ON SOME POINTS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW. A. ON THE VALUE OF PLEBISCITES IN INTERNATIONAL LAW. B. ON THE IDEA OF THE "LATIN RACE" AND ITS REAL C. SUGGESTIONS ON THE SALE OF ARMS BY THE U. S. GOV. ERNMENT DURING THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR. D. ON INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION. E. ON INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 299 NOTE. THREE of the communications which follow were printed in French in the Revue de Droit International et de Législation Comparée, 1871 and 1872. The first appeared also in the New York Evening Post under the signature Americus, and was reprinted in Littell's Living Age. A translation by W. W. S. of the second article (on the Latin race), was printed for private circulation in November, 1871, but Dr. Lieber's own language is here given. An English version of the third article, apparently from Dr. Lieber's own pen, appeared in an American journal, and is here reprinted. The fourth paper, addressed to Hon. Wm. H. Seward, U. S. Secretary of State, was originally published in the New York Daily Times, September 22, 1865. The fifth letter was addressed to Hon. Wm. C. Preston, U. S. Senator from South Carolina, in 1840.-G. 300 ON SOME POINTS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW. A. THE PLEBISCITUM. A German American View of the New German Nationality. THAT portion of the American population which takes a lively interest in the present war between France and Germany is by this time pretty well divided, according to the sympathies for the one or the other country, and those whose affections incline towards France, for whatever reason, maintain. that, according to good faith and international honor, no acquisition of French territory by Germany ought to take place without the inhabitants of the respective territories having expressed themselves in a plebiscitum favorable towards annexation to Germany. Even leading Germans, at least one of them, Dr. Jacoby, has publicly and strongly expressed this idea. It is with this question that I intend to occupy your readers for a short time. I leave the question aside—Is it wise for Germany to take a single foot of French territory? For argument's sake, we suppose that it is in harmony with profound statesmanship and necessary for the safety of Germany, as well as for the peace of Europe, that Alsace and Lorraine, or a portion of the latter, be incorporated with the German empire; and here only ask whether this ought to be done by a high-minded people without a plebiscitum-whether Americans, professedly lovers and cultivators of freedom, must not naturally be expected to side with the French. Let us judge of the question with manly calmness and just sincerity. Sentimentalism does no good; pretended sentimentalism does harm in every way. Of the Roman plebiscitum nothing need be said here but that it does not fall within the limits of the present discussion. The plebiscitum of antiquity was a resolution of the plebs as distinguished from the senate, and the plebs were not a nation, but simply the non-patrician population of Rome and its immediate vicinity. The modern plebiscitum is exclusively a French, nay, more, a recent Bonaparte innovation. Plebiscite, in the modern public law, designates a resolution or decree pretended to be adopted by the nation at large; that is, by the majority of votes of all Frenchmen twenty-one years old and above. They furnish good handles for the time, but are singularly untrustworthy, as every man, learned in election practice, sees at once, when he considers that these plebiscites allow no vote but yes or no; that no discussions, no meetings, no party formations are allowed; that the chief of the state has the whole army, all the officers, the entire administration, and the whole election apparatus, before and after the voting, in his hand. Consider this, and see what becomes of l'Elu du Peuple. So far as history goes it must be laid down that the modern plebiscite is singularly untrue and hollow, and the reasons can be readily discovered. It was the predominant desire of the emperor, now captive in Germany, to proclaim his so-called democratic absolutism as being the result of, and pre-eminently founded upon, the national decision. He adopted the official style: We, Napoleon, by the grace of God and the national will, Emperor of the French. Napoleon the First styled himself by the grace of God and the constitutions of France. The last plebiscite had appended to it by the emperor what in parliamentary slang is called a rider concerning the confidence which the nation has in the Bonapartes and the necessary continuance of their dynasty. More than seven millions voted yes; yet in no more than four months after, the Bonaparte |