The general opinion among English and American political writers is that the French system of cabinet government is very nearly a régime of “parliamentary anarchy.” In recent years it has also been the object of severe attack by many French scholars, notably by Professors Duguit, Moreau, Barthélemy and Faguet, and by public men like Charles Benoist, Raymond Poincaré and others, who assert that while the cabinet system has been established by law, it does not exist in fact, but in its place is to be found a poor imitation of the true cabinet sytem of England, upon which that of France was supposed to have been modeled.

One undoubted reason why cabinet government in France has not worked smoothly is to be found in the fact that it is not an indigenous institution. It was transplanted from the country of its origin where it had taken deep root and had developed to a high state of efficiency through a long process of evolution, and was suddenly introduced into one where the historical traditions, political habits and mental aptitudes of the people were very unlike those of the English.

In a previous paper the attempt was made to state Vattel's system of municipal and international jurisprudence, and to show in a general way the authority attributed to his treatise on international law. It remains for us to consider the technical rules of international law proposed by Vattel and thus to lay the basis for a critical estimate of the position to which his treatise is entitled among the classics of international law.

The rules of conduct which nations have voluntarily adopted for themselves, and which therefore constitute the law between them, may be divided, with regard to their intrinsic character, into two general classes: first, rules which define certain principles of moral conduct or which embody the recognition of certain fundamental rights of states, and secondly, rules which define the concrete application of principles to the practical relations of states. Chief of the rules defining principles of moral conduct is the rule of good faith between nations, which in its many applications pervades the whole field of international law. This rule of good faith is not merely an a priori conception deduced from the analogy between sovereign states as members of an international community and private persons as members of society; it is a rule of positive international law, accepted by nations as properly controlling their conduct, and appealed to by them in their diplomatic relations.

It is a long time since any serious student of history has proceeded on the assumption that whenever our forefathers wanted to shape or re-shape their governments, local or national, they sat down and drawing forward a sheet of paper said, “Lo, now we will make ourselves a constitution.” Our whole conception of history is nowadays shot through with theories of evolution, of the adoption and incorporation of the old into the new. Yet the process by which the institutions of the past have been wrought into those of the present is often neglected; a general statement, an indistinct impression is frequently allowed to stand unverified for lack of consultation of easily available records. For instance, no student of our constitutional history today lets Gladstone's remark as to the genesis of our federal Constitution go unchallenged; it is accepted as a fact that that instrument is at once a summary and the culmination of colonial and confederate legislative experience. Moreover, the part that the ineffective Articles of Confederation played in the formation of our federal Constitution, negative as it was, has been clearly and incontrovertibly set forth.

County government in New York, as in every other State, is more or less of a mystery to the average citizen. It is questionable whether, outside of the district attorney, and possibly the sheriff, very many people have any clear notion of the duties of any of the county officers. The activities of the counties are largely invisible and such as to attract very little interest or attention. On the other hand, counties use up a great deal of hard earned money and county officers loom up large on the political horizon at the general election.

For this prevailing ignorance, the nature of the county itself is largely to blame. It is an anomaly, and its anomalous character is due to the perpetuation of an historical institution through the manifold changes of the last two centuries. The county assumed a logical and practical form in its beginnings in the seventeenth century. In later times as the State developed, the interests of the people became diversified and they distributed themselves in some sections sparsely like the people of the southern States and sometimes into compact communities, as, for instance, in Onondaga, Monroe and Broome Counties. The form of local government which was made to fit the Hudson settlements was extended westward.