Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/499

 CH. VI.] respect both to foreign and domestic concerns. It will prevent some of the causes of war, that scourge of the human race, by enabling the general government, not only to negotiate suitable treaties for the protection of the rights and interests of all, but by compelling a general obedience to them, and a general respect for the obligations of the law of nations. It is notorious, that even under the confederation, the obligations of treaty stipulations, were openly violated, or silently disregarded; and the peace of the whole confederacy was at the mercy of the majority of any single state. If the states were separated, they would, or might, form separate and independent treaties with different nations, according to their peculiar interests. These treaties would, or might, involve jealousies and rivalries at home, as well as abroad, and introduce conflicts between nations struggling for a monoplymonopoly [sic] of the trade with each state. Retaliatory or evasive stipulations would be made, to counteract the injurious system of a neighbouring or distant state, and thus the scene be again acted over with renewed violence, which succeeded the peace of 1783, when the common interests were forgotten in the general struggle for superiority. It would manifestly be the interest of foreign nations to promote these animosities and jealousies, that, in the general weakness, the states might seek their protection by an undue sacrifice of their interests, or fall an easy prey to their arms.

§ 476. The dangers, too, to all the states, in case of division, from foreign wars and invasion, must be imminent, independent of those from the neighbourhood of the colonies and dependencies of ether governments on this continent. Their very weakness would invite