9. Treaty Obligation from the Protestant Reformation to 1919: Part 9 Honour and British Treaties

Allen Z. Hertz was senior advisor in the Privy Council Office serving Canada's Prime Minister and the federal cabinet. He formerly worked in Canada's Foreign Affairs Department and earlier taught history and law at universities in New York, Montreal, Toronto and Hong Kong. He studied European history and languages at McGill University (B.A.) and then East European and Ottoman history at Columbia University (M.A., Ph.D.). He also has international law degrees from Cambridge University (LL.B.) and the University of Toronto (LL.M.).

Foreword

This is first publication of the integral text of "Treaty Obligation from the Protestant Reformation to 1919." However, portions dealing with "Honour's Role in the International States' System" were published in Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, Vol. 31 (2002), pp. 113-155, and also appear as a separate posting on this website. Research for this present essay took place in Ottawa during service with the Privy Council Office which greatly assisted by regularly making conveniently available a variety of materials, including some rare books, from the Supreme Court of Canada Library, the National Library of Canada and the Library of Parliament. "Treaty Obligation from the Protestant Reformation to 1919" is current to the end of 2002.

The Part 1: Introduction discusses the thesis that before the First World War the moral and "natural law" principle that "agreements are to be kept" (pacta sunt servanda) was binding in honour alone. Part 2 reviews classical international law’s assessment of the treaty as a legal source.  Part 3 shows that, before the First World War, treaties were not always accepted as an integral part of international law.  Part 4 explains why treaties were then not seen as legally binding, and describes how international law governed treaties via pacta sunt servanda as a moral and "natural law" requirement.  Part 5 illuminates the State’s moral personality with reference to both personification and treaties as “contracts of kings.” Honour is identified as one of the principal features of pre-1914 European civilization and international relations in Part 6.  Part 7 portrays the “old diplomacy” as a milieu focusing on honour.  Part 8 shows what kings, prime ministers, philosophers and lawyers had to say about treaties binding in honour. The honour of treaties as seen in Britain is explained in this present posting, Part 9. Part 10 covers the same topic with respect to the USA. Part 11 recalls that, before 1914, all treaties were a “gentlemen’s agreement” -- an expression which only made sense in public international law after 1919, i.e. as a specific exception to the new rule that treaties are normally binding in law. Part 12 treats the “new diplomacy” that arose during the First World War and discusses the rise of the legal paradigm.  Finally, Part 13 highlights the law-centered order inaugurated by the 1919 Paris Peace Settlement which created conditions supporting 20th-century discourse about treaties as legally binding.  

18^th century discourse on treaty obligation

Soon to be Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Charles Jenkinson (later 1^st Lord Liverpool) during the Seven Years’ War touched on “disgrace” and “dishonour” as sanction for breach of treaty:

If our ancestors have betrayed the interests of our country in granting [by treaty] any privileges of this nature [i.e. exemption from the belligerent’s right to search for enemy contraband on a neutral vessel on the high seas], we who have succeeded to their rights are bound to abide by their [treaty] concessions. It is the happiness of great kingdoms, whose power is equal to support of their own independency, to be able to act upon those principles which necessity hath often forced little States to abandon. Those scandalous maxims of policy which have brought disgrace both on the name and the profession, took their rise from the conduct of the little principalities of Italy, when — distressed by the successive invasions which France and Spain made upon them — they broke or conformed to their leagues as their own security obliged them; and their refined shifts and evasions, formed into systems by the able doctors of their councils, have composed that science of fraud and deceit by which kingdoms are taught to be governed on principles which individuals would be ashamed to possess; as if there could be no morality among nations, and that mankind — being formed into civil societies and collectively considered — were set free from all rules of honour and virtue. Maxims like these I mean to avoid; to follow them would bring dishonour on my country.^[1]

Prussia’s King Frederick William II refused to implement the April 1794 Anglo-Prussian Subsidy Treaty.^[2]  According to diplomatist Lord Malmesbury:

No experience or habit of business, no prudence or care can read so deep into the human mind as to foresee that a great Sovereign and his confidential Ministers would be so regardless of their personal honour, and so forgetful of their public interests and glory, as to refuse to be bound in June by the stipulations of a Treaty ratified with their full consent and approbation in May.^[3]

Honour and 1802 Amiens Treaty

“Dishonour” as the sanction for breach of treaty was articulated by future Prime Minister Lord Grenville in debate on the controversial peace with Napoleon’s France:

Whatever disadvantages might arise to the country from this unfortunate treaty, he would be one of the first to say, it was concluded by the power which had the right, by the constitution of the country, to conclude it; and therefore, whatever were its terms, parliament was bound to accede to it.  It was ratified by his majesty, and the great seal of the kingdom affixed to it; consequently it was irrevocable; and not to carry it into effect would be to add dishonour to the loss occasioned by the treaty, and to impeach the national integrity.  The first proposition he should make to the House was, to declare to his majesty their opinion, that the public faith was pledged to the observance of the peace; that it was an obligation binding upon the country to maintain it inviolable.^[4]

Portugal: England’s oldest ally

  

Dating from the Middle Ages, the Anglo-Portuguese alliance was repeatedly renewed and affirmed, notably by treaties of 1661, 1703 and 1815.^[5]  In 1826, reactionary Spanish officials armed and equipped five thousand Portuguese absolutists who went home to overthrow the liberal constitution granted by the Bragança heir, King Pedro IV, then Emperor of Brazil.^[6]  Whether to send British troops to Lisbon “to maintain the faith of treaties” sparked a debate, in which all MPs saw treaty obligation as something touching “the honour and character of the country.”^[7]

Soon-to-be Lord Chancellor, Henry Brougham said the specific promise to defend Portugal had originally been given (1661) in return for very substantial consideration, including cession of Portuguese Bombay.  Arguing that “antiquity could make no difference” to a treaty’s validity, Brougham noted universal acceptance of the principle that today’s government is bound by its predecessors’ agreements.^[8]  The Portuguese treaties were said to be “such as no country with the slightest pretension to honour could retreat from — such as no statesman of common honour, of common sense, could recommend any country to abandon.”^[9]  Brougham believed failure to live up to the treaties would be a “breach of national faith, a sacrifice of the country’s honour.”  To England other States would say:

You are not safe people to enter into any treaty with: you make contracts; take what advantage you can of them; and the moment you find they press upon you, you would exclaim, ‘We are sorry that we made this bargain; in good policy we never ought to have made it; and therefore, good bye — for we feel ourselves entitled to abandon it.’^[10]  

Such unprincipled expediency he castigated as “stigma upon the national name,” “surrender of the dignity of the British nation,” and forfeit of “our station in the eyes of Europe and the world.”^[11]

Deploring “the hazard of war” with Spain, Foreign Secretary George Canning nonetheless reiterated the primacy of “national faith” and “national honour.”^[12]  Repeatedly he stressed that Britain had to help Portugal or face “irretrievable disgrace” and “national degradation.”^[13]  To his knowledge, no British statesman had ever argued “the expediency” of denouncing the Portuguese treaties.^[14]  Yet, he troubled to distinguish this instance of treaty obligation from an earlier case in which policy was the sole criterion:

Cause for war had been given by France in the invasion of Spain, if we had then [April 1823] thought fit to enter into war on that account.  But it seems to be forgotten that there is one main difference between that case and the present — which difference, however, is essential and all-sufficient.  We were then free to go to war, if we pleased, on grounds of political expediency.  But we were not then bound to interfere, on behalf of Spain, as we now are bound to interfere on behalf of Portugal, by the obligations of treaty.  War might then have been our free choice, if we had deemed it politic: interference on behalf of Portugal is now our duty, unless we are prepared to abandon the principles of national faith and national honour.^[15]

In January 1852, British Foreign Secretary Lord Granville similarly responded to the possibility of aggression:

The Spanish Government must... be well aware that were any Spanish military force to be directed to enter Portugal without the consent, and against the will, of the constitutional organs of that country, Great Britain would be bound by faith, by honour, and by regard for her own interests, practically to fulfill the obligations imposed upon her by the stipulations of those [Anglo-Portuguese] treaties.^[16]

Great Britain’s share of the Russo-Dutch loan

In return for British annexation of four Dutch colonies and Russian support for the disposition of the Belgian provinces in the 1815 Vienna Treaty, Britain agreed to pay a hundred years of instalments to help defray the cost of Russian loans raised in Holland for the war against Napoleon.  Annual payments to Russia were specifically to continue even in the event of war between the parties.^[17]  These 1815 obligations were renewed in 1831, when Belgium separated from the Netherlands.^[18]  The Crimean War’s outbreak (March 1854) posed the question of whether the obligation to pay survived the state of war between Britain and Russia.^[19]  In the relevant parliamentary debate, speakers on either side agreed that treaties are binding in honour.^[20]  For example, Attorney General Alexander Cockburn said:

Even with the clearest and strongest grounds for refusing payment, England ought to be most chary, scrupulous, and punctilious in refusing payment of her engagements in time of war.  And why?  Because in war no opportunity was afforded for those communications and explanations which in a time of peace would be sure to precede such a rupture as this.  If a difference of opinion on such a topic took place between two Powers in a time of peace, there could be no doubt that they would make every exertion and use every argument to make the other Power see the impropriety of their conduct before coming to an open rupture.  But all opportunity for such explanations was now closed, and England would stand before Europe in the position of a country which took advantage of war to violate engagements to which they were bound by the most solemn consideration of honour and good faith to adhere.^[21]

Guarantee of Belgian neutrality


Two 1839 treaties, with the Netherlands and Belgium respectively, established Belgium's neutrality which was guaranteed by Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia and Russia.^[22]  However, spectacular territorial gains by Prussia in the 1866 Seven Weeks’ War with Austria prompted French Minister of State Eugène Rouher to suggest (1867) that France be compensated via annexation of Belgium and Luxembourg.^[23]

At that time, Queen Victoria had reigned for almost thirty years. As revealed by her correspondence, she had from 1837 gradually acquired knowledge of both foreign policy and international law. Thus, persistent talk about such territorial compensation for the France of Napoleon III prompted her to insist:

England is bound by every tie that can bind a nation to assist another, to stand by Belgium in the hour of need. By the faith of Treaties, by every consideration of honour, and... interest, England must show the World that she is not prepared to abdicate her position as a great Power; that she can, at need, set aside the cold calculations of mere political expediency; and that, if the necessity should unfortunately arise, she is determined to fulfil her obligations, and ... defend the Independence of Belgium with the whole strength of the British Empire.^[24]  

In 1869, Foreign Secretary Lord Clarendon reminded the Queen of the changed international situation and “the exceeding delicacy of calling upon Parliament to give effect to Treaties which, if public opinion years ago had been what it now is, would not have been sanctioned.”^[25]  Yet, Victoria replied: “England will be prepared to maintain the obligation of Treaties, wherever her honour or her interest may call upon her to do so.”^[26]

After the July 1870 outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Foreign Secretary Lord Granville got from the law officers an opinion that the 1839 obligations were still binding.^[27]  Britain then reaffirmed the 1839 agreements in identical treaties with both Prussia (August 9) and France (August 11), wherein Britain vowed to fight the belligerent first violating Belgian neutrality.^[28]

Granville explained to Parliament that walking away from the 1839 treaties would have been impossible “with any due regard to the country’s honour and interests.”^[29]  Asked about the contingency that France and Prussia might simultaneously infringe Belgian neutrality, he replied:

For us to fear that two Powers after a solemn renewal of an engagement such as this, binding on the personal honour of the Emperor of the French and the King of Prussia, should within a very few months in the face of the whole world desert such an engagement, requires too strong an effort of the imagination.^[30]  

Former and future Lord Chancellor Hugh Cairns congratulated the government for being “prepared to maintain the engagements of the Treaty of 1839, engagements which do not concern the honour more than they concern the interests of England.”^[31]  This lawyer’s view was echoed by retired diplomat Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe who was “greatly indebted to the Government for the care they have taken to meet the requirements of the honour and interest of the country by redeeming the pledges which were given in the Treaty of April 1839.”^[32]

Future Prime Minister David Lloyd George was a successful solicitor before entering Parliament. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, he gave a September 1914 speech significantly entitled "Honour and Dishonour." In relation to the circumstances of the Franco-Prussian War, he insisted that the 1839 guaranty of Belgian neutrality was binding in honour, with any breach of treaty to be sanctioned by the signal shame of humiliation and dishonour:

That Treaty Bond was this: We called upon the belligerent Powers to respect that treaty. [...] We received the thanks at that time from the Belgian people for our intervention in a very remarkable document. [...] Three or four days after that document of thanks the French Army was wedged up against the Belgian frontier [Sedan, September 1, 1870]. Every means of escape was shut up by a ring of flame from Prussian cannon. There was one way of escape. What was that? By violating the neutrality of Belgium. What did they do? The French on that occasion preferred ruin, humiliation, to the breaking of their bond. The French Emperor, French Marshals, 100,000 gallant Frenchmen in arms preferred to be carried captive to the strange land of their enemy rather than dishonour the name of their country. [...] Had they violated Belgian neutrality the whole history of that war would have been changed. And yet it was the interest of France to break the treaty. She did not do it.^[33]

Tripartite guarantee of Ottoman Empire

Acting under the 1856 Triple Treaty guarantying Turkey against Russia became a political impossibility because May 1876 massacres by the Ottomans in Bulgaria had roused an anti-Turkish storm of indignation in Britain.^[34]  To embarrass Disraeli’s Conservatives, Liberal Opposition Leader Gladstone quoted Foreign Secretary Lord Derby’s September 1876 dispatch saying a Russian war against Turkey “would place England in a most unsatisfactory and even humiliating position” because “the sympathies of this nation would be brought into direct opposition to its Treaty engagements.”^[35]  In Parliament, both government and opposition believed “humiliation” to be the sanction for breach of treaties, which were clearly understood as binding in honour.  According to War Secretary Gathorne Hardy:

It would be a great humiliation to this country if being called upon by France and Austria to fulfil our obligation under that Treaty we were compelled to say that, although the obligation was binding upon us... yet nevertheless, in consequence of the feeling of the country... we were unable to have regard to it.^[36] 

Believing Britain “near a precipice of war or dishonour,” Liberal peer Lord Campbell said:

If Russia saw that we had done nothing, and had abandoned Treaties... the dishonour of sacrificing Treaties would fall on our ourselves.  If a country were struggling with insolvency or under some necessity by which its resources were impaired, he would not urge that the abnegation of a Treaty should not be pardoned; but there was not a shadow of excuse for ignominiously avoiding it [i.e. the Triple Treaty].^[37]

Honour require Britain to fight in 1914?

  

Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey had studied law at Oxford University. On August 3, 1914, he gave the Commons his assessment of Great Britain's commitments as they stood before Germany's August 4th violation of Belgian neutrality. He recalled the government’s promise that there would be “no secret engagement” foisting “an obligation of honour upon the country.”^[38]  He significantly offered clear evidence that treaties were then regarded as binding in honour:

I can say this with the most absolute confidence — no Government and no country has less desire to be involved in war over a dispute between Austria and Servia than the Government and country of France.  They are involved in it because of their obligation of honour under a definite alliance with Russia.  Well, it is only fair to say to the House that that obligation of honour cannot apply in the same way to us.  We are not parties to the Franco-Russian Alliance.  We do not even know the terms of that Alliance.  So far I have, I think, faithfully and completely cleared the ground with regard to the question of obligation.^[39]

The fact that Britain’s casus belli was to be breach of treaty understandably provoked prolonged discussion that revealed a lot about how treaties were then viewed.^[40]  The consensus was that treaty obligation arose from a “good faith” promise, of which fulfillment was a matter of national honour, abandonment a national disgrace.  Although the 1839 London Treaties guarantying Belgium’s neutrality were the crux of debate, a specifically “legal” obligation to help Belgium was significantly absent from the discussion. Rather the pertinent issue was whether the treaties had engaged Britain’s honour — posing the terrible sanction of dishonour.

On August 3rd Grey said: "If in a crisis like this, we run away from those obligations of honour and interest as regards the Belgian Treaty... we should, I believe, sacrifice our respect and good name and reputation before the world."^[41]  Moreover, Grey told USA Ambassador Page on August 4th: "England would be forever contemptible if it should sit by and see this treaty violated.  Its position would be gone if Germany were thus permitted to dominate Europe."^[42]  And, Grey’s memoirs repeated this key theme of honour and dishonour: "The real reason for going into the war was that, if we did not... stand up for Belgium against this aggression, we should be isolated, discredited, and hated; and there would be before us nothing but a miserable and ignoble future."^[43] 

On August 3rd, Grey's reasoning had been supported by Conservative Opposition Leader Andrew Bonar Law who spoke of “honour and security.”^[44]  However, Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party Ramsay Macdonald then asked “whether the country is in danger.” Ignoring treaties, Macdonald said neutrality alone is “in the deepest parts of our hearts” consistent with the honour of the country and of the Liberal Party.^[45]  

A barrister of Lincoln's Inn, Herbert Henry Asquith took silk in 1890. As Prime Minister, Asquith on August 4th told Parliament that Belgium had rightly refused Germany’s August 2nd demand for “free passage through Belgian territory” as a “flagrant violation of the law of nations.”^[46]  This phrase pointed to Germany's infringement of Belgium's sovereignty as a contravention of customary international law. This interpretation coincided with German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg’s astonishing Reichstag admission that Germany’s march into Belgium on August 4th was an Unrecht (wrong, tort, delinquency) which “violates the precepts of international law.”^[47]

Treaty obligation aside, Germany's invasion of Belgium as a customary law contravention was then simply subject matter for a bilateral dispute between Germany and Belgium. By contrast, Britain’s locus standi arose from the invasion’s being simultaneously a violation of the neutrality guaranteed by the 1839 London agreements to which Britain was party. On August 6th, Asquith justified Great Britain's August 4th declaration of war to uphold the 1839 treaties. He specifically referred to both honour and the doctrine of good faith:

If I am asked what we are fighting for I reply in two sentences.  In the first place, to fulfil a solemn international obligation, an obligation which, if it had been entered into between private persons in the ordinary concerns of life, would have been regarded as an obligation not only of law but of honour, which no self-respecting man could possibly have repudiated.  I say, secondly, we are fighting to vindicate the principle... that small nationalities are not to be crushed, in defiance of international good faith [i.e. pacta sunt servanda], by the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power.^[48]  

Moreover, Asquith characterized as “infamous,” “betrayal” and “dishonour of our obligations” the proposal that Great Britain acquiesce in Germany’s march through Belgium.^[49] 

Sir (William) Edward Goschen, the British Ambassador in Berlin similarly pointed to honour to explain to the German government why Great Britain was willing to fight for the 1839 treaties:

In the same way, as he [Bethmann-Hollweg] and [Foreign Minister] Herr [Gottlieb] von Jagow wished me to understand that for strategical reasons it was a matter of life and death to Germany to advance through Belgium and violate her neutrality, so I would wish him to understand that it was, so to speak, a matter of ‘life and death’ for the honour of Great Britain that she should keep her solemn engagement to do her utmost to defend Belgium’s neutrality if attacked. That solemn compact simply had to be kept, or what confidence could anyone have in engagements given by Great Britain in the future?^[50]

In September 1914, David Lloyd George was Chancellor of the Exchequer. He used the argument that treaties are binding in honour as the principal justification for fighting Germany:

Why is our honour as a country involved in this war? Because, in the first place, we are bound in an honourable obligation to defend the independence, the liberty, the integrity of a small neighbour [Belgium] that has lived peaceably, but she could not have compelled us, because she was weak. The man who declines to discharge his debt because his creditor is too poor to enforce it is a blackguard. We entered into this treaty, a solemn treaty, a full treaty, to defend Belgium and her integrity. Our signatures are attached to the document. [...] It is now in the interest of Prussia to break the treaty, and she has done it. Well, why? She avowed it with cynical contempt for every principle of justice. She says treaties only bind you when it is to your interest to keep them. 'What is a treaty?' says the German Chancellor. 'A scrap of paper.' Have you any ₤5 notes about you? I am not calling for them. Have you any of those neat little Treasury ₤1 notes? If you have, burn them; they are only 'scraps of paper'. What are they made of? Rags. What are they worth? The whole credit of the British Empire. [...] Treaties are the currency of international statesmanship. [...]  This doctrine of the scrap of paper, this doctrine which is superscribed by Bernhardi, that treaties only bind a nation as long as it is to its interest, goes to the root of public law. [...]  If there are nations that say they will only respect treaties when it is to their interest to do so, we must make it to their interest to do so for the future. [...] But their perfidy has already failed. They entered Belgium to save time. The time has gone. They have not gained time, but they have lost their good name.^[51]

The link between treaty performance and honour was not just an élite perception, but widespread among that generation of Englishmen.^[52]  London University Professor of French History, Alfred Cobban (1901-1968) said: “In 1914 there was still a general expectation that treaties would be kept until they were formally denounced.  It is difficult to think back now to a time when the German disregard of Belgian neutrality was regarded as a shattering blow to normal conventions of international behaviour.”^[53]  Poet Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) then thought Belgium “a thousand times enough” to fight for, and poet and writer Robert Graves (1895-1985) later recalled having been “outraged to read of the cynical violation of Belgian neutrality.”^[54]  Streaming to the colours, recruits believed they were doing the right thing: “Few young English officers doubted that Germany had broken the code of European nations and deserved to be punished.”^[55]  This violation of the 1839 treaties was condemned by British public opinion as a dishonourable breach of faith — a transgression helping religious denominations portray the Allied cause as a 20th-century crusade.^[56]

Treaties with Aboriginal Peoples of Canada

Modern Canadian courts pay special attention to British colonial treaties with North American aboriginal peoples principally because the 1982 constitution explicitly recognizes and affirms existing treaty rights.^[57]  In 1999, the Supreme Court of Canada allowed the appeal of Donald John Marshall, a Mi’kmaq Indian accused of offences under federal fisheries regulations.  The majority held that Marshall had an overriding right to catch and sell fish under Anglo-Mi’kmaq treaties of 1760-1761.^[58]  Relying inter alia on Canadian aboriginal treaty cases reaching into the 19^th century, all the judges repeatedly referred to the concept of the “honour of the Crown,” the “honour and dignity of the Crown” and the “honour and integrity of the Crown.” The majority pointed to an 1895 Supreme Court decision:

The British sovereigns... have been pleased to adopt the rule or practice of entering into agreements with the Indian nations or tribes... for the cession or surrender by them of ... Indian title, by instruments... to which they have been pleased to give the designation of ‘treaties’ ... and further that the terms and conditions expressed in those instruments as to be performed by or on behalf of the Crown, have always been regarded as involving a trust ... to the fulfilment of which... the faith and honour of the Crown is pledged, and which trust has always been most faithfully fulfilled as a treaty obligation of the Crown.^[59]

This “honour” appears, in Marshall and earlier aboriginal treaty cases, as a principle both substantive and interpretative.  Decided entirely under Canadian law, Marshall does not ask if the Anglo-Mi’kmaq treaties are now legally binding under public international law.  Precisely because the case sidesteps the modern international law of treaties, the judges found it necessary to refer to the original link between treaty obligation and “honour.”

Notes to Part 9

---

[1].  Jenkinson, Discourse on the Conduct of Great Britain (1759), 36-37.

[2].  Treaty of Subsidy between Great Britain and the Netherlands and Prussia, signed at the Hague, 19 Apr. 1794, in CTS, vol. 52:199-207.

[3].  Malmesbury to Foreign Secretary Lord Grenville, Mannheim, June 27, 1794, in Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, 1^st Earl of Malmesbury, ed. 3^rd Earl, James Howard Harris, 2^nd ed. (London, 1845), vol. 3:105-112, at 112.

[4].  May 13, 1802, Lords, Parliamentary History of England, vol. 36:688-689; Definitive Treaty of Peace between France, Great Britain, Spain, and the Batavian Republic, signed at Amiens, 27 Mar. 1802, in CTS, vol. 156:289-299; for failure to execute the treaty, see Redslob, Histoire des grands principes du droit des gens, 304-305; J. Christopher Herold, The Age of Napoleon (New York, 1963), 155.

[5].  Treaty between Great Britain and Portugal, signed at Whitehall, 23 June 1661, in CTS, vol. 6:327-336; Defensive and Offensive Alliance between the Emperor and Portugal (and Spain), and Great Britain and the Netherlands, signed at Lisbon, 16 May 1703, in CTS, vol. 24:375-407; Treaty between Great Britain and Portugal, signed at Vienna, 22 Jan. 1815, in CTS, vol. 63:459-472.

[6].  Neill Macaulay, Dom Pedro: The Struggle for Liberty in Brazil and Portugal, 1798-1834 (Durham, N.C., 1986), 190-192, 206, 224-230; A. H. De Oliveira Marques, History of Portugal (New York, 1972), vol. 2:41-49, 54-62; Lawrence’s Wheaton, 124-126; background by Earl Bathurst, Dec. 13, 1826, Lords, Parl. Deb., 2^nd ser., vol. 16:336-339.

[7].  Dec. 12, 1826, Commons, Parl. Deb., 2^nd ser., vol. 16:390.

[8].  Ibid., 381.

[9].  Ibid., 382.

[10].  Ibid., 383.

[11].  Ibid., 387-388.

[12].  Ibid., 351-352, 360, 367, 369, 391-393.

[13].  Ibid., 398.

[14].  Ibid., 352.

[15].  Ibid., 392.

[16].  Quoted by Temperley, Foundations of British Foreign Policy, 186.

[17].  Article 5, Treaty between Great Britain, the Netherlands and Russia, signed at London, 19 May 1815, in CTS, vol. 64:296.

[18].  Convention between Great Britain and Russia relative to the Russian-Dutch Loan, signed at London, 16 Nov. 1831, in CTS, vol. 82:265-269.

[19].  For June 27, 1854 Law Officers’ Report, see McNair, Law of Treaties, 562-564.

[20].  For example, see Lord Dudley Stuart, Aug. 1, 1854, Commons, Parl. Deb., 3^rd ser., vol. 135: 1098-1099, 1134.

[21].  Aug. 1, 1854, Commons, Parl. Deb., 3^rd ser., vol. 135:1133-1134.

[22].  CTS, vol. 88:411-426.

[23].  Taylor, Struggle for Mastery, 171-177.

[24].  To Foreign Secretary Lord Derby, Apr. 19, 1867, LQV, 2^nd ser., vol. 1:419.

[25].  To Queen Victoria, Apr. 16, 1869, LQV, 2^nd ser., vol. 1:590.

[26].  To Lord Clarendon, Apr. 17, 1869, LQV, 2^nd ser., vol. 1:592.

[27].  For 1870 and 1908 legal opinions on obligations under the 1839 treaties, see, British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898-1914, ed. G.P. Gooch and Harold Temperley, vol. 8 (London, 1932), 371-379.

[28].  CTS, vol. 141:435-445.

[29].  Aug. 8, 1870, Lords, Parl. Deb., 3^rd ser., vol. 203:1672.

[30].  Aug. 10, 1870, Lords, Parl. Deb., 3^rd ser., vol. 203:1757.

[31].  Ibid., 1747.

[32].  Ibid., 1760.


[33]. David Lloyd George, Honour and Dishonour: A Speech by the Right Honourable David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, at the Queen's Hall London, September 19, 1914 (London, 1914), p.3. 

[34].  Taylor, Trouble Makers, 74-86.

[35].  Feb. 16, 1877, Commons, Parl. Deb., 3^rd ser., vol. 232: 472.

[36].  Ibid., 494.

[37].  Feb. 26, 1877, Lords, Parl. Deb., 3^rd ser., vol. 232:985; Apr. 19, 1877, Lords, ibid., 1426.

[38].  Monday, Aug. 3, 1914, Parl. Deb. (Commons), 5^th ser., vol. 65:1810.

[39].  Ibid., 1814-1815.


[40].  The 1870 neutrality precedent and pacifism in the Liberal Party caused Cabinet to disagree over aiding France, but the invasion of Belgium tipped the scales, see Phillipson, International Law and the Great War, 7-26; Keith M. Wilson, “The Cabinet’s Decision for War, 1914,” in Policy of the Entente, 135-147; Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces: Britain and the Great War (Oxford, 1986), 28-35; Fry, Lloyd George and Foreign Policy, vol. 1:183-213; Britain would likely have opted for neutrality and France for an early peace, had Germany held back in the West and attacked Russia instead, see Taylor, Struggle for Mastery, 549, n. 1.

[41].  Monday, Aug. 3, 1914, Parl. Deb. (Commons), 5^th ser., vol. 65:1823-1825.

[42].  Burton J.  Hendrick, ed., The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page (New York, 1922), vol. 1: 314.

[43].  Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Five Years 1892-1916, vol. 2 (Toronto, 1925), 15-16, 322-324.

[44].  Monday, Aug. 3, 1914, Parl. Deb. (Commons), 5^th ser., vol. 65:1828.

[45].  Ibid., 1830-1831.

[46].  Tuesday, Aug. 4, 1914, Parl. Deb. (Commons), 5^th ser., vol. 65:1926.

[47].  Tuesday, Aug. 4, 1914, quoted by Mann, Deutsche Geschichte, 577: “Unsere Truppen haben Luxemburg besezt, und vielleicht schon belgisches Gebiet.  Das wiederspricht den Geboten des Völkerrechts...  Das Unrecht, das wir damit tun, werden wir wieder gutmachen, sobald unseres militärisches Ziel erreicht ist.”


[48].  Thursday, Aug. 6, 1914, Parl. Deb. (Commons), 5^th ser., vol. 65:2079.

[49].  Ibid., 2076-2077.

[50].  Nos. 667 and 671, Sir Edward Goschen to Sir Edward Grey, Berlin, Aug. 4 and 6, 1914, British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898-1914, vol. 9 (London, 1926), 347, 352; The Diary of Edward Goschen 1900-1914, Royal Historical Society, Camden, 4^th ser., vol. 25, ed. Christopher H.D. Howard (London, 1980), 50.


[51].  David Lloyd George, Honour and Dishonour: A Speech by the Right Honourable David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, at the Queen's Hall London, September 19, 1914 (London, 1914), pp.3-9. 

[52].  Michael Howard, “Europe on the Eve of the First World War,” in Lessons of History, 113-126, at 119-120.

[53].  Alfred Cobban, A History of Modern France, vol. 3 (Baltimore, 1965), 106.

[54].  24 Sept. 1914, The Letters of Rupert Brooke, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (London, 1968), 618; Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That: An Autobiography (London, 1929), 99.

[55].  Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), 93.

[56].  Penson, “Obligations by Treaty,” 87; Albert Marrin, The Last Crusade: The Church of England in the First World War (Durham, N.C., 1974), 131-132, 221, 251; Hubert Gebele, Die Probleme vom Krieg und Frieden in Großbritannien während des Ersten Weltkriegs: Regierung, Parteien und Öffentliche Meinung in der Auseinandersetzung über Kriegs- und Friedensziele (Frankfurt, 1987), 46.

[57].  Constitution Act, 1982, s. 35. (1).

[58].  Treaty of Peace and Friendship concluded by His Excellency Charles Lawrence Esq., Governor and Commander in Chief in and over His Majesty’s Province of Nova Scotia or Acadia, with Paul Laurent, Chief of the LaHave tribe of Indians in the Province of Nova Scotia or Acadia, March 10, 1760, full text in  R. v. Marshall, Supreme Court of Canada, File N^o 26014 (September 17, 1999).

[59].  In re Indian Claims (1895), 25 S.C.R. 434, at 511-512, per Gwynne J.