314 THEORY AND ADMINISTRATION 



bonds, in some instances exercising their international powers in 

 common, and in others surrendering up the enjoyment of their inter- 

 national rights in whole or in part to alien powers. In not a few 

 cases, indeed, this surrender has extended to the exercise of domestic 

 powers as well. Thus it has come about that just as in the Middle 

 Ages the feudal state was the prevailing civic type, and in the early 

 modern age the absolute monarchy, so at the present time the dom- 

 inant type seems to be the composite or federative form. In Europe 

 we have the federal state of Switzerland, the dual empire-kingdom of 

 Austria-Hungary, and the great German hegemony under the leader- 

 ship of Prussia. In the Americas we have the federal states of the 

 United States, Canada, Mexico, and the various South and Central 

 American federations. Australia is now a federated commonwealth. 

 In South Africa a federal movement among the several British colonies 

 exists, and finally, the scheme of an imperial federation of all the 

 English colonies with their mother country is in many quarters being 

 vigorously pressed. Each of the greater powers of the world has 

 within comparatively recent years established political interests over 

 the less developed peoples of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific Islands. 

 Where these political interests have taken the definite colonial form, 

 international conditions have not been greatly complicated; but where, 

 as is the case in so many instances, these interests have been asserted, 

 not as a result of the formal subjection of the territories in question 

 to the sovereignty of the powers claiming the interest, but as based 

 upon treaties providing for the establishment of a protectoral rela- 

 tion, or for the lease for a number of years of a particular tract of 

 land, or the recognition of simply a " sphere of interest," or, most 

 indefinite of all, for the lease of a sphere of interest, where these 

 have been the international relations that have been established, 

 a host of novel international problems have been born, for the solu- 

 tion of which, in most instances, only pure political theory is com- 

 petent. The connotations of the terms sovereignty, suzerainty, 

 half-sovereignty, protection, vassalage, allegiance, have to be exam- 

 ined with a carefulness never before required. Among other pro- 

 blems it is necessary to determine anew what powers and attributes 

 are incidental to the possession of sovereignty, whether its existence 

 is an infallible and necessary test of statehood, to what extent the 

 exercise of its powers may be delegated without parting with its 

 possession, the distinction between governments de facto and govern- 

 ments de jure, whether states may be created by international com- 

 pact, whether the origin of political authority in general is susceptible 

 of a juristic interpretation, what is the essential character of positive 

 law and whence its validity, and to what extent so-called inter- 

 national law is binding, or is law at all in sensu strictiore. 



