Page:Political and legal remedies for war.djvu/142

136 spirit, have taken the place of weakness abroad and disunion at home.

But this is no argument in favor of the indefinite aggregation of small States into larger ones. If pushed beyond a certain limit of extension, a State may include an amount of territory, and a sort of population which, under its existing constitution, its Government cannot control; and its constitution may not easily admit of the only radical changes which would enable it to extend its dominion. Beyond a certain point, again, an extension of the frontier may bring the State face to face with new rivals, or with new occasions of difference or dispute. This is especially true when the new territory of a State enters, as a wedge, into the territory of another State, or is enclosed, on the land side, wholly by the territory of another State, or borders the territory of several States. In this way a natural limit would seem to be imposed to the indefinite territorial expansion of States, and this limit ought to be observed in making Treaties of Peace.

But, even apart from any question of further expansion, a State in which the territory and population are both large has always strong inducements to convert a large proportion of its resources to purely military purposes. Its strongly centralized institutions favor this disposition, while the éclat which attaches to military display on a great scale further stimulates it. The importance of internal repose and external security seem further to justify it. Thus, looking merely to the interests of Peace, it is not without reason that large States are, in proportion to their dimensions, regarded as dangerous to those interests.

Small States, on the other hand, can only subsist by the practical toleration, or the express guarantees, of the larger States. In some cases it may be the generally recognized interest of all the larger States that the small States should be maintained in their integrity,