66

"I have addressed a similar despatch to her Majesty's Agent and Consul-General in Egypt. I am, &c.

"DERBY."

The Suez Canal was not blockaded during the war, but it would be difficult to deny that if Russia, against whom the Khedive had furnished his quota of troops acting in the Ottoman army, had thought fit to adopt this mode of harassing her belligerent, she would not have been within her right in so doing. Custom and prescription indeed, as well as positive agreement, may clothe with the sanction of International Law such a position as England has assumed: a positive international agreement may effect this end more speedily. But it cannot be admitted that the might of one State can make the right in this matter. England also declared that she would not allow the Canal to be the scene of any combat or warlike operation. But she did not assert or imply that both the public and private ships of Russia would not be entitled to what Jurists call an innocent passage through the Canal. It was implied that, once in the Canal, all ships would be in neutral waters, but it was not denied that either belligerent might prevent the other from entering this neutral spot by combat in the open sea constituting the approach to the canal (k).

The neutrality of the Persian Gulf was, I believe, declared by Russia.

(k) Question put by Sir W. Harcourt in the House of Commons, June 7, 1877.

CHAPTER III.

STATES UNDER A FEDERAL UNION.

C. WE now arrive at the second branch of this part of our subject-namely, the consideration of several States under a Federal Union. The examples in modern times of this description of States are the following:

1. The Germanic Confederation (Der Deutsche Bund) (a), the North German Confederation from 1866 to 1871, the German Empire since 1871.

2. The Confederated Cantons of Switzerland.

3. The United Republics of North America.

4. The United Republics of Central and South America: - namely, first, The United Provinces of Guatemala, or the Republic of Central America; secondly, The United Provinces of Rio de la Plata, or the Argentine Republic.

CI. States under a Federal Union may be classed under two principal heads:-First. Those which have retained their Independent and Individual Sovereignty, especially as to the adjustment of their external relations with other Nations, and belong to a system of Confederated States only for purposes of domestic and internal policy, and of mutual assistance and defence (Staatenbund) (b).

But the Laws of this Federal Body have only effect and force in the separate members of the system through the agency and application of the particular laws and jurisdiction

(a) Deutsches Staats- und Bundesrecht von Zacharia, erster Theil, Kap. i. s. 21 (Göttingen, 1841): "Von dem zusammengesetzten Staate, der Union, und dem völkerrechtlichen Staatenvereine."

(b) Zachariä, ib. B. i. Kap. i. s. 21. The other class is aptly designated Bundesstaat.

of each individual Government; therefore, as far as Foreign Power is concerned, these Confederated States must be considered as individually responsible for their conduct, and as separate Independent States. In this class must be ranked the existing Germanic Confederation.

Secondly. The Federal Union may be so adjusted that the management of the external relations of the respective members of the Union be absolutely vested in a Supreme Federal Power.

CHAPTER IV.

GERMAN CONFEDERATION AND EMPIRE.

CII. THE history of the Germanic Confederation has had an important bearing on the general system of International Law, and of the public law of Europe. It has undergone a complete revolution since the first publication of this volume. Nevertheless it has seemed to me for various reasons expedient to add to rather than omit what had been then written.

The complete study of this subject requires a division of it into at least five epochs

1. The original institution of the Confederation.

2. The remodelling of it in the year 1806.

3. The change effected by the Treaties of Vienna, 1815, 1820.

4. The entire destruction of this Confederation by Prussia, and the erection of a new Confederation of Northern Germany in 1866.

5. Constitution of the German Empire, April 16, 1871. CIII. (1) The ancient Germanic Empire (a), august and venerable for many reasons to the student of International Jurisprudence and Public Law, was virtually destroyed by Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine, and must be considered as formally extinguished by the Act (b) of Abdication

(a) Deutsches Staats- und Bundesrecht, Zachariä, Band i. Kap. ii. "Die Zeit des Deutschen Reichs." Von dem Gesandtschaftrechte des Deutschen Bundes, Miruss, i. p. 523. Vattel, ii. p. 338, s. 59.

(b) See the Act, Martens' Rec. des Traités, viii. p. 498; Wheaton's History, p. 70; Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. ii. c. 5; Koch, Histoire des Traités, c. i. s. 1 (par Schoell). The Germanic Constitution, and still

of the Emperor Francis, in August 1806. (2) By this Act the Electors were absolved from their duty to him as head of the Empire, and his own German dominions were incorporated into the Austrian States, over which he henceforth ruled as Emperor of Austria.

CIV. The Germanic Confederation is to be distinguished from those confederated States which have indeed an Independent National Government, but have also a Central Federative Government which conducts the International relations of the Confederacy.

The deliberations of the Germanic Confederacy were conducted by a Diet, which sat at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and was the established organ of the Confederacy, and the permanent congress of the plenipotentiaries of the States which were members of it (c).

It did not interfere with the internal arrangements of the individual members of the Confederacy, except in so far as they affected the general interests of the whole body; and each of these members communicated directly, and not through the medium of a central Government, with the Governments of Foreign Nations.

CV. (3) The Treaties which must be consulted upon this subject are-The Treaty of Vienna, 1815-the Annexes to that Treaty; the Acte final (Wiener Schlussacte) signed at Vienna May 15, 1820; the Loi organique, which settles the military constitution of the Confederation; the Act of the Diet of June 28, 1832, and of October 30, 1834.

By the fourth, fifth, and sixth articles of the Act which settled the Constitution of the German Confederation at the Congress of Vienna, it was provided, That, in the Federative Diet, all the members vote by their plenipotentiaries, either individually or collectively:

more the Medieval Councils of the Church, are the institutions which have, in theory, made the nearest approach which perhaps the world has ever seen to an Universal International Tribunal.

(e) Zachariä, ib. iii. ss. 223, 11; ss. 261, 1.