the usual cordiality by the ex-Mayor, Harvey Baldwin. Of his ample reply
a portion may here be presented to the reader. After alluding to
Dionysius and Timoleon, he came back to the subject of Russian
interference in Hungary, and declared that he would not appeal to their
passions, but to their calm reason, although he approved of excitement
in a good cause, and at any rate trusted that Truth and Hope would never
be out of fashion at Syracuse. He continued:--

Gentlemen, as the destination of laws in a well-regulated community is
to uphold right, justice, and security of every individual, rich or
poor, powerful or weak, and to protect his life against violence and his
property against the encroachments of fraud and crime--so the
destination of the laws of _nations_ is to secure the independence
even of the smallest States, from the encroachments of the most powerful
ones. Force will prevail instead of right, so long as _all_
independent nations do not unite for the maintenance of those laws upon
which the security of all nations rests.

I say _all_ nations, because weakness is always comparative, not
absolute. A combination of several leagued powers can reduce to the
condition of comparative weakness even the strongest power on earth.
Without the law of nations there is therefore no security for nations.
But the European powers have long ago substituted for the rule of
justice the so-called _balancing system_--that is to say, the
political balance of power among nations. That system is iniquitous, for
it is founded, not upon the national _right_ even of the smallest
nation to be maintained in its independence, but upon the natural
jealousy of the great powers. With this system the independence of the
smallest States is not sure by right and by law, but only depends on the
consideration that the absorption of such smaller States might
aggrandize one of the great powers too much. In this system humanity is
taken for nothing--the mutual jealousy of the powerful is all, and the
implicit guarantee for the security of the weaker ceases, wherever the
powerful can devise a plan of spoliation which leaves the relative
forces of the spoliators the same as before. It is thus the world has
seen the partition of Poland--that most iniquitous--most guilty
spoliation ever witnessed.

The balancing system would have protected Poland from absorption by
_one_ power, but it has not protected it from partition between
these rival powers.