6. Com

plete Union.

C. Division.

The constitution of Austro-Hungary since 1867 approaches the forms of Personal Union in the dualism of the two chief States, but there are elements of Real Union in the institutions of a common ministry for foreign affairs, of the imperial army and finances, as well as in the common delegation of the two representative bodies of Austria and Hungary. Each of these chief States themselves began as personal unions, but have now become real unions.

Complete Union puts an end to the separateness of the united States, and forms not a composite but a single State. England and Scotland were originally bound together by a mere personal union, but their Union into Great Britain in 1707, and the later Union between Great Britain and Ireland in 1800, make them examples of a Complete Union. Their separate Parliaments came to an end, and there is one Parliament for the whole realm. More recent examples are to be found in the incorporation of the principalities of Hohenzollern with Prussia in 1849; the annexation of the Italian duchies and of the kingdom of Naples to Piedmont in order to form the new kingdom of Italy in 1860-1861; above all, the transformation into Prussian provinces of the kingdom of Hanover, the principalities of electoral Hesse, Nassau, Schleswig and Holstein, and of the free eity of Frankfurt.

Public law was formerly inclined to regard these unions and changes exclusively from a dynastic point of view, as if the matter in hand were only the acquisition or inheritance of several pieces of ground by the same private person. The forms which private law provides for alienation among living persons as well as at death (testament, inheritance) were recognised, as if a nation and a country were a bequest with which an individual man could deal as he chose. Modern public law rejects this view, which conflicts with our conception of the State, and insists that such changes, as they essentially concern the public constitution of the nation, must not be arranged without the assent of the people's repre

sentatives.

The opposite of union is the division or separation of a greater State into two or more new States.

Division.

National division is apt to occur especially where different 7. National peoples, separated by their very territories, have been externally united in one State without becoming really one. If the power of concentration which has hitherto held them together is diminished, the natural differences come into play, and the process of separation begins, splitting up the existing whole into a number of new and independent States. Thus the great world-monarchy, which had been for a moment welded together by the genius of Alexander, went to pieces immediately after his death. The Frankish monarchy of the ninth century broke up according to nationalities; but this result was partly due to dynastic differences. The fall of the Napoleonic Empire, with its creations of dependent kingdoms, may be explained to a great extent in the same way: and so too the separation of Belgium from Holland in 1830.

ance.

During the middle ages a State was frequently divided 8. Division among several sons of the deceased ruler, just as an inheritance by inherit is among several heirs. This procedure, which follows the principles of private law, is quite incompatible with the unity and welfare of a State, and has only been abolished by the recognition of the modern principle of political indivisibility. Another form appears when one part of the State declares 9. Declaraitself independent and becomes constituted into a separate dependState.

As a rule the part as such is not justified in rising against the whole and separating itself by force. History has given examples of warning in many unjustified and unfortunate attempts at separation. At the same time there are declarations of independence which have obtained full recognition, and have sufficiently justified themselves. We may recall the separation of the United Provinces from Spain in 1579, the Declaration of Independence of the North American States in 1776, the liberation of Greece from Turkish dominion in our own days. The principle needs a limitation which may be put as follows: the part is, exceptionally, justified in seceding, if its lasting and important interests are not protected or satisfied by the whole to which it belongs, and if at the same time it is capable of taking care of itself and maintaining

tion of In

ence.

its independent position. Only real necessity and intolerable. suffering give sufficient ground for the secession, and only the moral force which proves itself victorious, and overcomes all difficulties, gives a claim to recognition. Under these two presuppositions, this recognition will be accorded by the judgment of history 3.

*

3 The American Declaration of Independence treats the principle more lightly, and acknowledges the then prevailing theory of natural rights :'We hold these truths to be self-evident;-that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organising its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evince a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.'

THE

CHAPTER IV.

III. DERIVED FORMS.

(a) Greek.

HE colonisation of the Greeks, which covered the coasts of 1. Colonisathe Mediterranean in Asia Minor, Italy, Sicily and the tion. Islands of the Archipelago with new cities and States, was a conscious formation of new States. The colony proceeded from the mother city like the son who goes out from the family of his father to set up a household of his own. It became immediately a new State independent of the mother city, but bound to it by the ties of descent, manners, law, religion. The young city took the holy fire from the Prytaneum of the mother city, and the ancestral gods were transferred to the new dwelling-place 1. The Greeks founded no great Empire, but their scattered colonies Hellenised the East2.

It was otherwise with the colonies of Rome". They were (6) Roman. intended to secure and extend Roman dominion, and they remained therefore in a relation of strict dependence on the capital. They were not the foundation of new States, but only an extension of the existing one State.

Different again is modern colonisation. If we consider the (e)Modern. origin of modern colonies founded by European States, especially those in America, there is, as a rule, no direct foundation

1 Cp. Hermann, Griechische Staatsalterthümer, Part iv. The Phoenician colonisation was not at first the foundation of new States, but usually came to be so.

2

a

Cp. Laurent, Histoire du droit des gens, ii. p. 310.

[Cp. Marquardt, Röm. Statsverwaltung, vol. i. p. 35 foll.]

2. Con

cession of sovereign rights.

3. Institu tion by a foreign ruler.

of new States: the intention is rather to extend the dominion and civilisation of the old country or to obtain a new economic existence, or, sometimes, to escape persecution at home. In South America the dependence of the colonies on the Romance States of Europe was greater than in the North, where the Teutonic feeling of freedom and tendency to form corporations caused or at least favoured a considerable degree of colonial independence.

But if one looks to the later development and history of these colonies, they have mostly attained to an independent existence, and have thus separated themselves from European rule and become independent States. This sort of colonisation may be rather compared with the birth of a child, who increases the family as a dependent member, but after he has grown up in body and mind goes off and founds a new family.

Another derived formation of the State often took place in the middle ages in the form of a concession of sovereign rights to particular parts of the State. A whole series, especially of German districts, principalities, dominions, imperial cities, became independent States by obtaining particular sovereign rights from the king, and gradually increasing these until at last the king retained only an appearance of supremacy without any real power. Thus what had previously been parts of one State, became in the course of centuries independent States. The outward form of such concession was frequently that of private acquisition by purchase or loan, and is thus not adapted for the modern state. Even in the middle ages, however, that was not essential, and thus at the present day it is practically possible that a State with clear consciousness should train up a part of its dominions and confer on it sovereign rights. England proceeds in this manner towards Canada and other of her dependencies.

Finally, there is the institution of a new State by a foreign ruler, especially by a conqueror whose fiat destroys old States and calls forth new ones. Europe saw, in the years of the Napoleonic rule, a number of States destroyed and others set up by the will of the Emperor. But these