[ARBITRATION.]
Should these efforts lead in the near future to the intended result, International Law would thereby have made an important progress.
It can no longer be denied that International Law does actually exist; but we undervalue its significance because we are impatient. We do not notice the advances it has made because they have been small; but they have been numerous; and slowly, step by step, international jurisprudence has progressed. This affects not only the awakening sense of justice and acknowledged principles, but also their application, which from the days of Hugo Grotius, 250 years ago, down to Martens, Bluntschli, Calvo, and other most distinguished jurists of our day, has been the subject of great scholarly activity, by means of which the various regulations of jurisprudence have little by little been pieced together into a foundation and substance of universally accepted law.
What has been most generally done to gain the object in view has been the Insertion of Arbitral Clauses in treaties which were being concluded or had already been concluded in reference to other questions. In this direction Signor Mancini of Italy has been especially active. As during the time he was Minister of Foreign Affairs he had the concluding of a great number of treaties between Italy and other countries, he made use of the opportunity to insert into almost all—in nineteen instances[1]—an arbitral clause.
We have examples of treaties with such clauses in the commercial treaty between Italy and England, 1883; Norway, Sweden, and Spain, by a supplement in 1887; also England and Greece, 1886. According to the first two agreements, all disputes about the right understanding of the treaties shall be settled by arbitration, as soon as it becomes apparent that it is vain to hope for a friendly arrangement. In the Greco-English treaty it is further stipulated that all disputes which directly or indirectly may arise in consequence of that treaty always shall, if they cannot be amicably arranged, be referred to a committee of arbitration, which shall be nominated by each party with a like number of members; also that if this committee cannot agree, there shall be appointed a tribunal of arbitration, whose decision both nations bind themselves to accept.
The idea of concluding distinct Treaties of Arbitration, or of giving a widely extended range to arbitral clauses, so that they should affect the whole relation of the contracting parties to one another, is comparatively new.
So far as I know, Mr. William Jay was the first who in modern times advocated this idea, in a work which came out in New York in 1842, and in which he proposed: that in the next treaty between, for example, the United States and France, it should be stated that in case any dispute should arise between the two nations, not only in respect of the interpretation of that treaty, but also in respect of any other subject whatever, the dispute should be settled by means of an arbitration by one or more friendly powers.
A similar proposition was presented to Lord Clarendon in 1853. By sending a deputation to the plenipotentiaries at the Congress at Paris in 1856, the English "Peace Society" succeeded in inducing them to introduce into, one of the protocols a solemn recognition of the principle of Arbitration. In the name of their governments they expressed the wish that the states between which any serious misunderstanding should arise, should, as far as circumstances permitted, submit the question to the arbitration of a friendly power before resorting to arms. This proposition, which was unanimously adopted, was made by Lord Clarendon, the representative of England, and supported by the emissaries of France, Prussia, and Italy,—Walewsky, Manteufel, and Cavour.
But the first movement in favour of independent Treaties of Arbitration came up in a petition in 1847, from the English Peace Society to Parliament.
The next year this subject was discussed in the Peace Congress at Brussels.