Secondly, States under suzerainty and under protectorate which are half-Sovereign and under the guardianship[186] of other States with regard to the management of external affairs, are not equals of States which enjoy full sovereignty.
[186] See above, §§ [91] and [93].
Thirdly, the part-sovereign member-States of a Federal State are not equals of full-Sovereign States.
It is, however, quite impossible to lay down a hard and fast general rule concerning the amount of inequality between the equal and the unequal States, as everything depends upon the circumstances and conditions of the special case.
Political Hegemony of Great Powers.
§ 116. Legal equality must not be confounded with political equality. The enormous differences between States as regards their strength are the result of a natural inequality which, apart from rank and titles, finds its expression in the province of policy. Politically, States are in no manner equals, as there is a difference between the Great Powers and others. Eight States must at present be considered as Great Powers—namely, Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia in Europe, the United States in America, and Japan in Asia. All arrangements made by the body of the Great Powers naturally gain the consent of the minor States, and the body of the six Great Powers in Europe is therefore called the European Concert. The Great Powers are the leaders of the Family of Nations, and every progress of the Law of Nations during the past is the result of their political hegemony, although the initiative towards the progress was frequently taken by a minor Power.
But, however important the position and the influence of the Great Powers may be, they are by no means derived from a legal basis or rule.[187] It is nothing else than powerful example which makes the smaller States agree to the arrangements of the Great Powers. Nor has a State the character of a Great Power by law. It is nothing else than its actual size and strength which makes a State a Great Power. Changes, therefore, often take place. Whereas at the time of the Vienna Congress in 1815 eight States—namely, Great Britain, Austria, France, Portugal, Prussia, Spain, Sweden, and Russia—were still considered Great Powers, their number decreased soon to five, when Portugal, Spain, and Sweden lost that character. But the so-called Pentarchy of the remaining Great Powers turned into a Hexarchy after the unification of Italy, because the latter became at once a Great Power. The United States rose as a Great Power out of the civil war in 1865, and Japan did the same out of the war with China in 1895. Any day a change may take place and one of the present Great Powers may lose its position, or one of the weaker States may become a Great Power. It is a question of political influence, and not of law, whether a State is or is not a Great Power. Whatever large-sized State with a large population gains such strength that its political influence must be reckoned with by the other Great Powers, becomes a Great Power itself.[188]
[187] This is, however, maintained by a few writers. See, for instance, Lorimer, I. p. 170; Lawrence, §§ 113 and 114; Westlake, I. pp. 308, 309; and Pitt Cobbett, "Cases and Opinions on International Law," 2nd ed. vol. I. (1909), p. 50.
[188] In contradistinction to the generally recognised political hegemony of the Great Powers, Lawrence (§§ 113 and 114) and Taylor (§ 69) maintain that the position of the Great Powers is legally superior to that of the smaller States, being a "Primacy" or "Overlordship." This doctrine, which professedly seeks to abolish the universally recognised rule of the equality of States, has no sound basis, and confounds political with legal inequality. I cannot agree with Lawrence when he says (§ 114, p. 276):—"... in a system of rules depending, like International Law, for their validity on general consent, what is political is legal also, if it is generally accepted and acted on." The Great Powers are de facto, by the smaller States, recognised as political leaders, but this recognition does not involve recognition of legal superiority.