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be found in which certain benefits of the law, granted to other foreigners, might be refused to them. They might be denied the privilege of suing in the courts, for example, on account of anything except some of the higher crimes, the more serious violations of person or property.

[11.] Among other things, it is sufficiently evident, that this Tribunal would be the proper organ for the trial of piracy. When preponderant inconvenience might attend the removing of the trial to the usual seat of the tribunal, it might delegate for that purpose the proper functionaries to the proper spot.

By the application of the principles, which we have thus expounded, an application which implies no peculiar difficulty, and requires nothing more than care in the detail, we are satisfied that all might be done, which is capable of being done, toward securing the benefits of international law.

A FEDERAL SUPREME COURT.

BY JOHN STUART MILL, 1806-1873.

In his treatise on Representative Government, Mr. Mill has the following "considerations" :

To render a Federation advisable several conditions are

necessary.

1. That there should be a sufficient amount of mutual sympathy among the populations.

2. That the separate States be not so powerful as to be able to rely for protection against foreign encroachments on their individual strength.

3. A third condition, not less important than the two others, is that there be not a very marked inequality of strength among the several contracting States.

There are two different modes of organising a Federal Union :

1. The federal authorities may represent the Governments solely, and then acts may be obligatory only on the Governments as such :

2. Or, they may have the power of enacting laws and issuing orders which are binding directly on individual citizens.

The former is the plan of the German so-called Confederation, and of the Swiss Constitution previous to 1847; and it was tried in America for a few years, immediately following the War of Independence. The other principle is that of the existing constitutions of the United States and of the present Swiss Confederacy.

A SUPREME COURT OF JUSTICE.

Under the more perfect mode of federation, where every citizen of each particular State owes obedience to two Governments, that of his own State, and that of the Federation, it is evidently necessary not only that the constitutional limits of the

authority of each should be precisely and clearly defined, but that the power to decide between them in any case of dispute should not reside in either of the Governments, or in any functionary subject to it, but in an umpire independent of both. There must be a Supreme Court of Justice, and a system of subordinate Courts in every State of the Union, before whom such questions shall be carried, and whose judgment on them, in the last stage of appeal, shall be final.

2. Every State of the Union, and the Federal Government itself, as well as every functionary of each, must be liable to be sued in those Courts for exceeding their powers, or for nonperformance of their federal duties, and must in general be obliged to employ those Courts as the instrument for enforcing their federal rights.

3. This involves the remarkable consequence, actually realised in the United States, that a Court of Justice, the highest Federal tribunal, is supreme over the various Governments, both State and Federal; having the right to declare that any law made, or act done by them, exceeds the powers assigned to them by the Federal Constitution, and, in consequence, has no legal validity.

4. The tribunals which act as umpires between the Federal and the State Governments naturally also decide all disputes between two States, or between a citizen of one State and the Government of another. The usual remedies between nations, war and diplomacy, being precluded by the federal union, it is necessary that a judicial remedy should supply their place.

5. The Supreme Court of the Federation dispenses international law, and is the first great example of what is now one of the most prominent wants of civilised society, a real International Tribunal.

6. The powers of a Federal Government naturally extend not only to Peace and war, and all questions which arise between the country and foreign Governments, but to making any other arrangements which are, in the opinion of the States, necessary to their enjoyment of the full benefits of union.

THE POSSIBLE MEANS OF PREVENTING WAR IN EUROPE.

BY THE LATE PROFESSOR SIR J. R. SEELEY, K.C.M.G., Litt.D.

(From a Lecture delivered February 28th, 1871.)

Civil Society has for its principal object the prevention of private war, and if war between individuals, between townships, between countries, between particular nations can be prevented, can be permanently abolished, why not between nations generally?

Compared with any properly organised legal system, what is deemed the justice of war is simply deplorable. If there is some justice in war there is not anything like enough of it. A proper legal decision is not one in which justice enters; but one in which nothing but justice enters.

The proper cure for popular indifference is a feasible and statesmanlike scheme of Arbitration, such a scheme as should take account of details, and provide contrivances to meet practical difficulties.

The object of this lecture is to offer some suggestions to those who may wish to find out in what way a system of International Arbitration can practically be realised.

The introduction of such a system involves a vast number of political changes, but is not on that account to be considered Utopian, because a Utopian scheme is not merely a vast one, but one which proposes an end disproportionate to the means at command, whilst the means available here, the forces, the in

fluences that may be called in for the accomplishment of this work, are as enormous as the difficulty of the work itself.

I. The international system wanted is something essentially different from, and cannot be developed out of, the already existing system by which European affairs are settled in Congresses of the Great Powers.

What is wanted is something in the nature of a Law-court for international differences. Now, a European Concert has nothing of the nature of a Law-court, and when people call it an Areopagus, or apply to it other epithets proper to judicial assemblies, they are surely guilty of an inadvertence which needs only to be briefly indicated. A Law-court may, of course, have many defects, and yet not cease to be a law-court; but the defect of the European Congress is not an incidental and venial, but a radical, and, therefore, fatal defect. What should we think of a judicial bench every member of which was closely connected by interests with the litigants, and on which, in the most important cases, the litigants themselves invariably sat?

cause.

That the judges should be avowedly partial is quite enough to strip them of all judicial character; but when the litigants are among the great European powers they are judges in their own An ambassador cannot be at the same time a judge; and a Congress of plenipotentiaries cannot possibly be a Law-court. There ought to be no representation of interests on a judicial bench. A good court is, not where both parties are represented on the bench, but where neither is.

II. The system wanted necessarily involves a Federation of all the Powers that are to reap the benefits of it.

We have a problem of Federation before us, and not merely of constituting a law-court. The law-court is not only historically found invariably within the State, but it also takes all its character and efficiency from the State. It is a matter of

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