The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-06-30
THE AMERICAN TREATY.

From the Pail Mall Gazette.
There was single passage in the speech of
Earl Russell which enables the reader of tho
debate in the House of Lords to see his way
through the contradictory opinions of the
disputant speakers "What would be said
asks Lord Russell, eff bill of indictment
were sent up to the grand jury at Liverpool,
charging a workman with intimidation CON-
mitted in 1869 under an act passed in 1871?
The grand jury would at once ignore such a
bill, and would hold it contrary to every
principle of justice that man who had COM
mitted some act not at the time penal or
criminal should be punished under statute
passed some years subsequently" The vete-
ran statesman who suggested this analogy
may very well have conversed with Jeremy
Bentham, and very possibly did SO; but he is
clearly under one of the delusions which
Jeremy Bentham made it the business of his
life to expose and denounce. Lord Russell
plainly states his belief that there is a strict
analogy between the laws of nations and
a statute of the English Parliament.
Bentham would have urged that the compari-
son fails in the one point which is the most
important of all. There is no punishment
for the breach of a rule of international law.
There is no power having common authority
to enforce such a rule. There is no court
to ascertain it by judicial declaration, nor,
even if there were, is there any officer
of international justice to execute its de-
crees No practical mischief ordinarily
comes of speaking of the law of nations
as if it were really law, and it is even
possible that the habit of speech on the
subject which long since established
itself may on the whole add to the respect
which international law receives. But to
press the analogy so hard as to found on it a
condemnation of the Treaty of Washington
is to blind oneself completely to the source
of the difficulty out of which the Alabama
dispute arose. The law of nations is a system
of rules directly enforced by opinion only
although every now and then one of the re-
suits of opinion is the infliction of very dis
tinct evil on the breaker of the law. But
exactly because it depends so closely on
opinion, international law falls into the
greatest uncertainty wherever opinion
changes on a particular point.
Fortunately for mankind, opinion does not
often undergo such change, and on all the
chief branches of conduct which nations have
to follow the rule is clear, and the disappro-
baton called forth by breach of it is per-
emptory and prompt. But no dispassionate
student of the Alabama controversy will deny
that on the question which provoked it
opinion was In very exceptional condition.
There was scarcely single civilized State
which had not admitted that it was wrong in
a W ollOH ohApo VI Wal w 10 OqOhppOu
in his ports and despatched from them.
Foreign enlistment acts, as these are called,
had been passed everywhere. What, how
ever, civilized States had not universally al
lowed was that the neutral could be called
to account for the neglect to enforce
a domestic statute by the belligerent
who had suffered by its non-obsergance.
Each State had deferred to a particular
opinion of its own citizens, but al
had not made up their mind to defer to the
same opinion in SO far as it was entertained
| by the people of other countries. So delicate
distinction could not have been long main.
tanned; and international law on the subj eel
! of the equipment of armed ships of war had
in fact just got into the condition in which,
if it had been true municipal law, it would
have been on the eve of being changed by
the Legislature. There is not, however, any
| true legislature for the community of nations;
and one of the consequences of this is that
nations deal with changes of opinion in in
ternational matters Just as men deal with
changes of opinion on rules Of private mo-
rality. They never, or hardly ever, admit
that opinion has changed at all They assert
that the new rule was always the rule, No.
J body who has even superfcially followed the