and it must be discussed by itself entirely upon its own merits. The fourth in the list the rules of war contained in the Russian Code was examined at sufficient length in the preceding article, and it will be unnecessary to repeat what was said there as to the real design, character, and intended effect of that body of regulations which Russia and Prussia are seeking to impose upon the nations of Europe. Events have happened, however, since the former article was written, which show beyond a doubt that the project will be an utter failure. The British government has positively refused to be represented in the conference to be had at St. Petersburg. The ulterior designs of the Russian and Prussian cabinets have been exposed by the leading periodical publications in England and on the continent; the smaller European Powers will follow the example of Great Britain; and the scheme, which was so artfully planned under the guise of humanitarianism, will be abandoned after a decent show of diplomatic negotiation on its behalf. The three other suggested changes related to the conduct of maritime warfare and the obligations of neutrals growing out of or connected with that species of hostilities. There is, however, an intimate bond of union between these four measures; they are all closely related to each other; they cover the whole field of actual war on the land and on the ocean, and would work a revolution in that department of the international law which has to do with the armed conflicts between independent states.

Before proceeding to discuss these various reforms, it will certainly be interesting, and may aid us in reaching a correct result, if we pause for a moment and inquire into the character and motives of the classes of persons who are the most zealous and prominent advocates of the proposed modifications. The diametrically opposite principles lying at their basis, which have already been pointed out, necessarily lead to the inference that the advocacy of the amendments as a whole must come from parties impelled by antagonistic motives and acting upon very different theories of policy and conceptions of public law. It was abundantly demonstrated in the preceding article that the moving spirit working beneath the code of military regulations presented to the Brussels conference was the statesmanship which controls the policy of Russia and of Prussia, and which aims to exalt the military absolutism predominant in those empires. The same

policy impels the ministerial heads of those governments to support with great zeal the proposed changes in the laws of maritime war, the two, at least, which are concerned with the capture of private property and the trade in contraband; and in this attitude Prince Bismarck and Prince Gortschakoff are undoubtedly sustained by the statesmen who control the public and foreign affairs of many other continental nations of Europe. A desire to curtail the naval strength of Great Britain, to destroy, in fact, the British supremacy on the ocean, has long been a prominent element in the policy of many European cabinets. A fatal blow at that strength and that supremacy would be struck if the right to capture private enemy property on the sea was abolished, and the trade of private citizens in contraband was made a national offence. The blow would be a double one: it would render the naval superiority of Great Britain useless when she was engaged in war; and would destroy a most lucrative commerce enjoyed by her subjects when she was a neutral spectator of hostilities between other belligerents. This result would follow with such unerring certainty from the adoption of the changes in question, that one motive alone can deter the cabinets of Europe from uniting with unanimity and urging it with all the resources of diplomacy. That motive is the fear of the consequences among the continental family of states themselves. The very alterations in the laws of war which would so completely humble Great Britain would as certainly operate to aggrandize the already overshadowing power of Russia and Germany; and the statesmen who watch over the interests of other peoples may well pause before they bring about an event which would place their sovereigns and their territories at the mercy of these enormously powerful, grasping, and unscrupulous military empires. While the scheme of abolishing the capture of private property on the sea and of interdicting the traffic in contraband thus finds a most ardent advocacy among certain leading statesmen of Europe, the governments have not in general taken. any decided stand in reference to the "three rules" of the Washington treaty, but have left their discussion to be carried on in a theoretical manner by the professors and other gentlemen who compose the two associations described in the preceding

article.

Side by side with the astute statesmen who are quietly labor

ing to shape the governmental affairs of the entire continent so as to promote their own dynastic interests and to aid in the accomplishment of their own vast plans for obtaining and perpetuating power, although actuated by far different motives, is ranged a large, influential, and earnest school of publicists and jurists, which embraces many of the foremost writers upon the international law in the various continental countries of Europe, in the United States, and even some in England. The central thought which possesses the members of this school in their conception of the international law, the paramount object of all their labors in moulding and developing that department of jurisprudence, is the bringing it as a whole, its fundamental principles and its practical rules, into a complete conformity with abstract right and justice. They conceive of the international law as a collection of ethical precepts applied to the affairs of peoples and nations, in exactly the same manner in which the rules of morality should be applied to the conduct of private individuals. In constructing an ideal system, all motives and considerations of state policy must, therefore, be banished; longaccepted and well-established maxims and regulations which would have the effect of procuring or maintaining any special advantage or particular superiority to one nation or class of nations must be abrogated, if they are based upon accidental circumstances of situation or custom or form, and not upon the immutable foundations of absolute right. This theory regards the duties of the state towards its fellow-states as identical with those of the individual towards his fellow-men, and may be summed up in the Golden Rule laid down by the Great Teacher as the summary of private morality. As the necessary consequence of these primary conceptions, the ancient theory that absolute sovereignty and independence are essential features of nations must be modified. In fact, those writers of this school who are true to their principles, and who clearly see where those principles must logically lead them, do not hesitate to deny the existence of absolute sovereignty and independence in the separate members which form the one family of civilized nations. The real sovereignty, which is the foundation of all authority over international relations, is taken away from the individual states and is conferred upon the united body of peoples considered as one collective whole. If the international law is to be con

structed upon such a basis as this, it is very plain that the question whether an advantage would be gained or lost from a particular line of policy, as, for example, whether neutral commerce in time of war would be promoted or curtailed, can never be made the criterion by which the acceptance or rejection of a proposed practical rule is to be determined. To rest a doctrine or regulation of the code upon such considerations of mere policy, would degrade the law from its high character as an ethical system, and would make it a collection of empirical and even immoral precepts. Starting with the postulate that absolute sovereignty is lodged in the associated family of states, so that the governmental attributes, both internal and external, of each are held and exercised in subordination to this supreme authority residing in the collective whole, the idea of the nation as the final object of the international law disappears, and in its place is substituted the idea of mankind. International law is concerned, therefore, with the relations between individuals and mankind, rather than with the relations between states, or between states and individual members of other states. The rights which it creates, recognizes, and protects become identical with the rights of humanity; the duties which it imposes and enforces are the obligations owed by nations and governments to humanity. In a system of public law founded upon this conception of the nation as subordinate to mankind, and in which the purely ethical notions of right and wrong are to determine all the obligations of the collective organism called the state, as well as the duties of the individual citizens which make up that organism, in such a system it is plain that no doctrine, principle, or rule can have place whose purpose or object is to secure any special advantage to nations or classes of nations, from the internal or external schemes of policy which they may choose to adopt, from the modes of activity and business pursuits of their inhabitants, or from any other feature, social or political, which may distinguish. them from other members of the universal brotherhood of states. All such doctrines and rules are parts of a false and inequitable theory of the public law; and no matter how generally they have been recognized, and how long established, they must be rejected from a code which reflects the progress and the opinions of the present age. The welfare, the prosperity of one state rather than of another, the welfare even of states, is not the ob

ject sought to be promoted by the international law, according to this theory, but the welfare of mankind. Its positive precepts must represent the wants, the claims, and the rights of humanity; all the permitted acts and transactions of nations must be in the interests of humanity; all the rules which control the relations of states with each other, or with the citizens of other commonwealths, must uphold and strengthen the obligations due to humanity.

These general principles, while they are adopted as the foundation of the entire system, are applied with special emphasis in the construction of that portion of it which is concerned with the conduct of actual warfare. War at best is a disturbing element in this humanitarian theory; its existence cannot be logically reconciled with the system itself, and is only admitted as a necessary fact. Recognizing the fact of war as indisputable, the writers of this school have labored with all their energies to devise rules for the conduct of hostilities which should render it as humane as possible; and in these very regulations are to be found the several modifications or asserted reforms of the international law, which were enumerated at the commencement of this article. The thought which lies at the basis of this scheme is the notion that war, as an international status, and as an armed conflict of forces, should be confined to the actual professional combatants, who for the time represent all the belligerent authority and functions of the two hostile nations. War, in this view, affects the two states alone which are engaged in it, and affects them only in their organic and corporate capacity; it does not produce the slightest change in the condition of the great mass of their inhabitants; they are not enemies actually or metaphorically; they may pursue all their customary avocations unmolested by the direct operations of the contest, and only liable to the demands of their own governments made in pursuance of the internal laws of the country. Even when it is said that the nations as corporations are the only parties to the belligerent status, the language needs some limitation; for the nation, as represented by its normal agencies and its regular governmental machinery, is unaltered by the inception of hostilities; only the special agencies, the extraordinary departments or branches of the governmental machinery, are to be called into active use, and through them exclusively are the warlike operations to be carried on and the conflict decided. These special agencies are the