In the United States we have seen a revival of the ancient discussion concerning the line of demarcation between national and State authority under our complex federal system, but there is an underlying question which cannot have escaped the thoughtful observer involved in the growing popular distrust of the representative system whereon both federal and State governments are based. This tendency is being manifested in very material modifications in representative government, as understood by the founders of our government, and I therefore ask your attention to the consideration of The Future of Representative Government.

This form of government, wherein the sovereign power of law-making is wholly delegated to deputies elected by the people, is of comparatively modern origin, and in the modern sense of the term it was unknown to the ancients. While its origin is obscure, we know that it was in England that representative government found its development in the form in which it was so greatly impressed upon the framers of our Constitution. Sir Henry Maine in his Popular Government says that it was virtually England's discovery of government by representation which caused parliamentary institutions to be preserved in England from the destruction which overtook them everywhere else, and to devolve as an inheritance upon the United States.

It is inevitable that any undertaking should be judged primarily from the point of view of what was originally attempted by the participants and expected by onlookers rather than by a strict standard of actual achievement. In most of the unfavorable discussion that has been current during and since the conference, the point of criticism is the opinion that the conference has not fulfilled its avowed purpose, rather than a complete denial of the usefulness of such results as actually have been accomplished. At the very opening session of the conference, M. Nelidoff in his presidential address pointed out in disillusioned language the impossibility of realizing certain general ideals that had been entertained with respect to these great meetings. He admitted that “we need not be discouraged from dreaming of the ideal of universal peace and the fraternity of peoples, considering that the essential condition of all progress is the pursuit of an ideal towards which we always strive without ever reaching it. Nevertheless, we should not be too ambitious.” He concluded by saying: “Let us set bravely to work, our path lit up by the bright star of universal peace which we shall never reach but which will always guide us.” While some among M. Nelidoff's audience approved of his cautious conservatism, others felt that his utterances had received an unduly pessimistic tinge from the unfortunate position in which Russia has found herself since the war. Nevertheless, when we now review the efforts and the accomplished work of the conference, we may take as the keynote, the words of the presiding officer, pointing out inevitable limitations and bidding us look for results not in sweeping resolutions, but in detailed and specific arrangements which at first sight may appear somewhat trivial and of a purely technical nature.

Prior to the time of the organization of the national government under the Constitution of 1787 the province of a court was very definitely determined. In accordance with the principles of ancient custom, a court was a tribunal established by law with the power to hear controversies between persons and to administer relief or punishment. It was the business of a court to interpret, pronounce and execute the law, to decide controversies and enforce rights. In the words of Lord Coke, “ a court is a place where justice is judicially ministered.”

Such was the traditional position of a court when the Federal Constitution went into operation in 1789. A supreme court was provided for, to be organized by congress, in whose hands was placed the authority to create such inferior courts as might be necessary to carry out the judicial duties allotted to the federal government. The supreme court which was established by one of the first acts of the congress which met in 1789 very soon recognized and affirmed the limited and definite field for the exercise of judicial authority.

The appearance of the eighth and final volume of M. Pradier-Fodéré's Traité de droit international public européen et américain seems a fitting occasion for a brief consideration of the life and works of this distinguished professor, counselor and author; more particularly is it appropriate to consider the extent and character of his services to that branch of public law dealt with in the above treatise, for it was to international law that he devoted the ripest years of a broad scholarship and the maturest judgments of an active life. M. Pradier-Fodéré was not simply and solely a student who looked out upon the hurly-burly of life from the secluded shelter of his study window; he was to no small extent a man of affairs who had come into close and intimate contact with matters of state on both sides of the Atlantic, and who, after a life of rich and varied experiences, settled down when over fifty to round out his life and his literary activity in the production of an extensive treatise on international law.