18i)7.] EDMUNDS — IN-TERNATIONAL ARBITRATIOX. 321 



necessarily implies a state of difference in respect of rights or 

 duties. In the municipal State these rights are established or de- 

 fined by municipal law, either written or unwritten, and they are 

 compulsory in the sense that the aggrieved individual may appeal 

 to the power of the State to compel a recognition of his rights or a 

 redress for his wrongs. 



This principle is equally true in respect of its nature as between 

 sovereign and independent States, with the exception that there is 

 no common tribunal yet established which has the authority to de- 

 cide upon, and much less compel obedience to, these principles. 



The idea, therefore, of international arbitration presupposes that 

 there must be some rule or law that is to be the standard by which 

 to measure the disputed rights or duties that may be drawn in ques- 

 tion between sovereign States. 



These rules or laws are what we call international law. It is not 

 founded in any essential sense upon the same grounds as is muni- 

 cipal law, for that is founded upon the assumed consent of all the 

 people who compose an organized State to which they have given 

 the authority, through their representatives of whatever kind, to 

 declare what their conduct toward each other shall be. 



International law, therefore, which is to be administered through 

 international arbitration, unless there be special provision made in 

 an agreement for arbitration other or further than what interna- 

 tional law requires, is really and in its widest aspects the law in- 

 herent in the nature of man ; that is natural law, as it is called by 

 the writers. And this natural law may be reduced to its last and 

 best analysis in the statement, which is the foundation of all practi- 

 cal religion, that every man and nation should do to another that 

 which he or it would wish another to do to himself or itself. 



But the law of nations has undergone — as have the social condi- 

 tions of mankind in the long centuries that have preceded us — a 

 great improvement. Some of the earliest writers on the subject 

 have undertaken to defend the use of poisoned weapons in war ; 

 later writers have been shocked at such propositions, as, justly, they 

 should have been. An interesting and comprehensive discussion 

 of the nature and history of natural and international law was 

 given by Vattell a century and a half ago, and it may be found in 

 the Preface to the comparatively recent editions of his treatise on 

 the law of nations. 



I affirm (notwithstanding the doubts in this respect of very emi- 



