procedure, is to be regulated by a special convention between the disputing states.

By the arbitral stipulations, the object of international arbitration is declared to be "the settlement of disputes between nations by judges of their own choice and in accordance with their reciprocal rights"; and arbitration is recognized as specially applicable to questions of law, and of the interpretation and execution of treaties, which cannot be settled by diplomacy. The resort to arbitration is voluntary, but the convention furnishes a plan by which it is intended to be systematized and made easy. Of this plan the basal feature is what is called the permanent court of arbitration, which is constituted by the designation by each of the signatory powers of not more than four persons “recognized as competent to deal with questions of international law, and of the highest personal integrity." The persons so designated, who are known as "members of the court," constitute a list from which any of the signatory powers, in the event of a controversy, may, if they see fit to do so, choose a tribunal for the decision of the particular case.

To the existence of this convention there is, no doubt, to be ascribed the recent remarkable agreement between Great Britain and Russia for the settlement, by means of a mixed court of inquiry, of the Dogger Bank incident.

The subject of general arbitration between Ameri

can nations, which remained in abeyance after the Washington conference of 1890, was again taken up by the Second International Conference of American States, which met at the city of Mexico on October 22, 1901. There appeared to be, as the American members of the conference reported, a unanimous sentiment in favor of "arbitration as a principle," but a great contrariety of opinion as to the extent to which the principle should be carried. A plan was finally adopted in the nature of a compromise. A protocol looking to adhesion to The Hague convention was signed by all the delegations except those of Chile and Ecuador, who are said, however, afterwards to have accepted it in open conference. A project of a treaty of compulsory arbitration was also signed by the delegations of certain countries, not including the United States, and a treaty was also adopted covering the arbitration of pecuniary claims.

When we consider the future of international arbitration, whether in America or elsewhere, we are at once confronted with the question as to its limitations. Is it possible to fix any precise bounds, beyond which this mode of settling international disputes may be said to be impracticable? If we consult the history of arbitrations during the past hundred years, we are obliged to answer that no such lines can be definitely drawn; but this is far from affirming that the use of force in the conduct

of international affairs will soon be abolished. It signifies merely that phrases such as "national honor" and "national self-defence," which have been employed in describing supposed exceptions to the principle of arbitration, convey no definitive meaning. Questions of honor and of self-defence are, in international as in private relations, matters partly of circumstance and partly of opinion. When the United States, in 1863, first proposed that the differences that had arisen with Great Britain, as to the fitting out of the Alabama and other Confederate cruisers, should be submitted to arbitration, Earl Russell rejected the overture on the ground that the questions in controversy involved the honor of her Majesty's government, of which that government was declared to be "the sole guardian." Eight years later there was concluded at Washington the treaty under which the differences between the two governments were submitted to the judgment of the tribunal that met at Geneva. This remarkable example serves to illustrate the fact that the scope and progress of arbitration will depend, not so much upon special devices, or upon general declarations or descriptive exceptions, as upon the dispositions of nations, dispositions which, although they are subject to the modifying influence of public opinion, spring primarily from the national feelings, the national interests, and the national ambitions.

IX

THE TERRITORIAL EXPANSION OF THE UNITED STATES

As conventionalized in the annual messages, of Presidents to Congress, the American people are distinguished chiefly by their peaceful disposition and their freedom from territorial ambitions. Nevertheless, in spite of these quiet propensities, it has fallen to their lot, since they forcibly achieved their independence, to have had four foreign wars, three general and one limited, and the greatest civil war in history, and to have acquired a territorial domain almost five times as great as the respectable endowment with which they began their national career. In reality, to the founders of the American Republic the question of territorial expansion did not present itself as a matter of speculation, or even of choice. There was not a single European power having possessions in America that did not lay claim to more territory than it had effectively occupied, nor was there a single one whose claims were not contested by some other power; and these contests were interwoven with the monopolistic struggle then in progress for colonial commerce and naviga

tion. The Spaniards and the Portuguese, the English and the French, the Swedes and the Dutch, contended with one another in Europe as well as in America for empire on the American continents. Their colonists knew no rule of life but that of conflict; and they regarded the extension of their boundaries as a measure of self-defence rather than of aggression. We have seen that, by the treaty of alliance with France of 1778, the remaining British possession in North America, if they should be wrested from the mother-country, were to be "confederated with or dependent upon" the United States; and in harmony with this stipulation, provision was made in the Articles of Confederation (Article xi.) for the full admission of Canada into the Union. No other colony was to be so admitted without the consent of nine States; and unless they consented, the colony, if seized, was to remain in a "dependent" position. With the independence of the United States, a new force entered into the territorial contests in America, but it did not stay their course. On the north of the new republic lay the possessions of Great Britain; on the west, the possessions of France; on the south, the possessions of Spain. With all these powers there were questions of boundary, while the colonial restrictions in commerce and in navigation were as so many withes by which the limbs of the young giant were fettered. It was in order to obtain relief from such condi