Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/396

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386 Reviews of Books time when the relations between states are so frequently a subject of dis- cussion in the domain of political science, it is interesting to go back and examine the international politics of the great revolutionist of the eighteenth century. M. Windenberger begins his work with a review of the system of Rousseau as applied to a single state, but follows the enquiry a stage farther. Assuming the existence of a social contract, how shall the small state, which was Rousseau's ideal, maintain itself in the pres- ence of powerful and aggressive neighbors ? This difficulty, Rousseau thought, could not be met by the aid of religious principles alone, nor could the solution be found in war. The true remedy is the application of the principle of contract to international relations. As the free con- sent of individuals forms the state, so on a larger scale the free consent of states may be the basis of an association of states protecting all its members. Rousseau's idea was, so reasons the author, that this protec- tive association should not be a mere league, since this would be too ephemeral in nature to afford the security desired ; nor yet a federal state in which protection might be obtained, but at the cost of the sovereignty of the contracting states. The proper form of association is the con- federacy, in which the several states retain their independence and sovereignty. M. Windenberger asserts, and repeats the assertion, that Rousseau's international contract corresponds exactly to the social contract (pp. 234, 251). As the author himself shows, however, in the social contract the parties to the agreement forfeit their sovereignty, and the state becomes the sole judge of its own competence. But in the confederation (which he carefully distinguishes from the federal state) the parties to the con- tract retain their individual independence and sovereignty. At this im- portant point the analogy breaks down. It is true that as far as X^a^ pur- pose is concerned Rousseau's social and his international contract are alike in that they rest upon the desire for common protection ; in result, how- ever, the contracts are widely different, since one involves a loss of sovereignty on the part of the contracting parties, while the other imposes no such necessity. M. Windenberger' s book presents a careful and complete study of the international politics of Rousseau, but all that is new in his discussion might easily have been stated with greater brevity. The last 50 pages of the book contain interesting extracts from the Geneva manuscript of the Contrat Social, and unpublished manuscripts in the Neuchatel ibrarv. C. E. Merriam. We have received the fifth and sixth volumes of the Skrifter utgifna af Kongl. Hiimanistiska Vefenskaps-Samfundcf i Upsala (Upsala, C. J. Lundstrom). Each contains several papers of historical interest. In Band V. Professor Karl Piehl discusses certain brief inscriptions, of the later periods of Egyptian history, coming from the temple of Horus at Edfou. J. M. Sunden, " De Tribunicia Potestate a L. Sulla imminuta Quaestiones," deals especially with the question whether Sulla abolished