Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/577

 17. BEALE: JURISPRUDENCE 563 the law of nations. Each state was a law to itself, giving little more than lip service to a vague body of rather gen- erally accepted principles. The alliance to conquer Napo- leon, to be sure, brought several great nations into a common undertaking; but this alliance, while of political impor- tance, added nothing to the growth of the law. In the last half of the century, however, there has been an enormous development of combinations, both to affect and to enforce law ; and resulting therefrom a development of the substance of the law itself. The associations of civi- lized nations to suppress the slave trade both made and enforced a new law. The concert on the Eastern question, the Congress of Paris, the joint action of the Powers in the case of Greece and Crete, and in the settlement of the ques- tions raised by the Russo-Turkish and Japanese wars, the Geneva and the Hague conventions, are all proofs of the increasing readiness of the Great Powers to make, declare, and enforce doctrines of law ; and they have not hesitated, in case of need, to make their action binding upon weaker states, disregarding, for the good of the world, the technical theory of the equality of all states. While all independent states are still free, they are not now regarded as free to become a nuisance to the world. Perhaps the most striking change in the substance of international law has been the extraordinary development of the law of neutrality. A hundred years ago the rights and the obligations of neutrals were ill defined and little enforced. To-day they form a principal theme of discussion in every war, and the neutral nations, for the good of the whole world, force the bellig- erents to abate somewhat from their freedom of action. It may be worth while, in order to see how far this con- stitutional change has progressed, to look for a moment at the present condition of the constitutional law of nations. We have a body of states known as the " Great Powers " which have assumed the regulation of the conduct of all nations. In this hemisphere the United States is sponsor for all the smaller independent nations. In Europe the Great Powers exercise control over the whole of Europe and Africa and a large part of Asia, while in the extreme Orient Japan