VII MEANS OF SECURING PERFORMANCE OF TREATIES
Vattel, II. §§ 235-261—Hall, § 115—Lawrence, § 134—Phillimore, II. §§ 54-63A—Bluntschli, §§ 425-441—Heffter, §§ 96-99—Geffcken in Holtzendorff, III. pp. 85-90—Ullmann, § 83—Bonfils, Nos. 838-844—Despagnet, Nos. 451-452—Pradier-Fodéré, II. Nos. 1156-1169—Rivier, II. pp. 94-97—Nys, III. pp. 36-41—Calvo, III. §§ 1638-1642—Fiore, II. Nos. 1018-1019, and Code, Nos. 784-791—Martens, I. § 115—Nippold, op. cit. pp. 212-227.
What means have been in use.
§ 523. As there is no international institution which could enforce the performance of treaties, and as history teaches that treaties have frequently been broken, various means of securing performance of treaties have been made use of. The more important of these means are oaths, hostages, pledges, occupation of territory, guarantee. Nowadays these means, which are for the most part obsolete, have no longer great importance on account of the gratifying fact that all States are now much more conscientious and faithful as regards their treaty obligations than in former times.
Oaths.
§ 524. Oaths are a very old means of securing the performance of treaties, which was constantly made use of not only in antiquity and the Middle Ages, but also in modern times. For in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries all important treaties were still secured by oaths. During the eighteenth century, however, the custom of securing treaties by oaths gradually died out, the last example being the treaty of alliance between France and Switzerland in 1777, which was solemnly confirmed by the oaths of both parties in the Cathedral at Solothurn. The employment of oaths for securing treaties was of great value in the times of absolutism, when little difference used to be made between the State and its monarch. The more the distinction grew into existence between the State as the subject of International Law on the one hand, and the monarch as the temporary chief organ of the State on the other hand, the more such oaths fell into disuse. For an oath can exercise its force on the individual only who takes it, and not on the State for which it is taken.
Hostages.
§ 525. Hostages are as old a means of securing treaties as oaths, but they have likewise, for ordinary purposes[893] at least, become obsolete, because they have practically no value at all. The last case of a treaty secured by hostages is the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, in which hostages were stipulated to be sent by England to France for the purpose of securing the restitution of Cape Breton Island to the latter. The hostages sent were Lords Sussex and Cathcart, who remained in France till July 1749.