matters which are seen by every one to involve dangers
of extreme seriousness.
As Mr. Frederic Passy declared the other day in the
Senate — " Parliamentary omnipotence is making liberty
extinct in France." It is assuredly not a fortunate
chap, vni] LEGISLATIVE OMNIPOTENCE 335
time to copy the crudities of absolute legislatures and
privileged officialism in the sphere of international rela-
tions. They are being abandoned in the sphere from
which they are copied, and we may as well copy the
improved edition.
The first requisite, then, is the satisfaction of local
patriotism : the next, the avoidance of a Universal
Provider of legislation and police ; and the third, the
skilful introduction of federal machinery for giving ex-
pression to the limited but important needs of wider
areas than these small units of force.
In particular, the wider unions cannot be in any sense
nations. The flame of patriotism, if it is not a flickering
flash of summer lightning, must burn steadily in one place.
The Unions must claim compliance ; they cannot demand
allegiance. So all-important is local attachment, and
supreme, that those examples of patriotism which we arc
accustomed to consider lofty and almost exaggerated, are
in reality pure cases of local patriotism. I do not venture
to speak of Japan, but the most conspicuous nation in
Europe for intensity of patriotism is probably Hungary,
and Hungarian patriotism is local patriotism in excclsis.
Hungarians themselves recognize it. " I am a patriotic
native of Budapesth I " an accomplished Magyar
lawyer observed to the author, in answer to a tentative
question. " I have lived all my life here, and I know it
by heart." " The patriotism of the Hungarian," says a
writer, " I suspect is a reflection of his intense passion
for his native town. No town in the world is anything
to compare, in his eyes, with his own." It is the only
real basis of state life. The patriots of antiquity were
city-patriots. The Poles, that other great tragic race of
Europe, were so fiercely wedded to local independence
as to uphold the liber um veto of local magnates.
We may discard the repeated declamation of politicians
who impress upon their hearers the possibility and pro-
priety of double allegiance. It is a platform commonplace
336 FEDERATION
[CHAP. VIII
for an orator to talk of the pride which a Scotsman feels
in Scotland as being perfectly compatible with his greater
pride in the British Empire. It is a gratuitous assumption.
No one is capable of two supreme passions. The federal
union may be the subject of warm interest ; of great
approval ; of disinterested sacrifice. But the patria
remains in unassailable supremacy. Put before an
Imperialist Scot the choice of the Union Jack or the red
lilies and lion, and if he has not forgotten Scotland alto-
gether, there will be no hesitation in his choice. Even
the name of Scotland stands in his mind for the piece of
Scotland he best knows and loves. Federation does not
need an impossible devotion to two rulers, any more than
feudalism demands an impossible devotion to seventeen
lords.
How to bring about a living federalism which shall em-
brace the world, is a larger question, which we do not pre-
sume to discuss in detail. But at least it is incumbent
on us to indicate the manner in which it is possible. These
dreams of city-states and hierarchies of power arc remote
enough from the facts of the present-day world. How
can they be related to them ? The answer is that the
necessity for them lies in the thought of to-day. If the
life of myriads at the moment is monotonous and de-
pressing : if powers are wasted in Paris and London which
ought to hold sway over far villages of Wales and Pro-
vence : if, for want of friendly guidance and help, masses
of pauperism are accumulating in the vortex of society :
if in the higher ranks every man is a social Ishmael, or
at best a Hal o' th' Wynd, fighting for his own hand, with
his eye on a motor, or a coronet : if power has become
divorced from grace, and presses with a dull mechanical
uniformity alike on the just and on the unjust : if the
exercise of personal sympathy in administrative details
has been replaced by the indiscriminate stiffness of
"Hi' ill pedantry : if life has become a great game of
blindman's bull, then nothing is more certain than that
chap, vni] LOCALISM 337
the commune will ultimately vindicate its lost liberties.
Neighbours eannol remain strangers. They will pit their
self-conscious strength against the ignorant dulness of
state routine. The vital organism, based on good under-
standing, will eat away the dead timbers of the state
machine. So Daireaux wrote in 1886 — " Le principe des
nationality qui a bouleverse le monde, qui a triomphe"
d'armees puissantes, ne triomphera jamais de ce vieux
germe de localisme qui est au fond du cceur de tous les
hommes." '
At the other end of the scale, while these knots of
neighbours are developing corporate life, the efforts of
the advocates of peace and arbitration will have developed
the simple form of federal union which is calculated to
unite all the world. The state in its present form will
dissolve easily and naturally, and its powers will be
beneficently scattered into hands which can effectively
use them. The giant Leviathan will vanish, and humanity
will rule.
As the local groups — (which will by no means probably
be town councils, or anything in the least resembling
them) — rise in influence, they will assume the bulk of
his power. A fraction will fall to the Federal Union. A
portion, not inconsiderable, will vanish with the giant
into smoke. We may feel a modest confidence that
the future age will disclaim omnipotence ; even of the
theoretical variety.
The stratification dealt with in the last chapter will
act as a powerful lever in breaking up the old system.
So long as the race is pleased with its new mechanical
toys, and is content to talk to wires and to look at pic-
tures, local contiguity may go for little. The organiza-
tion of the world by classes may diminish the pressure
of social evils, and thus retard for hundreds of years the
adoption of any but a rudimentary federal polity. But,
sooner or later, the probabilities are that society will
1 Clunet, 13 Journal de D. I. Pr. 288.
22
338 FEDERATION [chap, vih
crystallize on the old formula of local union. And if it
is not to prove to be an organization of a lower type than
was exhibited in the mediaeval time, it must be federal.
Meanwhile, the slender federalism which is possible
can only be realized by the most cautious adjustment to
the demands of public feeling. Nor must too much be
inferred from the vapourings of enthusiasts, the schemes
of politicians, or the frolics of the Fourth Estate. The
imposition of a common judiciary we have deprecated in
Chapter I. The imposition of a common legislature
would have even more immediate evil results. Those who
dream of a United States of the World, forgetting that the
United States of America are divided from each other by
no ancient memories, would dethrone science and reason
and would substitute for their sway the brute force of
arbitrary dogma and parliamentary majorities.
Between nations there has hitherto prevailed a law
which — broken sometimes, as all law must be, but never
suspended by the arbitrary decree of monarch, parlia-
ment or president — is no more capable of being so sus-
pended than is the precession of the equinoxes.
Speaking of this unique and admirable characteristic
of International Law, Phillimorc (IV. § xi.) says :
" It is a matter for rejoicing that it has escaped the
Procrustean treatment of positive legislation and has been
allowed to grow to its fair proportions under the influence
of that science which works out of conscience, reason
and experience the great problem of Law, or civil justice."
Parliament can decree injustice by a law. Science and
conscience cannot. Are those wise who ask us to abandon
the rule of law grounded in the universal sense of right
lor the capricious tyranny of ministers controlling the
legislative machine ?
CHAPTER IX
THE ASSOCIATION-STATE
But federalism will not be the end ; nor even, perhaps,
the necessary development. In the chapter on Stratifi-
cation, we touched upon the tendency to ignore the organi-
zation based upon territorial areas altogether, and to
substitute some other principle of cohesion.
' In the chill of this grey dawn," as an eloquent writer
says, we may well feel that we are invited to contem-
plate the passing of old things to an alarming extent.
There may be felt some repugnance to concern ourselves
with a state of affairs so remote in standpoint, perhaps
so remote in time. Nevertheless, it is not into an
unscanned vista that we ask our readers to look.
The ideal of the future to which thought and action
are painfully working their way is that of organization
based upon voluntary association.
Local connection is after all an arbitrary thing. For
the present, and for long enough to come, local association
and cohesion must be of capital importance. But the
class cohesion, which, as we have seen, bids fair to over-
shadow it, at all events for a time, is the symptom of
revolt against its arbitrary and essentially accidental
character. The explosion of the Renaissance drove the
elements of population in flying drops of spray far and
wide. Fresh political elements came into being to
meet the changed conditions. The modern explosion,
now to all appearance preparing, will have a still more
startling diffusive effect in proportion as the means of
339
340 THE ASSOCIATION-STATE [chap. IX
travel and communication are greater. The boundaries
of national feeling will be broken down, and the
organization on a basis of mutual good-understanding
will have begun. The organization would begin as a
simple necessity. To combat the forces of organized and
insistent manualism, the holders of capital will naturally
and inevitably gather into focus their international
resources. At first secret and unofficial, the power (what-
ever form it takes) that disposes of these resources will
ultimately attract to itself political power, and its finger
will penetrate to every corner of the world. The process
will be quite organic and natural. At no point will
anything startling happen. The old parliaments and
cabinets will, if history is any guide, continue to exist.
Their functions will gradually atrophize, until no one
any longer thinks it worth while to call them together.
For not only will capital have solidified itself into a
fighting caste : but so will manualism, and many another
interest. Capital will have a start in the race for supre-
macy. It is easier for a few to combine than for many.
Moreover, the capitalist knows foreigners better than the
workman ; and, on the whole, he has very much less
prejudice against them. But it is not likely to be all-
powerful.
If, eventually, a complex federal polity supervenes
upon this welter of castes, owing to knots of neighbours
resenting the wholesale uniformity which the castes, no less
than the out-worn states, would in the end impose, it will
be because the inveterate habit of neighbourliness is still
too deeply rooted in the race to admit of an immediate
further step in the direction ol" voluntaryism. But, with
or without such an intervening period of complex federal-
ism, it seems sale to hold that the ultimate issue will be
organization on a looting of free choice. Accident will
br recognized as a weak ground on which to base union.
Accident of birth or of residence — it will not matter.
The victory of voluntaryism would eventually come
chap, ix] STRENGTH OF FREEDOM 341
about by a process of survival of the fittest. When it is
seen that a company of individuals, joined together from
free choice and affection, have a strength that no mere
fortuitous assemblage possesses, the triumph of the
principle will be assured. Such a union is that of which
Ruskin spoke when, extolling the ' principle of co-
operation," he pointed to the handful of slime, separated
into its constituent parts and turning into a diamond, a
ruby and an opal, set in a " star of snow."
It is the random socialist who would grind carbon,
silica, corundum and damp together in a " brotherly '
mass of mud.
The voluntaryist sets each atom free to organize with
its like in the way agreeable to its nature. Only so can
its best qualities be brought out. Our natures are so
diverse, and it is so little we can know of each other, that
it can only be within the most jealously limited sphere,
and with the utmost caution, that any one should presume
to dictate to another. Much less should a living being
be set under the dominion of dead rules. Not enforced
collectivism, but what Sir N. Nathan ' condenses in a
word as the " systematisation of altruism " is the hope
of the coming ages.
A germ and promise of the Association-State of the
far future exists in the extraordinary development of
societies and leagues for all human — and some inhuman —
purposes. From churches to chess clubs, voluntary
societies, the entrance to which is compulsory on no one,
and which rest for their existence absolutely on free
enthusiasm, form a feature of modern life which in one
aspect is wholly new. It is not only that they are
numerous and important ; the real significance of them
is that they an: universal. Scarcely an individual above
the submerged limit who does not belong to two or
three : be they only recreation clubs and blanket unions.
And a good deal of light might be thrown on the subject
1 Economic Heresies.
34 2 THE ASSOCIATION-STATE [chap, m
by the history of China, honeycombed as it is with
societies of the first political importance.
There are even now societies, which, condemn and dislike
their objects as one may, have clearly transcended national
limits by explicitly disclaiming national authority. It is
useless to deny the attractive power of their propaganda,
nor the enormous influence which those who direct it
can exercise on the world. Forced union accumulates
material resources : free union accumulates spiritual
resources. Forced union piles up material strength, as a
giant piles up flesh — but there underlie it all the giant's
feeble muscle and feebler brain. In free union the will
and desire and the whole mental force of the individual
are utilized to the full. The result can only be to give
it an incalculable advantage. ' One volunteer is worth
ten pressed men."
It is safe to predict that the advantages of voluntary
and close union will not long be left to the anarchists as
their exclusive monopoly. The numerous societies which
exist for isolated political objects are of little importance
in themselves, for they do not affect to be intimate and
exclusive. They demonstrate the value of even a little
combination — but it is only when persons, realizing a
common ideal as of transcendent importance, receive one
another into the closest intimacy because of it, that their
union becomes a real rival to the state. The force of
companionship in the maintenance of unrecognized ideals
is not always properly estimated. The paradox is rea-
lized that, in that companionship, pain is pleasure. The
individual would rather follow (he rest through the dark
places than not. This is scarcely appreciated by those
excellent persons who would preach to the Indians the
benefits of alien rule, with laments that they should agitate
against their benefactors. They forget that the agitators
upheld an Ideal, and that, with that in the distance, it
is more attractive to follow them into prison, than to
remain under the Britannic vine and fig-tree. Not other-
chap, ixl UNITY OF IDEAL 343
wise did the Davidsbiindler haunt the rocks <>f Moab and
the deserts of Amnion. It was pleasanter to go with the
rest, than to remain at ease in Jerusalem.
So, the Austrian boasts of the public works he has
carried out in Bosnia : of the roads he has engineered, of
the buildings he has set up. He has indeed done much,
and when he asks of the Bosnian, in return, to renounce
his racial aspirations, he asks precisely what the English-
man asks of the Indian. And the Englishman is grieved
at the callousness of Vienna, and the Vienna people
lecture the Bosnian on his ingratitude. But the Ideal
is before the Bosnian.
It is a commonplace that this force is the mainspring
of that great cross-stratum of society — the Christian
religion. It is not a doctrine or any theory that is the
essence of that religion ; it is devotion to the ideal person
of Christ. In the company of Christ and the Saints a
Christian entirely welcomed contumely and pain. After
the era of forced conversions, the supply of saints and
martyrs becomes — unreliable. Mysticism is the heart of
religion, as it is the heart of love. Every time that the
mind pierces through appearances and discerns a living
spirit through the vesture of changing impressions, it
performs an act of mystic contemplation. Mysticism is
no "morbid condition of the nerve-centres," it is the
normal condition of life. The child grows in mysticism as
it grows in stature. As it learns to infer from the changeful
shapes around its cushions the unsuspected hidden prin-
ciples which it grows to know as persons, its mystical educa-
tion progresses, until it becomes the adept of two years old.
The man in the street is a mystic when he meets a friend.
The more mystical and ideal a union may be, the closer
and the more tenacious it is. But without approaching
the perfection of an agapemone, a union of a quite terres-
trial character may be exceedingly close and enthusiastic.
An army of lovers, says Plato, would be irresistible.
When they become conscious of their mystic unity, those
344 THE ASSOCIATION-STATE l chap. ix
who think alike cannot fail to act in concert and to pre-
vail. And there is this great advantage in a society based
on voluntary organization : that the best elements are
the most readily organized. There is honour among
thieves ; but there is not much. Harmonious co-operation
is the prerogative of sympathy and affection.
It was observed that the conception of society as
arranged on such a satisfactory basis is not a novel one.
In such an unexpected place as the writings of Ibn Khal-
doun, 1 the Saracenic jurist of Tunis, it appears quite
clearly. Ibn Khaldoun begins by pointing out the two
grand divisions of political systems, the religious polity,
which invokes religious penalties and depends on divine
authority, and the business polity, which is based on con-
siderations of mundane profit and loss alone — and then
proceeds to remind his readers that there are those who
entertain a different social ideal altogether ; who oppose
to the civitas imperfecta, the civitas perfecta. In that
perfect state, formal relations are based on sympathy :
there are no litigations, nor need of any sovereign, but
the eyes of the citizens are set in the same direction, to
follow the Inward Light which is common to them all.
Al-Farabi, too, the court-philosopher of Bagdad, is
quoted by Nys as having grasped the same conception.
He talks of " those chosen minds which live like foreigners
in the land where they dwell, the social life of which is
out of harmony with their ideals." And the greater name
of Avempace 2 can be adduced. " In the ' perfect ' State,
every individual will attain the highest development of
which humanity is susceptible ; every one will conceive
of it in the most fitting manner ; no one will dwell in
ignorance of what the laws and customs really are : there
will be no laxity or trickery in conduct. Thus litigation —
'the surgery of souls ' -will be uncalled-for."' Even
J Cited, Nys, Rev. de D.I. (1901), 418.
2 Horn ;d Saragossa, cite. in»> \ ,d.
3 Cited, Nys, id sup. 'â– freely translated here.
chap, ix] ARAB THOUGHT 345
in the " imperfect " states of the day, there are chosen
spirits: the " solitaires," who are putting forth " organic
filaments " (in Carlyle's phrase) of the " perfect " state
of the future and struggling to become its elements ; the
so-styled " shoots," called so on account of their likeness
to the plants which shoot up spontaneously and by
nature, in the midst of their artificially cultivated species.
These are they whom the Sufis call " foreigners," for
through their mental attitude they are in a way strangers
in their family and foreigners in the social world which
surrounds them, and by virtue of their mode of thought
they pass into the ideal communities which may not
unfairly be called their true homes.
These airy speculations of the Arab doctors are no
doubt intensely ideal. Their Perfect State lies some way
beyond the Association-State which the modern devotion
to contract and human freedom would seem to demand.
But the root-idea of a union based on mutual sympathy
and understanding is the same. Association is induced
by sympathy, and whether the sympathy be as pene-
trative as that postulated by the Southern thinkers, or
remain only a limited enthusiasm, the principle remains
intact. Union based on mutual understanding and free
consent is a thing to be reckoned with by the most modern
publicists.
' It is certain," says Mr. Jenks, 1 summing up the results
of his brilliant investigation of the general course of
European history, ' that the notion of Contract has
made serious inroads upon the older ideas of Law and
Politics ; few thinkers can doubt that it is destined to
play a yet greater part in social history. There are already
signs that it is regarded with fear and dislike by older
institutions ; and even the most advanced advocates of
change arc found to look with suspicion upon it, as an
instrument capable of wounding the hand which uses it.
But that, in some form or another, it will come intq
* Law and Politics in the Middle Ages, p. 316.
346 THE ASSOCIATION-STATE [chap, ix
conflict with the military notions upon which the great
majority of states are still founded, is tolerably certain."
" We look, for the future of Contract, not to the Gentile
organization of the clan, nor to the military organization
of the State, but to some as yet undeveloped institution,
which shall supersede them both." 1 And Mr. Clunet
shows, not obscurely, how the victory of Contract is the
victory of free Association. 2
Attempts to recast society by mechanical means are
sure to be baulked ultimately. Treaties, Acts of Parlia-
ment, Federal Constitutions, Declarations of Indepen-
dence, resemble attempts to make a solution crystallize
on predetermined lines, and they are equally predestined
to failure. Crystallization must begin with the atom.
And the atom will only group with its fellow-atoms, in
the pattern marked out by its nature.
It is not by inventing arbitrary rules of union that
society can be induced to crystallize, but by encouraging
the natural affinities of its individual members. That
cannot be done from without, by a legislative act. It
would be as reasonable to try to mould the nascent
crystals of silicate of copper with the fingers. Such
interference can retard union : and there its capacity
ends.
1 Law and Politics in the Middle Ages, p. 292.
2 Les Associations (Paris, 1909).
INDE X
M.erdcen, Earl of, 92, 93, 94, no,
111, 112
Abyssinia, 1 p. 235
Adams, D. /., case, 206
A lay case, 252
Alciat, 14
Alexandria, 124, 184
AI-Farabi, 344
Algeria, 193. 197
Aliens Act, 56
Alliance, 296 et seq., 323
Anarchism, 342
Angary, 239
Anti-foreign measures, 62 et seq.,
81, 147, 150, 159, 180, 201, 226,
j ;<\ 238, 264
Anti-Semitism (sec Jews)
Apology, 101, 103, 105, 109, 118,
143, 164, 175, 182, 171, 186,
205, 207, 209, 234, 236, 242
Arabs, 346
, / rbiter, 2, 6
Arbitral process, informality of,
2, 3
Arbitration, elasticity of, 19, 20, 23
obligatory, 8, 9, 11,19,23,337
pscudo-, 2-7
sanction of, 1 1
Arbitrator, authority of private,
13. 15. 151
choice of, 4, 7
in rem controvcrsam , 7, 13,
15. l 7
Arbitrators, inonarchs as, 13, 171,
273
Arbitrators, private, 4, 8, 14, 15,
86, 151, 157, 161, 170, 217, 220,
232, 234, 241
Argi lit ina :
arbitration with Britain, 13
disputes with France, 96, 105,
256
assertion of territorial prin-
ciple by, 106, 107
dispute with Britain, 155, 158-
160, 256, 257
war with Britain and France,
256
Angra Pequena, 208
Armed Neutrality, 323
Arms and weapons, 46, 48, 101
Arrest (see Imprisonment), 46
Artists, 278, 305
Ascoli case, 93, 94
Assab Bay, 193