sincere, harmonious and durable, to be able to subjugate and to hold in subjection the rest of Europe. It is not that the sea, the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees are obstacles that no ambition can surmount. These physical obstacles are fortified by others that spring from the nature and contrivances of men. The give-and-take of negotiations is an essential aid to the same end: 'preserve the balance' is the almost unvarying watchword. There is a more solid support. This support is the Germanic body which, placed almost in the centre of Europe, may be thought to contribute even more to the maintenance of its neighbours in their existing states than to that even of its own members. It is a body formidable on account of the extent of its territories and the vast number and valour of its peoples, Its very constitution renders it formidable, for that is of such a nature as to take from it both the desire and the means of conquest, and at the same time to make it a stout obstacle to those who are ambitious to conquer. This constitution of the Empire has undoubted defects, and yet it is certain that while it subsists the equilibrium of Europe will never be entirely destroyed, and that no sovereign of a European State need fear that he will be driven from his throne by another; the treaty of Westphalia will perhaps remain for ever the basis of our political system. Thus public law, a study which Germans cultivate with so much diligence, is even more important than they suppose. It is not only the public law of the Germanic body; it is the public law of the whole of Europe.
The existing system may be durable, but it is far from being one of rest: it is an uneasy equilibrium. The system is maintained only by an action and reaction which, without suddenly displacing any of the Powers, keeps them in continual agitation. Their efforts are ever in vain and yet ever being renewed, even as waves of the sea which without ceasing agitate its surface but cannot change its level. Suffering falls on the
