RELATIVE EQUALITY TO INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION. 563 



vastan enterprise. Even if men's efforts had been well directed, their failure 

 during two centuries of reaction against mediaeval influences would not warrant 

 their abandonment on the ground of mere lapse of time. 



But have they been well directed? The history of this period, if I am 

 not mistaken, is pregnant with lessons of warning not less emphatic than 

 the lesson of encouragement which Ave derive from its comparative brevity. 

 It tells us, — and I think the teaching of all history is to the same effect, — that 

 the power and importance of separate communities, not only absolutely, but, 

 what is far more important for our purpose, relatively to each other, have been 

 continually changing, and, consequently, that what we ought to have provided for 

 was the organisation, not of a stable body all the members of which possessed 

 and retained definite and specific functions, but of a body in peroetual flux the 

 members of which were changing and would continue to change their functions, 

 their rights, and their responsibilities, relatively to each other and to the whole. But 

 when we look into what has been really done or attempted, whether by statesmen 

 and diplomatists for the establishment and maintenance of the Balance of Power, 

 or by speculative politicians in their schemes for the creation of a European 

 Confederation, or their aspirations after a Perpetual Peace, we find that the effort 

 has invariably been to fit a final and unchangeable system to the requirements of 

 a society which was anything but final. The very same error which dictated the 

 search after the Perfect, or Ideal State, was thus repeated in the sphere of external 

 politics. 



To substantiate this statement by a satisfactory criticism of all, or even of any 

 one of these schemes, would lead me beyond the limits which your time assigns 

 to me. Those which received the sanction of diplomacy are embodied in the 

 treaties which have followed all our great wars, and belong to general history ; 

 and I shall probably recall the general character of the other class sufficiently to 

 your recollection when I mention the well-known names of their authors, St 

 Pierre, Rousseau, Kant, Bentham, Cobden, and of one, the latter phases of whose 

 much-contested policy seem to combine the practical sagacity of the statesman 

 with the dispassionate thoughtfulness of the philosopher — I mean the Emperor 

 Napoleon III. Should you find leisure to re-examine these various projects I 

 believe you will find that, without a single exception, they have proposed, not 

 only to reconstruct the map of Europe, but, when so reconsti Jicted, to stereotype 

 it and to guarantee, or attempt to guarantee, its permanence. 



Now, it is obvious that such an interference with the natural course of events, 

 with the ebb and flow of human fortunes, inasmuch as it assumed the possibility 

 of controlling the strong, could have been effected only by an amount of unani- 

 mity on the part of the weak which was very unlikely to be permanent. Our 

 utmost confidence in the doctrine of the Balance of Power could barely bring 

 such an occurrence within the re?.ch of possibility. But supposing it possible 



