K

ANT'S "Eternal Peace" was the subject of treatment in these editorial pages four or five months ago. That great tractate is in many respects the most remarkable prophecy and program ever made of international arbitration and the federation of the world. It was published in 1795, a hundred years ago. But a hundred years before that, in 1693, William Penn published his "Essay towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe, by the Establishment of an European Diet, Parliament or Estates." Penn's work is almost unknown to-day; but it deserves recognition and honor as the first plan in history for a general European union, with the sole exception of Henry of Navarre's "Great Design." It is the first plan which was animated throughout by the modern humanitarian spirit and is free from any ulterior political motive. Completely as it has now become forgotten, it attracted no little attention at the time, being twice printed in 1693. It was not, for some reason, included in the first folio edition of Penn's works, published in 1726, although it finds place in later editions. In 1858 the Historical Society of Pennsylvania reprinted it in the sixth volume of its memoirs; but it has never been really accessible to general students and the public until now, when it has just been added to the series of Old South leaflets. There

was never a time since its original publication when it would have found a public so deeply interested in the subject of which it treats as the present time. With all the wars and rumors of wars all about the horizon, with Europe an armed camp to an extent which even 1693 did not wit

ness, there was never a time when men looked so hopefully for the realization of William Penn's dream and Immanuel Kant's dream as now, or when they were taking such practical and energetic steps to bring about its realization. There was never a time when there were so many men in the world thoroughly aroused to the wastefulness and wickedness and folly of war and determined that some way shall be found to supplant our present crude methods of force in the settlement of international disputes by the method of reason and of law. We think that there was never before an International Arbitration conference where the utterances and the action were so positive, so definite and so confident as at the conference at Lake Mohonk last summer, the report of which comes to our table along with this leaflet containing Penn's remarkable essay of two centuries ago towards the universal peace and order for which the good people at Mohonk and elsewhere are working in this year of grace.

To us Americans this great dream and scheme of William Penn's possesses peculiar interest, because we claim that William Penn belongs as much to us as to England. Of all the founders of the colonies there was no other so prominent in the public eye of his time as he; there was no other whose religious and political career alike in England and America. was so important. Penn was much of a political philosopher. He has been abundantly vindicated against Macaulay's aspersions upon his course in England at the time of the Revolution. His organization and government of Pennsylvania will always be matters of profound interest

to us. He was perhaps the first to propose a general union of the American colonies. This was in 1696, almost sixty years before Franklin's famous plan of union. adopted by the convention at Albany in 1754, and only fourteen years after the founding of Pennsylvania. It was three years before his plan for a general union of the colonies that, now in England, while war was raging on the continent, he wrought out and published his plan for the union of the states of Europe, which, so long neglected and forgotten, will now we trust receive that general attention which it deserves, no more on account of its unique historical position than on account of its intrinsic worth.

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Penn's essay is divided into ten sections; and there is hardly any important consideration which the apostle of peace and federation would urge to-day which he does not somehow present. His opening section is "Of Peace and its Advantages." "He must not be a man," he begins, "but a statue of brass or stone, whose bowels do not melt when he beholds the bloody tragedies of this war in Hungary, Germany, Flanders, Ireland and at sea, the mortality of sickly and languishing camps and navies, and the mighty prey the devouring winds and waves have made upon ships and men since '88"; and he proceeds to enumerate the horrors of war and the blessings of peace very much as we did it at the last convention. "Peace preserves our possessions; we are in no danger of invasions; our trade is free and safe and we rise and lie down without anxiety; the rich bring out their hoards and employ the poor manufacturers; buildings and divers projections for profit and pleasure go on; it excites industry, which brings wealth, as that gives the means of charity and hospitality, not the lowest ornaments of a kingdom or com

He treats next "Of the Means of Peace, which is Justice rather than War." Referring to the old saying taken by Oliver Cromwell for his motto, "Peace is the end of war," he argues that this is very seldom the case, that what men are usually seeking in and through wars is not the right, but the gratification of some ambition or pride of conquest, so that one war is generally the seed of others. Justice and not war is the true and the only means of real and lasting peace between governments and peoples, as between one man and company and another. "Peace is maintained by justice, which is a fruit of government, as government is from society, and society is from consent." This observation is a bridge to a discussion, in his third section, of the nature of government and organized civil society. "Out of society every man is his own king, does what he lists at his own peril; but when he comes to incorporate himself, he submits that royalty to the conveniency of the whole, from whom he receives the return of protection; so that he is not now his own judge nor avenger, neither is his antagonist, but the law, in indifferent hands between both." Governments, he shows, have developed in the world, because the evils of anarchy were so apparent to all men of right feeling and thinking; and he proceeds to show, much after the manner of Kant, that anarchy among states involves essentially the same results on a larger scale as anarchy among individuals and must be overcome in the same way. "The ways and methods by which peace is preserved in particular governments will help

those readers most concerned in my proposal to conceive with what ease as well as advantage the peace of Europe might be procured and kept." How many utterances at Washington and Mohonk this year were unconsciously mere echoes of this word of William Penn two hundred years ago!

This brings Penn to his fundamental proposition, viz.: that "the sovereign princes of Europe, who represent that society or independent state of men that was previous to the obligations of society should, for the same reason that engaged men first into society, viz., love of peace and order, agree to meet by their stated deputies in a general diet, estates or parliament, and there establish rules of justice for sovereign princes to observe one to another; and thus to meet yearly, or once in two or three years at farthest, or as they shall see cause, and to be styled, The Sovereign or Imperial Diet, Parliament or State of Europe; before which sovereign assembly should be brought all differences depending between one sovereign and another, that cannot be made up by private embassies before the sessions begins; and that if any of the sovereignties that constitute these Imperial States shall refuse to submit their claims or pretensions to them, or to abide and perform the judgment thereof, and seek their remedy by arms or delay their compliance beyond the time prefixed in their resolutions, all the other sovereignties united as one strength shall compel the submission and performance of the sentence, with damages to the suffering party and charges to the sovereignties that obliged their submission."

This is the culmination of Penn's great essay. And this was in 1693! Four sections follow devoted to details into which it is not possible for us to enter here, concerning "The Causes of Difference and Motives to Violate Peace," "Titles upon which those Differences may arise," "The

Composition of these Imperial States," and "The Regulations of the Imperial States in Session." The ninth section is occupied with a consideration of the objections that may be advanced against the design. Penn's answer to one of these objections, viz., that such a disuse of the trade of soldiery as would result from such international peace and order would "endanger an effeminacy," is worth quoting and taking to heart today, when the old objection is still urged in quarters where we should so little expect it. "There can be no danger of effeminacy," he says, "because each sovereignty may introduce as temperate or severe a discipline in the education of youth as it pleases, by low living and due labor. Instruct them in mechanical knowledge and in natural philosophy, by operation, which is the honor of the German nobility. This would make them men, neither women nor lions,— for soldiers are t'other extreme to effeminacy. But the knowledge of nature and the useful as well as agreeable operations of art give men an understanding of themselves, of the world they are born into, how to be useful and serviceable both to themselves and others, and how to save and help, not injure or destroy. The knowledge of government in general, the particular constitutions of Europe, and above all of his own country, are very recommending accomplishments. This fits him for the parliament and council at home and the courts of princes and services in the imperial states abroad. At least he is a good Common-wealths-man, and can be useful to the public, or retire, as there may be occasion."

The final section of Penn's essay is devoted to an enumeration of "the real benefits that flow from this proposal about peace." Into these he enters at length, this section constituting a full third of the essay; but here again we cannot follow him. His "Conclusion" is a strong re-statement of the fundamental proposition

which we have noticed: "that by the same rules of justice and prudence by which parents and masters govern their families, and magistrates their cities, and estates their republics, and princes and kings their principalities and kingdoms, Europe may obtain and preserve peace among her sovereignties. For wars are the duels of princes; and as government in kingdoms and states prevents men being judges and executioners for themselves, overrules private passions as to injuries or revenge, and subjects the great as well as the small to the rule of justice, that power might not vanquish or oppress right, nor one neighbor act an independency and sovereignty upon another, while they have resigned that original claim to the benefit and comfort of society, so this being soberly weighed in the whole and parts of it, it will not be hard to conceive or frame nor yet to execute the design I have here proposed." He appeals to Sir William Temple's account of the United Provinces of Holland as furnishing a practical illustration in narrow limits of that constitution which he would have extended to cover all Europe. He confesses to "the passion to wish heartily that the honor of preparing and effecting so great and good a design might be owing to England." But he remembers the "Great Design" of Henry the Fourth of France as being something of the nature of his expedient; "for he was upon obliging the princes and estates of Europe to a politick balance, when the Spanish faction, for that reason, contrived and accomplished his murder." "So that to conclude," says Penn modestly, "I have very little to answer for in all this affair; because if it succeed I have so little to deserve. For this great king's example tells us it is fit to be done; and Sir William Temple's history shows us, by a surpassing instance, that it may be done; and Europe, by her incomparable miseries, makes it now necessary to be done."

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We hope that our people may now atone for their long neglect by a careful reading of this remarkable essay, and render William Penn the honor which is due him as the great pioneer in the cause of internationalism and universal peace. Too little is known of Penn altogether by the masses of our people. The interest which the present publication of his prophetic tractate may arouse should prompt many to inform themselves better upon his life and works. There are good editions of his works, and there are many biographies. The biography by Besse, prefixed to the first edition of his works, is the work of a contemporary; the better later biographies are those by Thomas Clarkson, William Hepworth Dixon, and John Stoughton.

We referred at the outset to the "Great Design" of Henry of Navarre; and we have found Penn appealing to this in his closing page as in a measure anticipating his own scheme. In connection with this notice of Penn's essay, we would urge the reader to an examination of this bold and remarkable conception of the great French king, which, whatever else is to be said of it, certainly has the distinction of being the first definite and comprehensive plan for a general European federation. Our original source of information concerning it is Sully's Memories. How much credit is actually due Henry for the "Great Design" is a matter of controversy, and the student may find critical discussions of it in Kitchin's History of France and elsewhere. One thing is certain, that this dream of a Christian commonwealth did shape itself in some head at that time, whether the head was Henry's or Sully's or another's. Twenty-five years ago-in Old and New for 1871-Edward Everett Hale published a most striking article about it, under the title of

. . His plan in brief was this, to reduce the number of European states, much as the Congress of Vienna eventually did two hundred years afterwards, or so that all Europe should be divided among fifteen powers. Russia did not then count as part of Europe; and Prussia was not then born. Of these powers, six were the kingdoms of England, France, Spain, Denmark, Sweden and Lombardy. Five were to be elective monarchies, viz.: The German Empire, The Papacy, Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia; and there were to be four Republics,-Switzerland, Venice, The States of Holland and Belgium, and The Republic of Italy, made up somewhat as the kingdom of Italy is now. These fifteen powers were to maintain but one standing army. The chief business of this army was to keep the peace among the states, and to prevent any sovereign from interfering with any other, from enlarging his borders, or other

usurpations. This army and the navy were also to be ready to repel invasions of Mussulmans and other barbarians. For the arrangement of commerce, and other mutual interests, a Senate was to be appointed of four members from each of the larger, and two from each of the smaller states, who should serve three years, and be in constant session. It was supposed that, for affairs local in their character, a part of these senators might meet separately from the others. On occasions of universal importance, they would meet together. Smaller congresses, for more trivial circumstances, were also provided for. . . . According to Sully, at the moment of Henry's murder, he had secured the practical active coöperation of twelve of the fifteen powers, who were to unite in this confederation. . . . It is easy to see that the central wish which bound these powers together was the wish to humble Austria. Under Charles the Fifth, Austria and Spain, with all the new wealth of the Indias at their command, had domineered over all Europe. Philip the Second would have been glad to do the same thing. The great design of Henry offered, therefore, to the various powers this immediate prize, that they would humble the emperor of Austria and tie his hands. This was just as the great alliance of the nations of Europe against the first Napoleon was animated by a determination to humble him, and the power of France. But, beyond this immediate purpose. Henry and Elizabeth and the king of Sweden looked to such a control by the allied powers that no single sovereign should so claim the lion's share again. The Great Design looked beyond the immediate purpose to the permanent peace of Europe."