "the act of a public society of men done five hundred years sithence, standeth as theirs who presently are of the "same societies, because corporations are immortal: we were "then alive in our predecessors, and they in their successors "do live still" (e).

Applying this principle to International relations, we learn that as one generation does not constitute a State (ƒ), it

renovation, and progression."-Burke, vol. v. p. 79. Thoughts on French Revolution, Ib. 183, 184.

(d) Ueber den Zweck der Zeitschrift für die geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft.-Savigny, Vermischte Schriften, 1-110.

(e) Hooker, Eccles. Pol. b. i.

(f) "Because a nation is not an idea only of local extent and individual momentary aggregation, but it is an idea of continuity which extends in time as well as in members and in space."-Burke's Works, vol. x. p. 97: Reform of Representation in the House of Commons.

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is not merely by the obligations contracted by one generation that the present State is bound; the engagements of the past, whether arising from the implied contract of long usage, or the express letter of treaty, or the pledge of the Executive Government, howsoever plighted, are as stringent upon her as those of the present. The individual succeeds to rights and obligations which he had no share in obtaining or contracting; and still more is this condition predicable of every corporate body. Nor is the greatest of all corporations, the State, exempt from the operation of a rule which is laid in the eternal constitution of things: "Cœtus quilibet, "non minus quam personæ singulares jus habet se obligandi per se aut per majorem sui partem. Hoc jus transferre potest tum expressè tum per consequentiam necessariam, puta imperium transferendo" (g). The rule by which an individual's duties are discovered-namely, by considering the place which he occupies in the great system of the universe; qua parte locatus es in re"-furnishes an equally sound maxim for national as for individual conduct. "Il ne "seroit pas," says the Abbé Mably, "moins superflu de "m'arrêter à prouver qu'un prince est lié par les engage"mens de son prédécesseur: puisqu'un Prince qui fait un "traité n'est que le délégué de sa nation, et que les traités "deviennent pour les peuples qui les ont conclus des lois "qu'il n'est jamais permis de violer." He proceeds to cite a passage from Bodinus to the effect that a King of France is not bound by the treaties of his predecessors; because each King of France is only the "usufructuarius” of his kingdom, and does not appoint his successor, who has an absolute right to the throne; and observes truly, "Il n'est "point de lecteur qui ne sente tous les vices de ce misérable "raisonnement" (h).

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CXXIX. The authority of D'Aguesseau (i) and Montes

(g) Grotius, 1. ii. c. xiv. s. 11, p. 408.

(h) Mably, du Droit public, etc. t. i. pp. 111, 112.

(i) There are some striking remarks of D'Aguesseau, i. 493, s. 4, as

to the observance of Treaties.

quieu further strengthens a position of such paramount importance to the peace of the globe. The latter conclusively destroys the sophistry by which it has been sometimes attempted to chicane away the binding force of Treaties, on the ground of their having been extorted by that superior force which might vitiate a civil contract between individuals (k). It might, indeed, have been supposed that this truth was too firmly established, and the value of it too deeply felt and too generally recognized, to be liable to question in these days. After the overthrow of the Orleans dynasty in France, the proclamation of M. de Lamartine (1848) appeared for a moment to throw the weight of France into the opposite scale, as disavowing the obligations of the treaty of Vienna, chiefly, it would seem, because at the time it was made, France was governed by a Monarchical, and at the time it was disavowed by a Republican Government (1).

Now no doctrine more fatal than this to the tranquillity of the globe can well be maintained-none which it is more the duty of every upholder of International Law to denounce. Nor can any doctrine be more pernicious to the country itself, be it Monarchical or Republican, which propounds it. "Nulla res," said Cicero, with all the energy of moral wisdom, "vehementius Rempublicam continet quam fides." What becomes of national faith if it be made to depend upon form of Government? Much what would become of individual faith if it depended upon no change happening in the condition or age of the individual who plighted it.

CXXX. The importance of the subject did not escape the notice of Grotius; and I do not know that, upon such a point, a higher authority can be appealed to:

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Neque refert quomodo gubernetur, regione, an plurium, "an multitudinis imperio. Idem enim est populus Roma"nus sub regibus, consulibus, imperatoribus. Imo etiamsi

(k) Esprit des Lois, 1. xxvi. c. xx.-"Qu'il ne faut pas décider par les principes des lois civiles les choses qui appartiennent au droit des gens." (1) Trois mois au pouvoir, par M. de Lamartine, p. 75.

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plenissimo jure regnetur, populus idem erit qui antea erat "cum sui esset juris, dum rex ei præsit ut caput istius populi, non ut caput alterius populi. Nam imperium "quod in rege ut in capite, in populo manet ut in toto, cujus pars est caput: atque adeo rege, si electus est, aut regis "familia extincta, jus imperandi ad populum redit, ut supra "ostendimus" (m).

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And in another part of this great work he expresses his free and manly opinion on this matter: "Huc et illa

frequens quæstio referenda est de pactis personalibus ac "realibus. Et siquidem cum populo libero actum sit, "dubium non est, quin quod ei promittitur sui natura reale "sit, quia subjectum est res permanens. Imo etiamsi status "civitatis in regnum mutetur, manebit fœdus, quia manet "idem corpus etsi mutato capite, et, ut supra diximus, im"perium, quod per regem exercetur, non desinit imperium "esse populi" (n). With this opinion Heineccius, in his commentary upon Grotius, entirely concurs.

CXXXI. An English civilian of considerable note in his day, commenting upon this passage, recognizes and adopts the doctrine which it conveys: "All leagues and treaties are "national: and where they are not to expire within a shorter "time, though made with usurpers, will bind legal princes if "they succeed, and so vice versa; and a league made with a king of any nation will oblige that nation, if they continue "free, though the Government should be changed to a "Commonwealth, because the nation is still the same though under different Governments" (o).

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Vattel, whom Lord Stowell pronounced to be not the least indulgent of modern professors of Public Law (p), speaks unhesitatingly to the same effect: "Puisque les traités publics, "même personnels, conclus par un roi, ou par tout autre

(m) Grotius, 1. ii. c. ix. s. 8.

(n) Ib., l. ii. c. xvi. s. 16.

(0) An Essay concerning the Laws of Nations and the Rights of Sovereigns, by Matthew Tindall, LL.D. p. 14 (London, 1734). (p) The Maria, 1 Rob. Adm. Rep. p. 163.