it required all the firmness of Cromwell to secure for the Commonwealth the ceremonial rank accorded to the old English Monarchy. When a great treaty or other international document has to be signed by several powers, various devices are resorted to for the purpose of preventing disputes as to precedence. The most famous of them is the Alternat, a usage whereby the signatures alternate in a regular order, or in one determined by lot, the name of the representative of each state standing first in the copy kept by that state. Another plan is to sign in the alphabetical order of the names of the powers in the French language. The relative rank of the regular diplomatic agents of states is determined by fixed rules which have received general assent and are acted upon by all civilized nations. We will discuss them when we deal with Diplomacy and Negotiation.1 § 139. We will now proceed to deal with Titles and their recognition by other states. Titles and their other states. Every sovereign may take whatever title is conferred upon him by the law of his own country; and his subjects are, of course, bound to use it in all official documents. But other states are under no inter- recognition by national obligation to use a new title taken by the head of one of their number. They may decline to do so, and continue in their official intercourse the use of the old title, or they may use the new one only on conditions. The latter course is sometimes adopted if the new title is accounted higher than the old. It is then often stipulated that the use of it should not be held to confer a higher degree of rank and precedence upon the sovereign who has assumed it. These arrangements are well illustrated by the 1 See § 143. history of the reception and acknowledgment abroad of the imperial title of the Czar of Russia. Peter the Great proclaimed himself Emperor of all the Russias in 1701. England was the only power which recognized the new title at once. Prussia did not acknowledge it till 1723, the German Empire till 1746, Spain till 1759, and Poland till 1764.1 When France recognized it in 1745 she stipulated that it should make no change in the ceremonies formerly observed between the two courts. § 140. The last matters we have to consider in connection with Equality and its outward signs are Maritime ceremonials. Maritime ceremonials. These are salutes between ships or between ships and forts. They are carried on by firing artillery or striking sails. The law of each state prescribes their details as between its own vessels. As between vessels of different states, or between vessels of one state and forts and land batteries of another, matters are regulated by express stipulations or by international custom. In the days when states claimed dominion over portions of the high seas and saluting first was looked upon as an acknowledgment of superiority, great disputes arose about salutes. British cruisers were instructed to capture vessels which refused to give proper honor to their flag in the seas claimed as part of the territorial possessions of the Crown.2 Philip II. of Spain forbade his vessels to salute first when they passed the cities and forts of other sovereigns. France and Russia, hopeless of overcoming difficulties, agreed by treaty in 1787 that in future there should be no salutes between their vessels either in port or on the high seas, and a similar convention was negotiated in 1829 between Russia and Den 1 Halleck, International Law (Baker's ed.), I., 100. mark. In modern times saluting is regarded merely as an act of courtesy; and treaties and custom have given birth to a number of rules which meet with general acceptance. The chief of them are as follows: (a) A ship of war entering a foreign port or passing a fort salutes first, unless the sovereign or his ambassador is on board, in which case the port or fort salutes first. In any case the salute, which is held to be an honor paid to the national flag, is returned gun for gun, by a fort if there is one in the place, if not by a ship of war. (b) When public vessels of different nationalities meet, the ship or squadron commanded by the officer inferior in rank salutes first, and the salute is returned gun for gun. (c) No international salutes are to exceed twenty-one guns. (d) Merchant vessels salute ships of war by lowering the topsails, if they have no guns on board. Sometimes the flag is lowered, but this is regarded by most states as derogatory to their dignity. 1 D' Hauterive and De Cussy, Recueil des Traites, Pt. I., Vol. III., p. 252, and Pt. II., Vol. II., p. 70. 8 CHAPTER V. RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS CONNECTED WITH DIPLOMACY. Diplomatic intercourse necessary. Growth of resident embassies. § 141. THE affairs of nations could not be conducted without mutual intercourse. Every state, however barbarous, recognizes this, and even savage tribes respect the persons of heralds and envoys. But among the family of civilized nations who are subjects of International Law intercourse is carried on to a great and steadily increasing extent; and with its growth has grown a system of regulating it by special formalities, employing special agents to carry it on and granting them special immunities. In the Middle Ages when the intercourse between peoples was comparatively meagre, negotiations were only occasional incidents in the life of a state. They were carried on by envoys, sent abroad to do the special business on hand and expected to return as soon as it was finished. The service was often one of difficulty and danger, for though the persons of ambassadors were held sacred in the country to which they were sent, they received little protection in the states they passed through on the way. There were plenty of robber bands for them to guard against and plenty of physical obstacles for them to overcome. The revival of commerce and letters at the time of the Renascence, and the immense impetus given to human activity by the discovery 1 Bernard, Lectures on Diplomacy, pp. 121, 122. of the New World, made intercourse between states more common and more necessary than before. But the introduction of the practice of sending permanent ambassadors to reside at foreign courts is due more to statecraft than to utility. Louis XI. of France, who reigned from 1461 to 1483, is said to have been the first sovereign to adopt it, his design being to have a sort of chartered spy at the Court of each of his powerful neighbors. After a time the convenience of the practice secured its general adoption, and by the middle of the seventeenth century it had become recognized as the regular method of carrying on diplomatic intercourse. But it had to win its way against a mass of jealousy and suspicion, largely caused by the unscrupulous character of the early diplomatists. "If they lie to you, lie still more to them," said Louis XI. to his ambassadors.1 "An ambassador," said Wotton in a punning epigram, "is a person who is sent to lie abroad for the benefit of his country." Henry VII. of England is praised by Coke as "a wise and politique King" because he would not suffer ambassadors from other states to remain at his Court after their immediate business was finished; 2 and as late as 1660 threats were uttered in the Polish Diet that the French Ambassadors should be treated as spies if they would not return home. But the new system became a necessity as the complexity of international affairs increased in the seventeenth century; and in spite of the unfavorable opinion of Grotius, who says that resident embassies may be excluded by states and speaks of them as "now common but not necessary," it grew and prospered, and a great variety of observances grew up with it and were gradually embodied in International Law. 4 1 Flassan, Diplomatie Française, I., 247. 2 Fourth Institute, Ch. XXVI. 8 Ward, History of the Law of Nations, II., 484. * De Juri Belli ac Pacis. II., XVIII., iii. |