Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/202

190 fall of the association is to be dated. The English unionists, intent on more practical concerns at home, never took a deep interest in its proceedings ; the German socialists were hindered by law from corporate action ; America was too remote. But it found its worst enemies amongst its own friends ; the views of Marx and his school were too moderate for the universally subversive principles of Bakunin, and the radical Swiss federation of the Jura led by Guillaume. It came to a rupture, at the congress of 1872, held at the Hague, when Bakunin, being outvoted and "excommunicated" by the Marx party, formed a rival International, which found its chief support in Spain and Italy. Wearied of its European contentions and desirous to form a basis of operation in America, the Marx Inter national now transferred the seat of its general council to New York; but it survived just long enough to hold another congress at Geneva in 1 874, and then quietly expired. The party of destruction styling themselves "autonomists" had a bloodier history. The programme of this party was to overturn all existing institutions, with the view to reconstructing them on some vague communal basis such as had been tried at Paris in 1871. It endeavoured to realize this in the great communal risings in southern Spain in 1873, when its adherents set up their peculiar form of government at Barcelona, Seville, Cadiz, and Cartagena, at the last-mentioned place also seizing on part of the iron clad fleet of Spain. As at Paris, they failed in leadership and organization, and were suppressed, though not without difficulty, by the national troops. The " autonomists " lingered on till 1879. At present there is no society that has any claim to the name and prestige of the International. The collapse has thus been complete of an association which once extended from Hungary to San Francisco, and alarmed the minds of men with visions of universal ruin. See Villetavd, Histoire do T Internationale, Paris, 1871 ; Testut, L Internationale, Paris, 1871; Onslow Yorke, Secret History of the International, London, 1871 ; Emile do Laveleye, Revue des DCIKK Mondes, April 1880 ; Professor Beesly, Fortnightly Review, 1870. (T. K.) INTERNATIONAL LAW is the name now generally given to the rules of conduct accepted as binding inter se by the nations or at all events the civilized nations of the world. International law as a whole is capable of being very differently interpreted according to the point of view from which it is regarded, and its rules vary infinitely in point of certainty and acceptance. According to the ideas of the leading English school of jurists it is an impropriety to speak of these rules as being laws : they are merely moral principles, positive, it is true, in the sense that they are recognized in fact, but destitute of the sanctioning force which is the distinguishing quality of law. There is not a word to be said against this criticism con sidered merely as a verbal criticism, but it may be so used as unduly to depreciate the actual force and effect of the system as a whole. On the other hand, the vast majority of writers on international law have preferred to derive its principles from some transcendental source, such as nature, reason, the Divine will, &c. ; and these accordingly have no hesitation in attributing to its rules an intrinsic authority over all the nations of the world. The usage of nations according to this theory is evidence of, but not the origin of, the law. It merely expresses, as Sir R. Phillimore puts it, "the consent of nations to things which are naturally, that is, by the law of God, binding upon them." The true position is this that we find as a fact a number of rules accepted by civilized nations as obligatory in their mutual dealings. These rules no doubt in many cases owe their existence to the prevalence of theories of natural and divine law, but their authority no longer depends on the truth of such theories. The rules are in themselves just and reasonable. Some of them are so precise, so certain, and so universally accepted that they cannot be distinguished from positive law except by the absence of a determinate legislative source. Many of them are taken up by the municipal laws of different countries, and in so far as they are thus incorporated with positive systems they are in every sense positive laws. But many of the rules of international law are vague, uncertain, and of disputed authority. Some of the rules, for example, relating to capture in war, the law of blockade, and the privileges of ambassadors are so well ascertained and settled that it is hardly conceivable that they should be broken by any civilized state. On other points e.g., as to wbat articles should be contraband of war, when a state should interfere with the domestic policy of another no universally admitted principles can be said to have been established. The substance of international law has been for this reason divided into various sections, according to the degree of certainty which the rules have obtained. Thus one of the most recent writers on this subject, Dr Woolsey, distin guishes the rights and duties known to the science as (1) those which are deduciblc from natural jus, which no action of a state can begin or terminate, (2) those deducible from the idea of a state, and (3) those which can be created or destroyed by compact, express or tacit. This and similar divisions do not really explain why some of the rules com posing what is known as international law are as fixed and certain as rules of conduct can well be, while others are pure matter of controversy. It is simpler to state the fact and to take note that the area of certainty in international law is constantly increasing. For example, the rights of embassies were disputed by England till a recent period ; and the rules prohibiting the slave-trade and making privateering illegal are comparatively recent additions to the certainties of international law. To say that such rules as the last, being founded on contract, are therefore of inferior authority to the imperishable principles which pronounce all sovereigns to be equal and independent, and distinguish between just and unjust wars, is absurd. 1 The theory of international law contemplates the world as divided into independent states. That states are sovereign within their own territories, independent of other states, and equal as between themselves is a fundamental axiom of the science. Not that all states are regarded as lying within the domain of this law. In modern times at least it has included all the states of the Christian world ; but at one time it excluded non-Christian states, and at this moment it would be difficult to say to what extent it covers the relations of such states inter se and with the Christian states of Europe and America. There is little doubt, however, that in course of time all the civilized communities of the world will observe substantially the same system of international law. In the next place international law regards the states of the world as being either in a state of war or in a state of peace. It prescribes rules of conduct to be observed in the mutual dealings of nations which are at peace with each other, and of nations that are at war with each other ; and it fixes the rights and duties of belligerent and neutral nations. If peace is the normal state of nations, as jurists sometimes assert, war is the state which has made the largest demands on the science. The rules of international law with regard to war are more voluminous and more certain than those which govern nations in time of peace. International law, as we now know it, is substantially the creation of civilized Europe in the last three hun dred years, but rules of some kind, however meagre, 1 The name " international law " has generally taken the place of the "law of nations," the "law of war and peace," Jus inter gcntes, &c., used by earlier writers. Benlliam suggested international law as the most suitable title.