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THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND
CH.

value, but he pointed out that the Concert has a great future, and is "the embryo of the only possible structure of Europe which can save civilisation from the desolating effects of a disastrous war."

The fifth method which we have advocated is international arbitration. The age of the Renaissance exalted the irresponsibility of international action, but since that date a strong and increasing cry has gone up from Europe to bring that irresponsibility under the law. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did, indeed, establish permanent embassies as an instrument of peace, while the eighteenth founded the rudiments of a law of neutrality; but it was reserved for the nineteenth to establish international arbitration as a permanent factor in the world. This system, to be precise, dates from 1794, when England and the United States concluded an arbitration treaty to deal with questions arising under the Peace Treaty of 1783. Thus international arbitration is of Anglo-Saxon origin, was inaugurated by our race, and we, most of all, have practised it. La Fontaine, the learned historian of that subject, estimates that from 1794 to 1900 there were actually 177 instances of this arbitrament, of which he assigns no less than 70 cases as shared in by Great Britain, 56 by the United States, and 26 by France, with other nations relatively nowhere. Under Anglo-Saxon auspices the arbitration of sovereigns has been superseded by that of jurists, and the institu-