Such a union of states, in order to maintain peace, may be called
a permanent congress of nations; and it is free to every
neighbouring state to join in it. A union of this kind, so far at
least as regards the formalities of the right of nations in respect of
the preservation of peace, was presented in the first half of this
century, in the Assembly of the States-General at the Hague. In this
Assembly most of the European courts, and even the smallest republics,
brought forward their complaints about the hostilities which were
carried on by the one against the other. Thus the whole of Europe
appeared like a single federated state, accepted as umpire by the
several nations in their public differences. But in place of this
agreement, the right of nations afterwards survived only in books;
it disappeared from the cabinets, or, after force had been already
used, it was relegated in the form of theoretical deductions to the
obscurity of archives.
By such a congress is here meant only a voluntary combination of
different states that would be dissoluble at any time, and not such
a union as is embodied in the United States of America, founded upon a
political constitution, and therefore indissoluble. It is only by a
congress of this kind that the idea of a public right of nations can
be established, and that the settlement of their differences by the
mode of a civil process, and not by the barbarous means of war, can be
realized.
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