COMMENTARIES UPON INTERNATIONAL LAW. BY ROBERT PHILLIMORE, ADVOCATE TO HER MAJESTY IN HER OFFICE OF ADMIRALTY, "Wars are no massacres or confusions, but the highest trials of Right." "Lex est..... Communis Reipublicæ Sponsio."-Dig. 1. i. t. iii. § 1. VOL. III. LONDON: WILLIAM G. BENNING AND CO., LAW BOOKSELLERS, 1857. [The Author reserves the right of translating this Work.] BIBLIOTHEQUE DE L'UNIVERSITE DE GAND AL-503243-) PREFACE. THIS volume completes the system of Public International Law, and fills up the outline sketched out in the first volume of this work (a). I. Since the publication of the last (the second) volume, great events have happened in the history of the Community of States. Some of these are noticed in the following pages; others belong to the subjects which have been already treated of in the preceding volumes. It is proposed to draw the attention of the Reader to these events in the following imperfect sketch : — II. Turkey has been formally, and in a manner to place the question beyond all doubt, admitted, by the Treaty of Paris (6), into the family of States (c) which are bound, not only, as all States are, by the principles of PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW, but by those usages and customs which constitute what may be considered the Positive Law of Christian Communities. The object of the new Treaty of Paris is to secure, "through effectual and re (a) The reader is referred upon this point to the concluding pages of the present volume. (b) This Treaty is printed in the Appendix to this volume. (c) Vide ante, Vol. I. pp. 113-17., as to the effect of the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829, and of usage upon this point. ciprocal guarantees, the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire" (d). This result is the subject of a common Guarantee (e). The Plenipotentiaries declare that "the Sublime Porte is admitted to participate in the advantages of the Public Law and system (concert) of Europe (f). This proposition must receive, as to PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW, some obvious limitation from the very nature of Mohammedanism: though it be true that this religion is professed by a comparatively small number of the subjects of European Turkey; but the proposition holds good as to PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW; and the fact which it affirms marks an important epoch in the History of the Progress of International Jurisprudence. For if Turkey has acquired the Rights, she has also subjected herself to the Duties of a civilised Community. How long this new condition of things, so utterly at variance with the former traditions and habits of Christendom, may endure, is a speculation without the province of this work. It is to be remarked, however, even in this place, that this condition is the more complicated because the same Treaty which recognises this quasi-Christian status (g) of the Turkish Empire, contains the following most singular provision, which might almost seem intended at once to recognise and to prohibit the Right of INTERVENTION by the Powers of Christendom on behalf of their co-religionists: "His Imperial Majesty the Sultan having, in his con"stant solicitude for the welfare of his subjects, issued a (d) Preamble. (e) Article vii. (f) Art. vii. of the Treaty of Paris, 30 March, 1856. (g) The Sultan has even received from the Queen of England the essentially Christian Order of the Garter. 66 "firman which, while ameliorating their condition without "distinction of religion or of race, records his generous "intentions towards the Christian population of his em'pire, and wishing to give a further proof of his senti"ments in that respect, has resolved to communicate to "the Contracting Parties the said firman, emanating "spontaneously from his Sovereign Will. "The Contracting Powers recognise the high value of "this communication. It is clearly understood that it can"not, in any case, give to the said Powers the right to “interfere, either collectively or separately, in the relations "of His Majesty the Sultan with his subjects, nor in the "internal administration of his Empire" (h). The Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia are placed under the Suzeraineté of the Porte, and the Guarantee of the Protecting powers, but without " any separate 'right of interfering in their internal affairs." III. Another event of great International importance, which has happened since the publication of the former parts of this work, is the recent CONCORDAT entered into between the Austrian Empire and the Pope. It will be seen, from a comparison of this Ecclesiastical Treaty with former instruments ejusdem generis entered into between these two Powers, and mentioned in the last part of the preceding volume, how wide and grave a departure Austria has sanctioned, both from the traditions of her own previous policy, and from the International usages of other States. The recent Spanish CONCORDAT preserves in express language the ancient rights of the Crown. (h) Article ix. |