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banished from the civilized mind as rationally unthinkable. He says (p. 309):

The policy of Grenville led directly to a searching inquiry into the nature of the imperial constitution. Colonial opinion was at the outset not clearly defined. It was, however, patent that parliamentary supremacy could be used as a powerful check on the tendency toward independence that had already, to a marked degree, manifested itself. This tendency is plainly visible in the facts of colonial history. But the colonists were, to a great extent, unconscious thereof, and, as a rule, asserted their loyalty to the mother country. Such assertions are, however, no proof of the existence of this sentiment. As in many other historical movements, the real motive was obscured because its revolutionary character would have injured the cause. Their allegiance was purely utilitarian, and its fundamental basis had disappeared with the conquest of Canada. It was this unconscious desire for complete self-government which could be realized only by political independence, that explains the intensity of the opposition aroused by Grenville's policy. As Osgood has said: "In this last idea, that of national independence, lies the secret spring of the revolt."

*

From this view of the causes of the American Revolution, it is necessary, in the opinion of the reviewer, emphatically to dissent. The reasons for this dissent are given in the preceding review of Sir Charles Lucas's History of Canada, 1763 to 1812.

ALPHEUS HENRY SNOW.

Vers La Paix Études sur l'Établissement de la Paix Générale et sur l'Organisation de l'Ordre International. By Alberto Torres. Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional. 1909. pp. viii, 115.

These studies, which form a volume of some one hundred and fifteen pages, are dedicated by the author to his wife and children.

Three pages are devoted to a justification and ninety pages to a projet for a conference for the establishment of a general peace and the oganization of international order.

Twelve pages to the justification of and two to the projet for the organization of an international court of justice.

The arguments in the first justification are the usual ones against the waste and horrors of war expressed with epigrammatical effect in a language which lends itself easily to such composition.

Mr. Torres strongly advocates the necessity for adjusting the economic and social problems as a preliminary to international peace. He urges that the problem of pacification has arrived at the state of a practical problem and by the progress of civilization, and the development of re

lations, social, political and economic between peoples, it is now placed on the same footing which the problem of the equilibrium of the nations formerly held between sovereigns.

He asserts that the rivalry of peoples of different races or divided by ancient dissensions is, in our age, a political fact, more artificial than natural, provoked by the acts of rulers and agitators with the end either to divert general attention from internal politics, to attract partisans or to flatter popular vanity. He believes, without counting philosophers, moralists and thinkers, that the majority of opinion is, over all, opposed to war; that the powerful nations have frankly arrived at the age of industrial civilization; that, in this society, neither capitalists nor workmen, nor any but a few who produce war supplies or adhere to some ancient forms of patriotism, see in the armed struggles of peoples any elements of progress; that the fight for life has evolved from the grosser combats into an intellectual concurrence; that contemporary monarchies are pacific because they depend for existence on peace. He believes that naval and land police will be the only armed forces of the nations of the future. He urges us to suppress the charges of war and its effect on the economies of the people and says the expansion of wealth will be stimulated and the probabilities of success in the struggle of life multiplied for all the world.

He points out that emigration makes life easier in both the old and new countries but that the "armed peace" hinders colonization on the part of the older countries and development on that of the new.

His first projet calls for a conference of representatives of all civilized nations. This conference may adjudicate questions between the nations from the point of view of law and equity, of the reasonable interests of each country and the interests of civilization; it may take notice of the aspirations of powers founded in the interest of civilization and human progress; it may establish the general peace by the disarmament of all the power reserving to each a force sufficient to preserve order; it may organize international justice and regulate its procedure. It may organize, at the place where the court of international justice sits, the military and naval forces destined to guarantee international order, the stability of peace and the superior interests of humanity and civilization, also a bureau to administer these forces.

It may colonize and adjust population and adopt measures to ameliorate the conditions of the proletariat.

The delegates to this conference are to be accredited as ambassadors

with power to bind their several states even by the final signing of

treaties.

The breach of an international engagement should be held a casus belli by all the other powers.

Questions submitted should be decided in each instance by commissions constituted according to the projet of organization of the court of international justice.

Elaborate rules for deciding territorial questions are prescribed in which a plebiscite of the men of the territory plays a chief part as well as ideas of convenience, topography and the (often recurring) "interests of civilization."

In the "justification" of the projet for the court of international justice, Mr. Torres points out that at the peace conference the organization of such a court was advocated by the great powers on a basis of representation founded on military force and with a preponderating share in the great powers; that the lesser powers objected to this and claimed absolute equality of representation on the basis of the law of nations.

He seeks to mitigate these differences in his projet by providing that each power name a delegate and a substitute and by classifying the powers in three catagories.

When the powers pleading belong to the same catagory, the litigation shall be decided by the delegates of that category, excluding the delegates of the parties to the cause. Where the litigation is between two powers of diverse categories the commission to determine shall be composed of an equal number of judges from the two categories under the presidency of one from the third.

Causes between three or more powers belonging to three categories shall be adjudged by a commission chosen in equal number from all three categories, when the rights claimed are distinct. There are various other provisions for special cases.

There is no historical argument or comparison. No general review of the many kindred schemes, which are now spawned in every community and hatched in every printer's press.

This reviewer entertains such a hearty sympathy for the objects which are sought that he desires to avoid anything like censure on measures proposed in good faith for their advancement. However, he is in great. doubt whether this good cause of universal peace is fostered by the great number of rhetorical dissertations, composed with little expenditure, apparently, of thought or reseach, each proposing, with remarkable con

fidence, a grandiose fantastic but nebulous scheme of judicial and legislative control for the world. Their tendency, he fears, is to weary and alienate public interest and to make a noble topic stale and even ridiculous.

Chief Justice Ryan said long ago that "the record of human legislation was a record of error and presumption." It can not be said that the projets now epidemic among us are wholly free from the faults which the Chief Justice attributed to our legislation. All this ferment, deeply working throughout the civilized world, will, undoubtedly, result in great good but it will be accompanied with much froth.

We of the colder races follow the more ornamental composition of our tropical Latin brethern with some difficulty and a limited appreciation, but we must attribute this, in part, to our own idiosyncracies which are quite as marked as theirs. That these studies, Vers La Paix, may serve that good cause is our sincere wish but not our assured prediction. CHARLES NOBle Gregory.

Die moderne Fortbildung des Internationalen Privatrechts. By Dr. F. Meili, Professor of International Law at the University of Zurich. Zurich: Orell Füssli. 1909. pp. viii, 35.

The axiom around which the argument of this thoughful little pamphlet revolves is that modern needs demand modern methods of jurisprudence. The gradual conquest of physical barriers as affecting international intercourse has developed an extraordinary complexity in the legal relations of private persons; and the conflicts of jurisdiction and of law resulting from the increasing number of transactions between persons of different nationality, or of different national domicile, and from the greater mobility of private property, demand ever nicer adjustments.

The author has little confidence in the legislation of the nations working individually in this field. He believes that when the rules are simply local they may truly be designated "norms of conflict," for they induce conflicts as well as solve them (p. 4). The practice of European countries in holding official conferences at The Hague in order to arrive at international conventions creating uniform rules for the solution of conflicts of law and jurisdiction is heartily indorsed. The four conferences already held have resulted in treaties now in force between some or all of the fifteen participating nations, upon a limited number of topics. The provision for adherences is based upon the principle of ne varietur and thus the treaties constitute a sort of international union.

Gradually other topics will be covered and the author seems inclined to the belief that the development of international private law will be wrapped up in the work of these conferences much in the same way that international public law has received its direction since 1899 from the Hague Peace Conferences.

The purpose of the present work is to point out the most pressing needs in this field as well as some tendencies deemed unwise. The author proposes that official commisions be created in each state of the treaty union to study and report upon the practical workings of the treaty provisions in their respective jurisdictions and to make proposals based on practical observation to future conferences. Such commissions might well also certify opinions of the local law to foreign tribunals called upon to apply it under the treaties (pp. 24-25).

The author deplores that courts of last appeal in Germany and Switzerland refuse to review determinations of the lower courts where the error assigned is on the interpretation of foreign as distinguished from local law. This result is reached by reason of the interpretation given to the statutes giving such courts jurisdiction to review where an imperial or federal law has been violated. But the author very properly remarks (p. 11) that when a German statute requires the application of a foreign law, the German law would indeed seem to be violated if the judge does not properly apply the foreign law.

Particular objection is made to the ever-widening scope of the lex patria as the controlling law in personal and domestic relations. It has been adopted as the standard in all countries except those of the AngloAmerican sphere, Denmark, Norway and Switzerland. The Hague treaties have also favored it and yet it would seem to be most unsuited to a period of the greatest fluidity of population.

In the field of civil procedure, the author hopes that new impetus will be given the movement in favor of the execution of foreign judgments without re-examination on the merits (p. 18). Speaking generally, our own system raises only the questions of jurisdiction and fraud, yet the necessity of bringing a new action, coupled with the complex requirements of our statutes in the way of certification of the record, makes the execution of foreign judgments with us, as it frequently is in Europe, an illusory remedy. The author pleads in fact for a simplification of the methods of proof of all foreign records and documents and in this he truly strikes a responsive chord in the breast of the American practitioner. The requirements of our own statutes are so complicated as to be almost prohibitive. The very forms of administration in the foreign

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