9°. Finally the functions of a treaty cease when the acts contemplated by it have been fulfilled, the treaty being then dissolved and gone over into actual facts with the consequences derived from the situation created by the treaty. These are the treaties or conventions, called by Vattel, de Martens and Wheaton conventions transitoires, such as regulating boundaries, cession or change of territories, etc. * The object of the treaty is satisfied, but the acts contemplated by it, though done once for all, leave legal obligations behind them. If a treaty stipulates for the cession of territory or the recognition of a new State, the act of cession or of recognition is no doubt complete in itself; but the true object of the treaty is to set up a permanent state of things and not barely to secure the performance of the act which forms the starting-point of that state; the ceding or recognizing country therefore remains under an obligation until the treaty has become void or voidable in one or other of the ways that may be applicable to it. † under which a treaty becomes voidable. 136. The conditions under which treaties Circumstances cease to be binding, as given in the preceding Section, resolve themselves, as Mr. Hall states, into impossibility of execution, consent of the parties, satisfaction of the object of the compact and incompatibility with undisputed law and morals. With regard to such causes of nullity, there can be no room for disagreement, but it is less easy, says this author, to lay down precisely the conditions under which a treaty becomes voidable; that is to say, under which one of the contracting parties acquires the right of declaring itself freed from the obligation under which it has * VATTEL. Liv. II. Chapt. XII. § 192. DE MARTENS. etc. Liv. II. Chapt. II. p. 58. † W. E. HALL. Intern. Law. p. 293. CALVO. § 550, Precis, placed itself. A clear principle, however, is ready to hand, which, if honestly applied, would generally furnish a sufficient test of the existence or non-existence of the right in a particular case. This principle, which is proposed as a sufficient test of the existence of an obligatory treaty or of the voidability of a treaty at a given moment, Mr. Hall states as follows. "Neither party to a contract can make its binding effect dependent at its will upon conditions other than those contemplated at the moment when the contract was entered into, and on the other hand a contract ceases to be binding so soon as anything which formed an implied condition of its obligatory force, at the time of its conclusion, is essentially altered. If this be true, and it will scarcely be contradicted, it is only necessary to determine under what implied conditions an international agreement is made. When these are found, the reasons for which a treaty may be denounced or disregarded will also be found." * (Comp. §§ 133 & 137). Beyond the grounds afforded by the conditions stated above, writers on International Law admit no basis upon which repudiation of existing treaty obligations can be placed. With regard to alleged grounds upon which a treaty may be voided, Mr. Hall gives the following opinion. "The other reasons for which it is alleged that States may refuse to execute the contracts into which they have entered, resolve themselves into so many different forms of excuse for disregarding an agreement when it becomes unduly onerous in the opinion of the party wishing to escape from its burden." M. Heffter says that a State may repudiate a treaty when it conflicts with the rights and welfare of its people.' M. Haute* W. E. HALL. p. 295. 6 * feuille declares that a treaty containing the gratuitous cession or abandonment of an essential natural right, such for example as part of its independence, is not obligatory.' M. Bluntschli thinks that a State may hold treaties incompatible with its development to be null, and seems to regard the propriety of the renunciation of the treaties of 1856 by Russia as an open question. The doctrine of M. Fiore exhibits the extravagancies which are the logical consequence of these views. According to him 'all treaties are to be looked upon as null, which are in any way opposed to the development of the free activity of a Nation. or which hinder the exercise of its natural rights'; and by the light of this principle he finds that if the numerous treaties concluded in Europe are examined, they are seen to be immoral, iniquitous, and valueless. † Such doctrines as these may be allowed to speak for themselves. Law is not intended to bring licence and confusion, but restraint and order; and neither restraint nor order can be imposed by the principles of which the expression has just been quoted. Incapable in their vagueness of supplying a definite rule, fundamentally immoral by the scope which they give to unregulated action, scarcely an act of international bad faith could be so shameless as not to find shelter behind them. High sounding generalities, by which anything may be sanctioned, are the favourite weapons of unscrupulousness and ambition; they cannot be kept from distorting the popular judgment, but they may at least be prevented from affecting the standard of law." ‡ ** HEFFTER. §98. HAUTEFEUILLE. Des Droits et Devoirs des Nations Neutres. Vol. I. p. 9. BLUNTSCHLI. §§ 415-456. † FIORI. Nouv. Droit Intern. Part I. Chapt. IV. W. E. HALL. Intern. Law. p. 302. § 137. international upon the Inter national Spirit of Law. The durability of § 137. A treaty ceases to be efficacious when treaties depends the moral or material, the speculative or practical object of agreement on which its raison d'être was based, ceases to exist. The moral causes of the imperfect observance of international contracts must be looked for in the changes which take place in the standard of international morality. Moral causes of the imperfect observance of treaties. international international customs compared. International treaties as well as international customs are the manifestations of the International Spirit of Law (§ 14); in other words, they are the Characteristics of indications of the state of progress or of re-action treaties and in civilization, with this distinction, that the elasticity of custom renders it a far more sincere interpreter of this Spirit of Law than the formal treaty. Custom rarely mistakes actual circumstances as is the case with treaties which are based on theories or presumed facts or made to satisfy temporary exigencies. Custom being unconsciously guided by the Moral Law of Nature, causes men to follow the true direction without being able to explain to themselves the reason why they have chosen any particular course; while many treaties, which pretend to fix the goal beforehand or to establish the right direction, through premeditating conception of the material object to be attained, make men drift into the wrong way while they intended to go right.* Thus treaties which serve to suit special interests are often serious impediments to progress. Finally, the existence of a custom is the unfailing evidence that its object was possible; while the real objects of many treaties are rarely attainable. These statements are plainly demonstrated by the scientific investigation of the main source or origin of International Law, as so lucidly stated * Prof. LORIMER. The Institutes of the Law of Nations, p. 27 et seq. by Prof. Sheldon Amos, in his work "The Science of Law." "The scientific study of Law," says the Professor, "seems to attain its highest perfection and its noblest uses when it is directed to what is now generally known as 'International Law,' or the Law of Nations.' A preliminary difficulty is here encountered as to whether the rules of reciprocal action, to which the Governments of modern civilized States practically submit themselves with more or less steadiness, can properly be held to constitute a body of Law in the same sense of this term as is involved when the rules for the internal government of any particular State are concerned. There are, no doubt, obvious resemblances between the two sorts of rules, and there are also obvious discrepancies. The question is, whether a new term should be invented to designate the rules practically guiding the mutual action of States in certain respects, or whether it is rather expedient that the meaning of the term Law should be extended to admit of its covering both classes of rules." "This inquiry opens out another, as to whether the definition of the term Law, as given by the most recent and celebrated school of English legal writers, is not based on too restricted a conception of the phenomena to which it relates; and it is only at the moment of attempting to apply the former definition of law to international uses, that the insufficiency of that definition is discovered." "Mr. Austin, indeed, endeavoured to escape the necessity of reconstructing his own definition by denying to the rules for regulating the mutual relations of States the name of Law. He styled those rules, in their assemblage, morality. Two inconvenient consequences followed from this innovation. In the first place, the word morality |