Must Treaties be kept, or is it enough that they are made?
The latter.--To-day the mining-superintendent exercises, for the first
time, on the reader's ground and soil the right (_servitus oneris
ferendi_, or I may say _servitus projiciendi_) which, according to the
contract of May 4, he actually possesses. The main question now is,
whether a dog-contract between two such great powers--inasmuch as the
reader has all the quarters of the world, and I, in turn, have the
reader--must, after being concluded, also be kept.
Frederick, the Antimachiavellist, answers us, and backs himself by
Machiavelli: Certainly every one of us must keep his word so long as
it--is for his advantage. So true is this, that such treaties would
never be broken, if they were not once--concluded; and the Swiss, who,
as late as 1715, swore one with France, might quite as well in all the
Cantons have lifted their fingers and taken an oath they would every
day regularly--make water.
But so soon as the advantage of contracts ceases, then is a regent
entitled to break them in two cases,--those which he makes with
other regents, and those he makes with his own step-children of the
country,--his subjects.
While I was already at work in the cabinet, (not later than six
o'clock, with the goose-wing, dusting the session-table, not with the
pen,) I had under the latter a clever fugitive paper, wherein I
proposed to show that the _ouverture_ of treaties (_au nom de la Sainte
Trinité_ or _in nomine Sanctissimæ et individuæ Trinitatis_) was the
cipher which ambassadors sometimes place over their reports, meaning
that the opposite is to be understood. Nothing, however, came of the
fugitive paper but a--manuscript. In this I was simple enough, and
proposed first to advise princes, that, in regard to lies of necessity
and truths of necessity, they must have, for every latitude and
hour, _declinations_ and _inclinations_. I proposed to whistle the
state-chanceries to myself into a corner, and whisper in their ears, I
would never suffer it, and, though I had only nine regiments in pay and
starvation, that my hands and feet should be glued together with the
sealing-wax of contracts, and my wings clogged with ink. That
would I for the first time introduce into state-praxis; but the
state-chanceries laughed at me, afar off in my foolish corner, and
said, The whistler may believe, himself,--we do the thing otherwise.
In the works of Herr _Herkommen_[109]--the best German publicist, who,
however, writes no _acta sanctorum_ it is proved that a reigning prince
need not observe at all any treaties, privileges, and concessions
granted by his predecessor to his subjects; hence it follows that he is
far less bound to keep his _own_ covenants with them, since the
enjoyment of the benefit of these covenants, which consists in nothing
but the keeping or breaking, manifestly vests in him as proprietor. Mr.
Herkommen says the same on every page, and absolutely swears to it.
Nay, can there be a dean or rector magnificus who exercises so little
reason--considering that, according to a general assumption, a king
never dies, and consequently predecessors and successors grow together
into one man--as not to draw from this the conclusion that the
successor may regard his own covenants as those of his predecessor, and
accordingly, since the two make only one man, may break them just as
much as if they were transmitted ones?
Whoso chose to discourse philosophically about this might prove that,
in fact, _no man whatever_ needs keep his word, not merely no prince.
According to physiology, the old body of a king (a reader, a
superintendent of mines) in _three_ years makes way for a new one. Hume
carries it still farther with the soul, inasmuch as he considers that
as a fleeting (not frozen) stream of phenomena. How much soever, then,
the king (reader, author) may, at the moment of making a promise, be
bound to keep it, still he cannot possibly be held thereto the next
minute after, when he has already become his own successor and heir; so
that, in fact, of us two contracting parties of the 4th of May, nothing
more is extant than our mere _posthumi_ and successors,--namely,
ourselves. As now, fortunately, promising and fulfilling never enter
into one and the same moment, herefrom may follow the conclusion,
pleasant to all of us, that, in fact, no one at all is bound to keep
his word, whether he is the top of a throne or only a chip thereof. Nor
will courtiers (the corner-clips of the throne) oppose this
proposition.
The public is requested to consider the Preface as the Second
Intercalary Day, for the sake of symmetry.