568 PROFESSOR LORIMER ON THE APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF 



to the ignorant, constraint to the criminal. So far, I think, we may go, even 

 where these conditions are dependent on the active interposition of our fellow-men. 

 But equality is neither a consequence of life, nor a condition of freedom. It may 

 or may not result from free energising ; and it is only where it is present as a fact 

 that it comes within the scope of a rational representative system. It was 

 Rousseau's doctrine, that all men ought to be equal, and not Hobbes 1 assump- 

 tion, that all men are equal, and ought consequently to be recognised as such, 

 which brought about the Revolutions of last century, and which threatens 

 us still. But this claim to be heard in vindication of rights which are alleged 

 to exist, is neither more nor less than a claim to equality before the law— a 

 claim which the constitution of this country recognises in the freedom of the 

 press, the right to petition Parliament, to hold meetings, to form associa- 

 tions, and in many other ways quite as much as in the right to sue. With 

 reference to such a claim the State, in its legislative capacity, holds, mutatis 

 mutandis, precisely the position which the judge holds when the claims of two 

 private parties are urged before him. And, in a still wider sphere, the existing 

 States that form the commonwealth of nations assume the same position with 

 reference to every new claimant for what, in international law, is technically 

 known by the very significant and appropriate term of recognition. 



If justice is to be done, then, if the principles of the science of jurisprudence — 

 of a science which, in its minutest application, is an interpretation and an exposi- 

 tion of nature, are to be followed in any department whatever, there must be 

 proportion between the claimants and the things granted to them (oh kcu ev oh), 

 in order that those who are unequal may not have equal things (m hoi oV ha 

 e^ovai), or the reverse. It is far stranger, and far more sad, than that Aristotle 

 should have failed to recognise the operation of the distributive principle in 

 private law (if he did fail to recognise it), that the Christian world of Europe 

 should for nearly a century have practically banished it from public law, in which 

 Aristotle held that it reigns supreme. 



Such, then, being the two false principles which, since the Peace of West- 

 phalia in 1048, have vitiated our schemes of international organisation, can we 

 get rid of them for the future ? Can we shadow forth a European or Cosmopolitan 

 Constitution, self-sustaining and self -vindicating, which shall make provision for 

 legitimate progress and righteous development, and for inevitable retrogression, 

 whilst it takes cognizance of existing diversities of power? 



To anything approaching to a Confederation, in the stricter sense of a single 

 Composite State, there is, I think, the objection which exists to all Confederations, 

 and of which we have just seen the consequences so terribly exhibited, first in 

 America, and then in Germany. In a Confederation there are always two forces 

 at work, a centrifugal force and a centripetal force — the tendency of the first of 

 which is to pull it to pieces, and the tendency of the second of which is to cen- 



