Page:Diplomacy and the Study of International Relations (1919).djvu/115

 In a 'Conclusion' (pp. 759–60) the author summed up the general results of his retrospect from the Treaty of Westphalia. The chief of these are the following:

'That the pacific relations among nations have been maintained by the general establishment of permanent missions, and the general recognition of the immunities of public ministers.

'Although the right of intervention to preserve the "balance of power", or to prevent the danger to which one country may be exposed by the domestic transactions of another, has been frequently assumed; yet no general rules have been discovered by which the occasions which may justify the exercise of this right, or the extent to which it may be carried, can be laid down; and that it remains, therefore, an undefined and undefinable exception to the mutual independence of nations.

'The exclusive dominion, claimed by certain powers over particular seas, has been abandoned as an obsolete pretension of barbarous times; the general use of the high seas, without the limits of any particular state, for the purposes of navigation, commerce, and fishing, has been conceded…

'The colonial monopoly; that fruitful source of wars, has nearly ceased; and with it, the question as to the right of neutrals to enjoy in war a commerce prohibited in time of peace.

'The African slave trade has been condemned by the opinion of all Christian nations, and prohibited by their separate laws, or by mutual treaty stipulations between them.

'The practices of war between civilized nations have been sensibly mitigated, and a comparison of the present modes of warfare with the system of Grotius will show the immense improvement which has taken place in the laws of war.

'Although there is still some uncertainty as to the rights of neutral navigation in time of war, a conventional law has been created by treaty, which shows a manifest advance