INTERNATIONAL LAW IN TIME OF PEACE. The subjects or persons of international law are inde pendent sovereign States or nations. The com munity constituting such State is (1) perma nently established for a political end: (2) it is possessed of a defined territory; (3) it is inde pendent of external control. If one or more of these elements be lacking, the political community is not a State in the sense of international law. The United States, i.e. the Union, is sovereign: the individual States are unknown to the law of nations. When these requirements are present, we have a State the existence of which is proved like other questions of fact. Individuals choose their associates. and States likewise determine whether and when they wish to maintain rela tions with a newcomer. A failure to recognize the existence of a State having a rightful claim thereto would be an unfriendly act, hut as the recognizing State is sovereign, recognition de pends upon its will. It is therefore a political, not a judicial question. A revolted colony may have all the requirements except the element of permanency. A hasty recognition of its inde pendence—Franee's recognition of the United States in 1778, for instance—helps to create the independence it professes to recognize. Such conduct is unfriendly in the extreme, and Great Britain not unjustly replied with war.
The form of government is immaterial. The Papal States (before 1870), the Empire of Rus sia, the Kingdom of Great Britain, the Republic of the United States, have an equal claim to recognition. The State is the corporation, and if the three essentials of statehood exist it does not matter who happens to be the chairman or public representative. Internal changes are like wise immaterial.
Publicists enter into minute classifications of States, but the matter is of little moment; a State is independent or it is not. if independ ent of external control, it is, internationally speaking, a sovereign State; if not independent of foreign control, it is internationally a cipher, and nations negotiate with the controlling power. Neutralized States (Switzerland, 1815; Belgium, 1831 ; Luxemburg, 1867) have, in the interests of European peace, engaged not to wage offensive war, and their independence is guaranteed on that condition.
A State possessing these three elements and so recognized by international law is termed a de jure State; one possessing these elements but not recognized is termed a de facto State. The Confederate States of America furnish the most imposing example of a de facto sovereign. The de facto States have the same claims upon subjects and residents as de jure States. The struggle they wage to compel the mother country's reeog nition of their independence is war if on a large scale, and they are entitled to all the rights of belligerents, such as exchange of prisoners, the right of visit and search on the high seas. (le. (See BELLIGERENT.) If success crowns their efforts the de facto becomes a de jure sov ereign State (American Revolution).
-1 fundamental proposition of international law is the equality of States, of which Chief Justice Marshall aptly said: "No principle of general law is more universally acknowledged than the perfect equality of nations. Russia and Geneva have equal rights. It results from this «piality that no one can rightfully impose a rule on another. Each legislates for itself. but its legislation can operate on itself alone." It fol lows therefore that the doctrine of intervention or interference has no place in international law. See INTERVENTION.
The Monroe Doctrine (1823), rightly under stood, means non-intervention; for the United States will not intervene. but will enjoin inter vention from an external source. Sir William Harcourt has felieitously analyzed the doctrine of intervention in the following passage: "It is a high and summary procedure which may some times snatch a remedy beyond the reach of law. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that in the ease of intervention. as in the case of revolu tion, its essence is illegality, and its justification is its success; of all things, at once the most unjustifiable and the most impolitic is an unsuc cessful intervention." See INTERVENTION.