ROBERT PHILLIMORE, ADVOCATE TO HER MAJESTY IN HER OFFICE OF ADMIRALTY, "Wars are no massacres or confusions, but the highest trials of Right." T. & J. W. JOHNSON & CO., NO. 535 CHESTNUT STREET. 1857. PREFACE. THIS volume completes the system of Public International Law, and fills up the outline sketched out in the first volume of this work.(a) I. Since the publication of the last (the second) volume, great events have happened in the history of the Community of States. Some of these are noticed in the following pages; others belong to the subjects which have been already treated of in the preceding volumes. It is proposed to draw the attention of the Reader to these events in the following imperfect sketch: II. Turkey has been formally, and in a manner to place the question beyond all doubt, admitted, by the Treaty of Paris, (b) into the family of States(c) which are bound, not only, as all States are, by the principles of PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW, but by those usages and customs which constitute what may be considered the Positive Law of Christian Communities. The object of the new Treaty of Paris is to secure, "through effectual and reciprocal guarantees, the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire."(d) This result is the subject of a [*iv] common Guarantee. (e) The Plenipotentiaries declare that "the Sublime Porte is admitted to participate in the advantages of the Public Law and system (concert) of Europe. (f) This proposition must receive, as to PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW, some obvious limitation from the very nature of Mohammedanism: though it be true that this religion is professed by a comparatively small number of the subjects of European Turkey; but the proposition holds good as to PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW; and the fact which it affirms marks an important epoch in the History of the Progress of International Jurisprudence. For if Turkey has acquired the Rights, she has also subjected herself to the Duties of a civilized Community. How long this new condition of thing, so utterly (a) The reader is referred upon this point to the concluding pages of the present volume. (b) This Treaty is printed in the Appendix to this volume. (c) Vide ante, Vol. I. pp. 113-17, as to the effect of the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829, and of usage upon this point. (d) Preamble. (e) Article vii. (ƒ) Art. vii. of the Treaty of Paris, 30 March, 1856. |