Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay

Montesquieu is of course writing in the days of mercenary troops; but the cost to the nation of our modern armies, both in time of peace and of war, is incomparably greater.

[97] Even St. Pierre was alive to this danger (Projet, Art. VIII: in the English translation of 1714, p. 160):—“The European Union shall endeavour to obtain in Asia, a permanent society like that of Europe, that Peace may be maintain’d There also; and especially that it may have no cause to fear any Asiatic Sovereign, either as to its tranquillity, or its Commerce in Asia.”

[98] Bentham’s suggestion would be useful here! See above, p. 79, note.

[99] The best thing for Europe might be that Russia (perhaps including China) should be regarded as a serious danger by all the civilised powers of the West. That would bring us nearer to the United States of Europe and America (for the United States, America, is Russia’s neighbour on the East) than anything else.

[100] Trade in barbarous or savage countries is still increased by war, especially on the French and German plan which leaves no open door to other nations. Here the trade follows the flag. And war, of course, among civilised races causes small nations to disappear and their tariffs with them. This is beneficial to trade, but to a degree so trifling that it may here be neglected.

[101] Cf. also the civil war of 1847 in Switzerland.

[102] See Werke, VII., p. 467.

[103] The other he knew was impossible. Peace within the state meant decay and death. In the antagonism of nations, he saw nature’s means of educating the race: it was a law of existence, a law of progress, and, as such, eternal.

[104] For a vivid picture of the material advantages offered by such a union and of the dismal future that may lie before an unfederated Europe, we cannot do better than read Mr. Andrew Carnegie’s recent Rectorial Address to the students of St. Andrews University (Oct 1902). Unfortunately, Mr. Carnegie’s enthusiasm stops here: he does not tell us by what means the difficulties at present in the way of a federation, industrial or political, are to be overcome.

[105] Professor D. G. Ritchie remarks that it is less an over-estimation of the value of peace than a too easy-going acceptance of abstract and unanalysed phrases about the rights of nations that injures the work of the Peace Society. Cf. his note on the principles of the Peace Congresses (op. cit., p. 172).

[106] The day is past, when a nation could enjoy the exclusive advantages of its own inventions. Vattel naively recommends that we should keep the knowledge of certain kinds of trade, the building of war-ships and the like, to ourselves. Prudence, he says, prevents us from making an enemy stronger and the care of our own safety forbids it. (Law of Nations, II. Ch. I. § 16.)

[107] The text used in this translation is that edited by Kehrbach. [Tr.]

[108] I have seen something of M. de St. Pierre’s plan for maintaining perpetual peace in Europe. It reminds me of an inscription outside of a churchyard, which ran “Pax Perpetua. For the dead, it is true, fight no more. But the living are of another mind, and the mightiest among them have little respect for tribunals.” (Leibniz: Letter to Grimarest, quoted above, p. 37, note 44.) [Tr.]

[109] On the honourable interpretation of treaties, see Vattel (op. cit., II. Ch. XVII., esp. §§ 263-296, 291). See also what he says of the validity of treaties and the necessity for holding them sacred (II. Ch. XII. §§ 157, 158: II. Ch. XV). [Tr.]

[110] “Even the smoothest way,” says Hume, (Of the Original Contract) “by which a nation may receive a foreign master, by marriage or a will, is not extremely honourable for the people; but supposes them to be disposed of, like a dowry or a legacy, according to the pleasure or interest of their rulers.” [Tr.]

[111] An hereditary kingdom is not a state which can be inherited by another state, but one whose sovereign power can be inherited by another physical person. The state then acquires a ruler, not the ruler as such (that is, as one already possessing another realm) the state.

[112] This has been one of the causes of the extraordinary admixture of races in the modern Austrian empire. Cf. the lines of Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (quoted in Sir W. Stirling Maxwell’s Cloister Life of Charles the Fifth, Ch. I., note):—

“Bella gerant alii, tu, felix Austria, nube!

Nam quae Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus.” [Tr.]

[113] A Bulgarian Prince thus answered the Greek Emperor who magnanimously offered to settle a quarrel with him, not by shedding the blood of his subjects, but by a duel:—“A smith who has tongs will not take the red-hot iron from the fire with his hands.”

(This note is a-wanting in the second Edition of 1796. It is repeated in Art. II., see p. 130.) [Tr.]

[114] See Vattel: Law of Nations, II. Ch. IV. § 55. No foreign power, he says, has a right to judge the conduct and administration of any sovereign or oblige him to alter it. “If he loads his subjects with taxes, or if he treats them with severity, the nation alone is concerned; and no other is called upon to offer redress for his behaviour, or oblige him to follow more wise and equitable maxims.... But (loc. cit. § 56) when the bands of the political society are broken, or at least suspended, between the sovereign and his people, the contending parties may then be considered at two distinct powers; and, since they are both equally independent of all foreign authority, nobody has a right to judge them. Either may be in the right; and each of those who grant their assistance may imagine that he is giving his support to the better cause.” [Tr.]

[115] It has been hitherto doubted, not without reason, whether there can be laws of permission (leges permissivæ) of pure reason as well as commands (leges præceptivæ) and prohibitions (leges prohibitivæ). For law in general has a basis of objective practical necessity: permission, on the other hand, is based upon the contingency of certain actions in practice. It follows that a law of permission would enforce what cannot be enforced; and this would involve a contradiction, if the object of the law should be the same in both cases. Here, however, in the present case of a law of permission, the presupposed prohibition is aimed merely at the future manner of acquisition of a right—for example, acquisition through inheritance: the exemption from this prohibition (i.e. the permission) refers to the present state of possession. In the transition from a state of nature to the civil state, this holding of property can continue as a bona fide, if usurpatory, ownership, under the new social conditions, in accordance with a permission of the Law of Nature. Ownership of this kind, as soon as its true nature becomes known, is seen to be mere nominal possession (possessio putativa) sanctioned by opinion and customs in a natural state of society. After the transition stage is passed, such modes of acquisition are likewise forbidden in the subsequently evolved civil state: and this power to remain in possession would not be admitted if the supposed acquisition had taken place in the civilized community.

It would be bound to come to an end as an injury to the right of others, the moment its illegality became patent.

I have wished here only by the way to draw the attention of teachers of the Law of Nature to the idea of a lex permissiva which presents itself spontaneously in any system of rational classification. I do so chiefly because use is often made of this concept in civil law with reference to statutes; with this difference, that the law of prohibition stands alone by itself, while permission is not, as it ought to be, introduced into that law as a limiting clause, but is thrown among the exceptions. Thus “this or that is forbidden”,—say, Nos. 1, 2, 3, and so on in an infinite progression,—while permissions are only added to the law incidentally: they are not reached by the application of some principle, but only by groping about among cases which have actually occurred. Were this not so, qualifications would have had to be brought into the formula of laws of prohibition which would have immediately transformed them into laws of permission. Count von Windischgrätz, a man whose wisdom was equal to his discrimination, urged this very point in the form of a question propounded by him for a prize essay. One must therefore regret that this ingenious problem has been so soon neglected and left unsolved. For the possibility of a formula similar to those of mathematics is the sole real test of a legislation that would be consistent. Without this, the so-called jus certum will remain forever a mere pious wish: we can have only general laws valid on the whole; no general laws possessing the universal validity which the concept law seems to demand.

[116] “From this diffidence of one another, there is no way for any man to secure himself, so reasonable, as anticipation; that is, by force, or wiles, to master the persons of all men he can, so long, till he see no other power great enough to endanger him: and this is no more than his own conservation requireth, and is generally allowed.” (Hobbes: Lev. I. Ch. XIII.) [Tr.]

[117] Hobbes thus describes the establishment of the state. “A commonwealth is said to be instituted, when a multitude of men do agree, and covenant, every one, with every one, that to whatsoever man, or assembly of men, shall be given by the major part, the right to present the person of them all, that is to say, to be their representative; everyone, as well he that voted for it, as he that voted against it, shall authorize all the actions and judgments, of that man, or assembly of men, in the same manner, as if they were his own, to the end, to live peaceably amongst themselves, and be protected against other men.” (Lev. II. Ch. XVIII.)

There is a covenant between them, “as if every man should say to every man, I authorise and give up my right of governing myself, to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him, and authorize all his actions in like manner.” (Lev. II. Ch. XVII.) [Tr.]

[118] It is usually accepted that a man may not take hostile steps against any one, unless the latter has already injured him by act. This is quite accurate, if both are citizens of a law-governed state. For, in becoming a member of this community, each gives the other the security he demands against injury, by means of the supreme authority exercising control over them both. The individual, however, (or nation) who remains in a mere state of nature deprives me of this security and does me injury, by mere proximity. There is perhaps no active (facto) molestation, but there is a state of lawlessness, (status injustus) which, by its very existence, offers a continual menace to me. I can therefore compel him, either to enter into relations with me under which we are both subject to law, or to withdraw from my neighbourhood. So that the postulate upon which the following articles are based is:—“All men who have the power to exert a mutual influence upon one another must be under a civil government of some kind.”

A legal constitution is, according to the nature of the individuals who compose the state:—

(1) A constitution formed in accordance with the right of citizenship of the individuals who constitute a nation (jus civitatis).

(2) A constitution whose principle is international law which determines the relations of states (jus gentium).

(3) A constitution formed in accordance with cosmopolitan law, in as far as individuals and states, standing in an external relation of mutual reaction, may be regarded as citizens of one world-state (jus cosmopoliticum).

This classification is not an arbitrary one, but is necessary with reference to the idea of perpetual peace. For, if even one of these units of society were in a position physically to influence another, while yet remaining a member of a primitive order of society, then a state of war would be joined with these primitive conditions; and from this it is our present purpose to free ourselves.

[119] Lawful, that is to say, external freedom cannot be defined, as it so often is, as the right [Befugniss] “to do whatever one likes, so long as this does not wrong anyone else.”[B] For what is this right? It is the possibility of actions which do not lead to the injury of others. So the explanation of a “right” would be something like this:—“Freedom is the possibility of actions which do not injure anyone. A man does not wrong another—whatever his action—if he does not wrong another”: which is empty tautology. My external (lawful) freedom is rather to be explained in this way: it is the right through which I require not to obey any external laws except those to which I could have given my consent. In exactly the same way, external (legal) equality in a state is that relation of the subjects in consequence of which no individual can legally bind or oblige another to anything, without at the same time submitting himself to the law which ensures that he can, in his turn, be bound and obliged in like manner by this other.

The principle of lawful independence requires no explanation, as it is involved in the general concept of a constitution. The validity of this hereditary and inalienable right, which belongs of necessity to mankind, is affirmed and ennobled by the principle of a lawful relation between man himself and higher beings, if indeed he believes in such beings. This is so, because he thinks of himself, in accordance with these very principles, as a citizen of a transcendental world as well as of the world of sense. For, as far as my freedom goes, I am bound by no obligation even with regard to Divine Laws—which are apprehended by me only through my reason—except in so far as I could have given my assent to them; for it is through the law of freedom of my own reason that I first form for myself a concept of a Divine Will. As for the principle of equality, in so far as it applies to the most sublime being in the universe next to God—a being I might perhaps figure to myself as a mighty emanation of the Divine spirit,—there is no reason why, if I perform my duty in the sphere in which I am placed, as that aeon does in his, the duty of obedience alone should fall to my share, the right to command to him. That this principle of equality, (unlike the principle of freedom), does not apply to our relation to God is due to the fact that, to this Being alone, the idea of duty does not belong.

As for the right to equality which belongs to all citizens as subjects, the solution of the problem of the admissibility of an hereditary nobility hinges on the following question:—“Does social rank—acknowledged by the state to be higher in the case of one subject than another—stand above desert, or does merit take precedence of social standing?” Now it is obvious that, if high position is combined with good family, it is quite uncertain whether merit, that is to say, skill and fidelity in office, will follow as well. This amounts to granting the favoured individual a commanding position without any question of desert; and to that, the universal will of the people—expressed in an original contract which is the fundamental principle of all right—would never consent. For it does not follow that a nobleman is a man of noble character. In the case of the official nobility, as one might term the rank of higher magistracy—which one must acquire by merit—the social position is not attached like property to the person but to his office, and equality is not thereby disturbed; for, if a man gives up office, he lays down with it his official rank and falls back into the rank of his fellows.

[B] Hobbes’ definition of freedom is interesting. See Lev. II. Ch. XXI.:—“A Freeman, is he, that in those things, which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to.” [Tr.]

[120] Cf. Cowper: The Winter Morning Walk:—

“But is it fit, or can it bear the shock