The story of the Congo Free State

by Henry Wellington Wack

First. By creating themselves into a state—that is to say, by establishing themselves upon a territory which belongs to them, and forming themselves into a community with a regular government, and legal organs of public power—in a word, with all the constituent elements of a state.

Most of the states of antiquity, according to legends and traditions, or positive historical information, have been created in no other way.

The states of the Middle Ages had the same origin. The Franks, the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Burgundians, and others, were only nomadic peoples, composed of chiefs who, in the eyes of international law, were only individuals, but who founded states.

The Italian republics of the Middle Ages were only municipalities without international sovereignty, and they have become sovereign states. Simple individuals, poor fishermen, caused the republic of Venice to rise from the waves of the Adriatic and to become its queen.

Almost all the States of New England, in America, have been founded by individuals.[80]

States, to exist, have no need to be recognised by other states. Those who have founded them are the sovereigns, and therefore have the right to exercise the rights of sovereignty in so far as this exercise has not been delegated to an authority instituted under the constitution of the state.

And a revolution which has for result the detaching from a state of one of its parts, is it not at the commencement the work of individuals? And those individuals, if they unite themselves in their enterprise, can erect a simple province or provinces into a new and sovereign state, and exercise then sovereign rights.

And if to-day, simple individuals should establish themselves on a desert island, or on territory unoccupied by another state, they can establish a new state, with all the rights of sovereignty. We have seen Texas thus formed.

Second. An individual can become sovereign by succeeding to another sovereign in the exercise of the sovereignty of a state. From a private individual he becomes a sovereign.

The question whether a private individual can accept a sovereignty when the interior laws of his state forbid him is outside of our subject, and we do not treat of it.