DECLARATION OF PABIS. 48 now prevailing." s this placed no restriction ui)on Confederiilc privateers, the negotiations were dropped. In the war between the United States and Spain, in 18!)S, both belligeients for- mally announced their intention to adhere to the principles of the Declaration. It may be said that the second, third, and fourth principles are a rec- ognized part of the body of international law. The question of privateering has thus far been regarded rather as one of national policy. With the development of modern navies, however, it has become of minor significance. Consult the authorities referred to under Mabitime Law; Intekn.^tional Law. DECLARATION OF WAR. A formal an- nouncement of liostile intentions, bj- one State to another. It is a survival of the feudal custom of sending heralds to give the enemy warning of impending hostilities. The doctrine that notice must be given an enemy before entering upon war has never grown into an obligation, and since the middle of the eighteenth century the practice has so largely decreased that it may be concluded that a formal declaration is not lequircd by morality or international law. The later custom of publication by- a belligerent in its o^vn terri- tory, at the outbreak of war, of a manifesto dis- cussing the questions at issue, and justifying its position, which should be communicated to neu- trals, never has assumed the weight of an obliga- tion, though useful both to subjects of the State and to those of neutrals. Since 1700 there have been only 12 declarations between civilized States, while over GO wars or acts of reprisal have been instituted without formal notice. I'nder conditions of modern intercourse, a State can never be taken by surprise. A period of negotiation is followed by an ultimatum in the form of a demand, refusal of which involves war. Thus, the United States demanded of Spain her withdrawal from Cuba in April, 1898, on condition of war: and on October 9, 1890, the Transvaal Republic demanded the withdrawal of British troops, or war would be begun within forty-eight hours. Tn the case of the Spanish- American War. a later act of Declaration was passed by Congress on April 25th, fi.xing the date of hostilities as A])ril Slst. This was important. as determining the date for legal purposes. Wlien not fixed by direct notice, war is held to date from the first act of hostilities bv either party. The United States began the War of 1812 by in- vading Canada, And seizing British vessels in port; and in ISm (he British fleet entered the Black Sea to com)M'l the Tiussian fleet to return to Sebastopol before the ambassadors had with- drawn. On the other hand, the French charge d'ad'aires handed a formal notice to Bismarck in 1870. and Russia declared war upon Turkey in 1877 by a formal dispatch. DECLARATOR, Action of. A form of ac- tion |)(Miilinr til (lie law of Scotland, the object of which is judicially to ascertain a fact, leaving its legiil consequences to follow as a matter of course. Such are declarators of property, of non-entry, of marriage, of bastardy, and many others. The declaratory conclusions of such jietions are generally followed by petitory, or possessory, actions, for the purpose of giving effect to the right declared. A substantial inter- est on the part of the pursuer, or plaintiff, nnist be shown in all cases, as it is not competent to DECLENSION. ask the court to declare a mere abstract fact or right. The existence of this special form of action has contributed to ditl'use in Scotland a false view as to the nature of actions and judi- cial proceedings generally. DECLENSION (Fr. dicUnaison, Lat. dcclen- tio, from dccliniirc, to bend, from dc, down +
- clinare, Gk. KXlfew^lclineiii, to bend, Lith. azlyli,
to incline, Skt. sij, to lean). A grammatical term applied to the system of modifications called cases, which nouns, pronouns, and adjec- tives undergo in many languages. How the words declension (Lat. declinatio, a declining, or leaning away) and case (Lat. casus, a fall) came to be applied to this species of inflection, has never been made altogether clear. The rela- tions in which one thing stands to other things may be expressed in either of two ways. Some languages make use of separate words, called prepositions: in others, the relations are ex- pressed by changes in the termination of the name of the thing. Thus, in Latin, reg being the root or crude form of the word for 'king,' jfjjfs, or rex, is the word in the nominative case, signifying 'a king" as subject or agent; regis, in the genitive ca.se, 'of a king;' regi, in the dative, 'to a king,' etc. An adjective joined to a noun usually takes a corresponding change. The number of cases is very different in difi'erent languages. The further we go back in the his- tory of the Indo-European languages, the richer do we generally find them in these modifica- tions. Sanskrit had eight cases, Latin six, and Greek five. The names of the Latin cases, which are often used also in regard to the English language, are the nominative, which names the subject or actor; the genitive, expressing the source whence something proceeds, or to which it belongs — it is sometimes called the adjective case; the dative, that to which something is given, or for which it is done ; the accusative, the object toward which an action is directed — it completes the meaning of a transitive verb; the vocative, the person addressed or called: and tne ablative, that from which something is taken. The Greek has no ablative case. The Sanskrit, in addition to the Latin cases, has an instrumental and a locative case. The gram- mar of the inflective languages is compli- cated by the circumstance that all nouns do not form their cases in the same way. This makes it necessary to distribute nouns into various classes, called 'declensions.' In Latin, as many as five declensions are usually given. (See In- flection.) As we descend, the case-endings become rubbed oft', as it were, and prepositions are used in their stead. The languages descended from the Latin (French. Italian, ete.) have lost all the cases of nouns and adjectives. The Teu- tonic languages in their early periods had cases almost as numerous and perplexing as those of the Latin. German is still to a great extent incumbered with them. Modern English has only one case in noims dift'erent from the nomina- tive — namely, the genitive, or possessive. (See NotTN.) The declension of pronouns (q.v.) has been more persistent than that of nouns and ad- jectives. Languages of the agglutinative order have, in general, a groat abundance of cases. In Finnish, nouns have fifteen cases, if by rase is understood an inflectional form produced by join- ing on a sulfix which takes the place of a prepo-
