When one state takes the place of another and undertakes a permanent exercise of its sovereign territorial rights or powers, there is said to be a succession of states. This succession may be called universal in case of total absorption, whether through voluntary agreement, forcible annexation or subjugation, the division of a state into several international persons, or the union of several states into a single international person. Universal succession may also be said to exist where a state is broken up and divided among several previously existing states, as in the case of the division of Poland between Kussia, Prussia, and Austria.

In the Clayton-Bulwer treaty of 1850 the United States and Great Britain agreed that neither would ever erect or maintain any fortifications commanding the canal or the vicinity thereof. The Hay-Paunceforte treaty of 5 February, 1900, by clause 7, stipulated as follows:

On February 15, 1911, the Senate of the United States advised and consented to the ratification of the International Prize Court Convention adopted by the Second Hague Peace Conference and signed by the American delegates October 18, 1907. Although transmitted to the Senate with the various Hague conventions on February 27, 1908, and favorably recommended by the President and Secretary of State, action upon the convention was deferred by the Committee on Foreign Relations because the convention in its original form involved an appeal from the Supreme Court of the United States to the international court at The Hague. This feature of the otherwise acceptable convention raised doubts as to its constitutionality, because Article 3, section 1, of the Constitution provides that “ the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court.” An appeal from the Supreme Court to the court at The Hague seemed to some inconsistent with this provision, for a court can not be considered supreme if an appeal lies from its decisions. To this it may be answered that the court to be established at The Hague is not a court of the United States, and, therefore, is not contemplated by the Constitution; for the Hague court is a diplomatic tribunal for the settlement of questions which would otherwise be adjusted by diplomacy, or referred to a mixed commission specially constituted for their determination, or which if not determined by either of these methods, might result in war.

France has had a richer legislative experience in matters of nationality than any other country. Scarcely a decade has passed since the Revolution in which some project for legislation has not been proposed, and during the intervals between these projects the subject has been kept alive by very intelligent discussion on the part of statesmen and writers. A resumé of French legislation will indicate the trend of thought in France and throw light upon the policies behind the present law. In so brief a summary as is here presented it will be impossible, however, to refer to the numerous proposals which never passed beyond the stage of debate. We shall confine ourselves to the laws as adopted, and these will suffice for our purpose.

The law existing in France immediately anterior to the Revolution conferred French nationality on persons (1) born on French soil; (2) born in a foreign country of a French father who had not established his domicile in that country nor lost his intent to return, provided the person so born returned to France.

During the fourteen years that he occupied the chair of history and political economy at Columbia College, in the city of New York, Francis Lieber displayed praiseworthy activity. This period of his life covered some restless years; the theatre of operations was of a size whose equal can be shown by few historical dramas. Terrorstricken, the civilized world witnessed a tremendous struggle, whence, fortunately, the cause of civilization was to issue triumphant. The learned professor did not content himself with zealously performing his university obligations; neither was he satisfied with fulfilling his civic duties; he threw himself resolutely into the conflict; he fought with his tongue and his pen; he made himself the organizer and representative of a ceaseless propaganda for the Union cause against the secessionists; by his advice and by his legal works he gave the Federal Government the most valuable assistance. For a long time he had been occupied with public law; he now enlarged the field of his researches and his studies, and he studied ardently the laws of war and important problems of international law. The serious events taking place before his eyes led him, too, to write his opinions and to draft The instructions for the government of armies of the United States in the field, which will ever be an honor to him.

In states which possess a written constitution and a constituent power, constitutional laws are, as early writers on international law expressed it, fundamental laws. In them is the source of the several governmental powers; they determine the form of the state, and of its organs and their functions, and they regulate the exercise of the legislative power. Briefly, they are the fundamental and the essential act of national sovereignty, the expression of the will of a self-organizing people.

Unlike other provinces detached from the Ottoman Empire and endowed with autonomy, the Island of Crete, for example, which the Powers furnished with a constitution prepared by themselves, Bulgaria received at Berlin the power to undertake the elaboration of its own constitution.

Having considered in former numbers of this Journal the sometime and occasional duties of the Department, including among them certain contingent duties which it has never been called upon to perform, we may now advance to a consideration of its habitual functions.

The organic act of the Department prescribed that the Secretary of State should keep “ the seal of the United States.” It is the mark of the supreme authority of the United States, and before the government went into operation under the Constitution, was in the custody of the Secretary of Congress, being used to verify all important acts, whether executive or legislative; but the debate on executive departments in the first constitutional congress indicated that Congress did not contemplate keeping the seal any longer, and thought it would necessarily pass to the custody of the Executive. The President did, in fact, take it under his control as soon as he assumed office and before legal provision had been made for it.