Page:Handbook of maritime rights.djvu/106

92 make even a formal treaty binding; how much more an informal declaration!

Now if we compare all the safeguards which our Constitution provides against hasty and improvident changes in our smallest municipal law, with the hastiness and improvidence which marked this fundamental change in a vital matter governing our external relations, we shall see the more reason for a careful review of the whole subject. For this declaration affected to reverse the law and practice of the land without the consent of Parliament and to turn its back on the traditions of the country without the country ever having been consulted in the matter. Never was an act of such stupendous import committed with such secrecy and precipitancy.

The reasons given for it were as trumpery as the step itself was grave. In the protocols two reasons were assigned; I. That uncertainty on the law of nations existed; II. That it was desirable that uniformity