Page:Studies in constitutional law Fr-En-US (1891).pdf/177

Rh shown that the fundamental laws of these countries if not essentially treaties, yet contain treaties between established powers. Now the one aim of a treaty is not to bring down everything to a few simple axioms and to follow them out to their logical consequences. A treaty cannot help bearing more or less the stamp of circumstances, and reflecting the incoherence, diversity, and complexity of the state of things which it aims at settling; the most it can do is to introduce into that state of things some sort of order and arrangement. The spirit of system does not extend over the domain of diplomacy — a sphere of which the limits are ever shifting under the influence of force and of will. The principle that politics are to be treated in the spirit of a treaty is universally and indisputably recognized in England, of this I have already given proofs. The recognition of this principle is less evident in the Constitution of the United States. In appearance, the Federal Constitution aims at being a well-ordered composition; it lays down general principles. But we need only look closer to see that in it no principle is followed out to the end, but that concrete and varied interests settle everything by a compromise. See, for example, the principle of the liberty of the individual, categorically asserted at the head of the Declaration of Independence, and contradicted in a hypocritical form by Section IX. of the first Article of the Constitution. See again the principle of respect for contracts and federal arbitration between the States, which is categorically affirmed in the text of the Constitution but is openly contradicted by that eleventh Amendment