complete control was secured, without assuming sovereign powers or undertaking the direct administration of the province.

This settlement has usually been criticised because it divorced power from responsibility. From the point of view of theoretical politics, the fact is indisputable; but this criticism wholly ignores the facts of the case. It was not possible for Clive, even if he had desired it, to establish a direct administration. He lacked men skilled in law, in languages, in the customs of the people. Such men had to be bred and trained. A tradition of administrative service had to be formed. Clive cannot be attacked for not establishing what Hastings found so difficult to create. Meanwhile the English continued to administer the districts which had been granted them by Mir Kasim, and in so doing prepared themselves for a wider field of action and a heavier responsibility. It is not claimed that the Dual Government which Clive established was an ideal system; but it is not too much to assert that it was the best possible solution in the circumstances. At the worst, the Government of Bengal was as good as it had been under Siraj-ud-daula or Mir Jaffar; and the English were in a position to assume direct control as soon as the time was ripe.

The wonder is, not that Clive's settlement was incomplete, but that it lent itself so readily to the developments of the future. There is no severer test of successful statesmanship. For these reasons we think Clive was even greater as statesman than as soldier or as politician. As a soldier, both in the Carnatic and Bengal, he allowed himself to be surprised; as a politician ranged against Siraj-ud-daula and Mir Jaffar he condescended to meet them with their own weapons of intrigue and deceit; but as a statesman, in his last government, he rose to rare heights of disinterested action and, without ever losing his grasp of the actual facts, not only built for the present but also prepared for the future.

H. DODWELL.

Art. 4.-STATE MORALITY.

THE question, how far the dictates of individual morality apply to the conduct of the State, is one of the highest practical importance at the present time, while it also embodies a strictly scientific problem, connected both with the axioms of ordinary ethics and with the view taken by sociology of the meaning and significance of the State. And yet, while it is true that a few politicians and constitutional lawyers* have recently occupied themselves with certain aspects of the question, and that a few pamphlets dealing with it have appeared, chiefly in Germany, the students of ethics or sociology have not hitherto paid much attention to it.

The following observations are not based upon any special moral principle, whether of transcendentalism or utilitarianism or the principle of evolution. It is possible to agree with me, irrespective of the way in which one conceives of the genesis of the ordinary moral laws. For thousands of years the human intellect has laboured to shape the ethical constitutional laws which govern the mind and actions of men. One may conceive of these laws as the work of man, as a stage in the ordinary progress of civilisation; or as a categorical imperative with sovereign rights over human life, which needs only to be recognised ever more and more clearly. In any case we have before us a splendid intellectual achievement, which is becoming to an increasing extent the joint property of the whole human race. Speaking generally, nobody in our days is in doubt as to what is good and honourable between man and man. Lying, cheating, stealing, violence, and so forth, are not only proper subjects for the reaction of the penal laws, but also come under a common moral condemnation. And men do homage in their hearts to the great laws of brotherhood, although they may be very far from realising them in their lives.

All the more surprising is it, then, that there should be a great and important field of human intercourse, in

Since this article was written, two essays by the late Prof. Henry Sidgwick, bearing on this subject, have been reprinted, under the title National and International Right and Wrong,' with a preface by Lord Bryce (Allen and Unwin, 1919).

which the applicability of the ethical laws is still regarded by the bulk of mankind as an open question. Yet this is a field with which we come in contact, so to speak, every day, and which has the greatest significance for the welfare and development of mankind. I am thinking of the Foreign Policy of States, their actions in international intercourse, trade policy, colonial policy, international controversies, treaties, war and peace.

Now it is certainly in this field that the doubt and confusion of thought are most obvious. But if we look closer, we find that this doubt and confusion really start deeper down. They actually begin at every point where men step beyond the narrowest sphere of their private life, and where co-operation with others in business and public life takes place. For, when one has to act for or on behalf of others, there come into play conflicting interests, which at times culminate in a collision of duties. One has duties both in respect of him for whom one is acting, and in respect of him towards whom one is acting. The manager of a company, for instance, may find that out of regard to the shareholders he cannot accommodate the workmen in the industry to the same extent, or act as openly and honourably towards customers or competitors, as he would have done if the business had been his own. This circumstance furnishes, indeed, one of the darker sides of the widespread application of the shareholding principle in industrial life which marks our time. The difference is perhaps still clearer in the contrast between the independent individual and the trustee. The individual is entitled to spend his whole fortune in charity if he likes; the trustee cannot do so, for he has to safeguard the rights of others. Now the Government of a State is in the position of a trustee for the nation committed to its charge.

Here may at once be seen the reason why the abovementioned uncertainty in regard to the ethical verdict on the actions of political societies, especially of the State, occurs almost entirely in one great field of governmental activity-the international relations of the State, not its domestic functions. For there does not enter into the latter domain any collision of duties such as has been alluded to. No one is in doubt that the State

should aim at the advancement of its citizens' spiritual and bodily welfare, in its Church policy, its educational policy, its social policy; that the axioms of morality should actuate the State in its labours to promote enlightenment, to eliminate poverty, to help the weak, and to promote national welfare by means of social reforms, old-age and health insurance, employment bureaus, factory legislation, etc.

The fundamental moral laws have thus completely captured one side of the State's activity, namely, the inner. On the other hand, they have not conquered the other, the outer side--the State's activity as an international legal entity, as a member of the great society of peoples. It is here, as already indicated, that we confront a curious groping uncertainty. Practice lags infinitely behind the moral conquests of advancing civilisation in all other departments of life; and theory, as already remarked, has ventured but little into this field. Wherever it has done so, opinions are divided.

From one quarter it is asserted-with greater or smaller differences of statement-that the foreign policy of States is practically exempt from the moral laws. If States in their mutual relations are actuated by the evil motives which we condemn in individuals, such as covetousness, vanity, envy, desire for revenge, and the like, they do not, according to this view, incur the same severe censure as the individual. On the contrary, States are entitled to regard solely what is in their own interest, to satisfy their need of expansion at their neighbours' expense, to let force decide all disputes and the strong dominate the weak. In statements built up on this chain of reasoning, it is declared that international policy lies 'on the other side of good and evil,' and need not recognise a moral judgment. Societies (it is said) have no conscience; questions of foreign policy are and always must be questions of power; self-interest is decisive, and no moral consideration will, or ought to, hinder the stronger from using his power. For it follows from the law of natural selection that the strong conquers the weak; war is the only just court of appeal among peoples; and the verdict of History actually consists in this, that it confers on the State which has shown its capacity for conquest the right to rule. The conclusion

of the whole matter is, that the morality of altruism or the feeling of brotherhood can only be applied between individuals, but not between States. And this conclusion is supported by quoting one or another great statesman's motto: Might before right,' 'My country, right or wrong,' and the like.

Absolutely opposed to this whole line of argument is the other-perhaps now the most prevalent-according to which the actions of the individual and those of the State come under exactly the same ethical judgment. What is wrong, dishonourable, sinful for the individual man is equally so for the society, the people, the municipality or the State; to lie is to lie, whoever does it; likewise in the case of fraud, burglary, theft, murder, violence, oppression or slander; and whether it is a horse or a province that is misappropriated, whether the suppression of truth occurs in dealing with a business customer or a foreign government, the action incurs exactly the same moral judgment. And from this point of view I suppose it would be added that to kill some hundreds of thousands or millions of another State's citizens cannot at least be judged more mildly than to murder a single man.

In order to see clearly what is right and wrong here, one ought first to distinguish between the moral claims which on the one hand may be made upon single persons, princes, statesmen, diplomatists, who act on behalf of the State, and those, on the other hand, which can be made upon the State itself, considered as a willing and acting unit.

First then: Is it the duty of these single persons to act as morally in affairs of State as in their own? Here the answer may be, yes and no. Duty has both a negative side-to avoid wrongdoing; and a positive-service, selfsacrifice. One can give away only what is one's own, not what belongs to another or to the State. But one has as little right to do wrong on others' behalf as on one's own. The organ or the servant of the State comes under this law. A diplomatist who tries to deceive a foreign government, out of State considerations or by superior orders, will feel his conscience react, if it is sound. The necessary lie' is a very doubtful ethical