Page:The English Constitution (1894).djvu/54

xlviii First. That it would not be always desirable for Ministers to state clearly the motives which induced them to agree to foreign compacts. “Treaties,” it is said, “are in one great respect different from laws, they concern not only the Government which binds, the nation so bound, but a third party too—a foreign country—and the feelings of that country are to be considered as well as our own. And that foreign country will, probably, in the present state of the world be a despotic one, where discussion is not practised, where it is not understood, where the expressions of different speakers are not accurately weighed, where undue offence may easily be given.” This objection might be easily avoided by requiring that the discussion upon treaties in Parliament like that discussion in the American Senate should be “in secret session,” and that no report should be published of it. But I should, for my own part, be rather disposed to risk a public debate. Despotic nations now cannot understand England; it is to them an anomaly “chartered by Providence;” they have been time out of mind puzzled by its institutions, vexed at its statesmen, and angry at its newspapers. A little more of such perplexity and such vexation does not seem to me a great evil. And if it be meant, as it often is meant, that the whole truth as to treaties cannot be spoken out, I answer, that neither can the whole truth as to laws. All important laws affect large “vested