329] THE PLEBISCITE IN ANCIENT AND FEUDAL TIMES 3 1 



the modern demand for popular consent or self-determina- 

 tion may be extended. 



The diplomatic study of the historical cessions of the past 

 reveals the fact that the principle of popular consent has 

 in some form or other been applied chiefly in cases of terri- 

 torial transfers by what we have called voluntary cession, 

 enforced cession, and, in some cases, in transfers by sale. 



While ancient Rome and Greece practiced the plebiscite 

 or referendum in their internal affairs and thus recognized 

 the principle of self-determination as applied to themselves 

 in their doings at home, in matters of foreign relations, in 

 their relations to their neighbors, they recognized no other 

 rights than those of their own will and power. All other 

 nations were deemed barbarians who were to be left alone 

 when strong but were to be conquered and enslaved when 

 weak. The German publicist Rotteck writes : 



From the oldest times up to the present and almost everywhere 

 and always peoples have been forced to let themselves be treated 

 like cattle, to be sold like common merchandise, to be exchanged, 

 pawned, given away, to be offered in payment, to be stolen, dis- 

 tributed, to be inherited according to civil law . . . and to be thrown 

 in as dowry of marrying women. . . . That such should have hap- 

 pened in ancient times should not prove strange, since in those early 

 times there existed hardly any conceptions, or at least only dark 

 ideas, of law, especially of international law. . . . The powerful 

 rulers of the far-reaching territories of the East and the little 

 tyrants of the West considered themselves the unrestricted proprie- 

 tors of their lands and of all that they included, peoples no less than 

 real property. . . . When they warred among each other, the loser 

 was deprived of all or part of his territory. . . . The peoples which 

 were thus transferred from one rule to another were not consulted. 

 . . . They did not really become members of the new state . . . but 

 they remained booty of war, property subject to the ' Sachenrccht.' 



Even when Republics made conquests . . . this was done solely 

 on the basis of Sachenrecht. Political right, citizenship proper re- 

 mained exclusively with the conquering tribe. . . . Thus it was with 

 the Greek republics, . . . thus it was with the world ruler — Rome — 

 which of the subjugated lands and peoples accepted only those of 

 Italian soil into the relation of allies and very much later into citi- 

 zenship, while she treated all the rest under the name of provinces 

 as subject to Sachenrecht. 



During the storms of the migrations . . . brute force reigned 

 supreme. Later, after ihe growth of feudalism even tiie .small 

 national tics were torn. Of former peoples nothing but greater or 



