200 THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON. 
THEORY OF ARBITRATION. 
Sovereign States, it has been said, should be trust- 
ed to do justice spontaneously, and without humbling 
themselves to be judged by an arbitrator. It might 
with just as good reason be said that all men should 
be trusted to do justice spontaneously, and without 
humbling themselves to be judged by a tribunal. 
The experience of mankind contradicts each of these 
propositions. Diverse views of the facts, and of the 
rules of right applicable to the facts, to say nothing 
of prejudice, passion, pride of opinion, are inseparable 
from human affairs, because they are conditions of 
the human mind, influencing the actions as well of 
men in political society as of individual men. <Ad- 
mit that in a majority of cases reason will prevail to 
prevent or to settle controversies between individual 
persons; but reason does not suffice in all cases, and 
it is for such exceptional cases that tribunals of jus- 
tice exist, without which, in the attempt of men to 
right themselves, society would be dissolved into a 
state of anarchy and bloodshed. The considerations 
which recommend the establishment of tribunals hay- 
ing authority as such within the limits of each sov- 
ereign State, are still more cogent when applied to 
sovereign States themselves, which, having no com- 
mon superior, must of necessity determine their dif. 
ferences by war, unless they accept the mediation of 
some friendly Power to restore concord between them, 
or unless they recur to arbitration, by mutual consent, 
in one form or another according to circumstances, as 
