Page:Studies in constitutional law Fr-En-US (1891).pdf/174

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up a balance between the pre-existing powers, has kept the attention of the makers of the Constitution in a region of compromise and moderation, and has prevented them from gliding down the slope which leads to one of two extremes, viz. individual license or state despotism. Definitions and comparisons must not be pressed too far; nevertheless, one of those which I have suggested above elucidates in a rather striking manner this capital characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon public law. I have shown that the two Anglo-Saxon Constitutions, if they are not really treaties, yet contain treaties which are an essential part of them, and that from this fact they derive their most important features. Now, the object of a treaty between living powers is always to give securities to each other. It may happen that they both fall under a predominant power which absorbs them, but it is never the object of a treaty to create such a power; the most in this respect that parties to a treaty can propose to themselves (and this is what happened in the United States) is to create an arbitrator with limited authority, who may preserve harmony between the parties. Absolute justice introduced into a treaty would only be baffled or violated by the rival interests of the parties: the perfection of a treaty, therefore, is not to be an embodiment of ideal justice, but to express with accuracy, and to consolidate an effectual balance of power between the contracting parties. The maintenance of the status quo, a nicely adapted compromise, is the highest aim that a treaty can have. The idea of a supreme social good is quite foreign to it. Narrow, but lucid realism, calm satis-