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The only parts of India which have long been and still are exempt from the horrors of famine, are the districts where the land tax is fixed in perpetuity, and where independent Courts of Judicature protect the people against illegal demands of fiscal officers. In the rest of India it is utterly vain to expect that famine can be averted so long as the agricultural classes, that is, the great bulk of the population, are reduced to live from hand to mouth, that Revenue officers preside as judges in Law Courts, and that the Indian Legislature is made to enact unprincipled measures favouring the exercise of arbitrary power and the enforcement of illegal claims by the Executive.

J. DACOSTA.

III. SOME REMARKS ON THE SITUATION

IN CRETE.

ARE we returning to the Middle Ages?

Is Europe

going back to the picturesque confusion of the days when personal law had scarcely yet been supplanted by territorial? Has, perhaps, a new crusade been set on foot, and an instalment of its heterogeneous chivalry reached the scene of so many irregular exploits of their old-time predecessors? Or what then is the meaning of those six Standards floating over Canea?

Such might be the questions which would occur to the mind of a voyager by the coasts of Candia, who had been isolated for a while in the Arctic regions or elsewhere, from the current of affairs. What the answer should be we cannot at present say. But the reason which would be given by most people for the strange phenomenon would be that the foreign troops had been landed and were exercising jurisdiction, in the first instance, for the preservation of order and the protection of property. And it is,

to say the least, remarkable that that reason should be so generally accepted as sufficient.

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Whether these forces landed without objection on the part of Turkey or not, is not to the point. It is sufficient that they did not do so by the request of that State, nor as its agents; but their Governments assumed to undertake the maintenance of order on their own responsibility and that this appears to be widely regarded as a proper step. It cannot be pretended that the occupation of Canea is a mere anomalous proceeding, legalised by the necessities of the case. Self-preservation is, doubtless, a principle known to International Law; but it does not extend to authorise occupations of territory after this fashion. And dangerous questions are best settled by a strict adherence to legality. The real reason why the proceeding is regarded without disapproval seems to be that it is a mere extension of the bout de siècle practice of landing sailors for the protection of the subjects of their respective States in times of disorder, and for the protection of consulates. Primá facie, the presence of organised bodies of foreign troops within the territory of a State is an illegality; much more, if they proceed to keep order by force. On the other hand, it may be argued that a consul is entitled to maintain the inviolability of the consulate. Between these two conflicting ́principles, some middle course satisfactory alike to those who are anxious to preserve intact the inviolable character of the territory of nations, and also to the upholders of the right of active interference in foreign territory, in defence of the official and unofficial subjects of the interfering State, would be the ideal rule of law. But, so far as appears, very few writers determine any such rule.

Looking for a moment at the two competing principles. as stated above-the inviolability of territory and the protection of officers and subjects abroad-an enquirer cannot but be struck with the extreme disparity in

importance between them. We need not dilate on the paramount necessity of preserving intact the absolute inviolability of the dominions of States if our system of International Law is not to be shaken to its foundations. Once let it be established that for reasons of expediency, or as a so-called peaceful measure of self-redress, a State is entitled to invade the dominions of another, a principle of anarchy will be admitted into politics totally inconsistent with the fundamental postulate of International Law, based, as it is, on the territorial independence of nations. That a new law might be worked out on the new lines indicated by the admission of such a principle is possible. That, for our familiar circle of Powers, each developing its genius and energies in its own fashion, we might have in exchange the autocracy of a clique of diplomatists, or the supremacy of a dominant State, might be an advantage to the world, though opinions will doubtless differ as to the immediate desirability of such a metamorphosis. But the system of law which has been worked out on the basis of the territorial independence of nations with such elaboration and, on the whole, with such deeply beneficial results, would have vanished for ever, in the process of substituting a world-empire, or a set of tribal sovereignties, for the territorial sovereignty with the conception of which the fabrics of that system is bound up. And in the chaos which would ensue, much would happen of a more serious character than the trivial or conjectural dangers which induce politicians to permit their armed forces to act in foreign territory with a self-approving consciousness that they are the instruments of preventing alarming disturbances, that they are not at war, and are only improving upon that most ridiculous of all pretensions, "a pacific blockade." The support which is accorded to the notion of the "hegemony of the Great Powers" which inevitably implies the more or less

immediate dictatorship of the greatest-by persons who arrogantly apply the term "criminal" to the conduct of States which exercise their rights without regard to the policy which for the moment commends itself to the Powers in question, is one sign of change, and points to the substitution for independent territorial sovereignties of a worldsovereignty, or empire; but there is also another feeling to be considered, equally subversive of the principle of territorial independence, although pointing in quite a different direction, namely, that of tribal sovereignty. If followed to its logical extreme, the principle of nationality leads to the conclusion that individuals are justiciable only by the organised tribunals of their nationality, and are subject only to its laws, whatever local portion of the earth's surface may be for the moment honoured by their presence. From this point of view the land which is actually occupied by the bulk of a race is a matter of quite secondary importance. Signs of the practical influence of this tendency are to be seen in the extreme prominence and influence which the personal statute has at the present day; as exemplified by Italian legislation, and, in Conservative England, by such judgments as that in which the Privy Council's Judicial Committee broke away from the doctrine of Niboyet v. Niboyet.

Whether a return to the system of Imperial Rome or Macedon, or to the inglorious anarchy of tribal independence, would be an improvement on our present methods of government, we do not here discuss. Only it is desired to emphasize the fact that, whether difficult or easy, the transition to either plan would be accompanied by the total and entire failure of International Law to accommodate itself on any terms to the new conditions.

The principle of territorial independence has lain at the root of the public law of the world since the days of Hugo de Groot, and so long as no substitute for our present Law

of Nations has been worked out, no steps can be tolerated which would render that law at once inapplicable by falsifying its fundamental assumption. So we have to consider whether the principle of territorial sovereignty is seriously impaired by the recognition of the legality of landing troops or sailors, though in small numbers, in foreign dominions upon emergency. Unbiassed consideration-unless an admiration of the system by which various forms of human activity can exist and develop side by side, each in unquestioned security, can be termed a prejudice— will probably lead to the conclusion that it is. In the first place, the spectacle of a foreign military force exercising authority, under whatever circumstances and for whatever purposes, on the soil of a State, is enough to create, in the minds of the subjects of the latter, an impression that their own Government is not really independent. They feel that it has not that unlimited authority which they have attributed to it, but that it is liable, upon occasion, to the interference of foreign officials, and that not as an act of war, which everyone can understand, but as a measure of public order taken, to all appearance, in the exercise of some regular reserve jurisdiction.

The mass of the population do not draw delicate distinctions. Foreigners, they notice, step in and keep order when matters come to a head. The inevitable conclusion is that, when it suits them to do so, they will step in sooner. The authority of the State is at once lowered, if not undermined, in the estimation of the unreflective body over whom its maintenance is of the utmost importance. Besides this-although the symbolic influence of the absolute immunity of territory upon the populace is surely, in these days, important enough-there is a further consideration of practical gravity. This lies in the unfortunate tendency of armed forces, when once they have obtained a footing on land to remain there. Examples, not few nor unimpressive,

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