that bounties, drawbacks, or other favors in either state on goods exported or imported in national vessels shall be also granted on goods directly exported or imported in vessels of the other country to and from the ports of the two countries; and that tonnage and harbor dues, and light house, salvage, pilotage, quarantine, or port charges shall be imposed in each country on the vessels of the other only as imposed in like cases on national vessels. "Again, in 1852, the two powers being desirous of placing the commerce of the two countries on a footing of greater mutual equality,' agreed to extend the provisions of the treaty of 1839, so that its provisions should include also goods and merchandise of whatever origin, imported or exported from or to any other country than the United States or Netherlands respectively, with a similar extension as to bounties, drawbacks, &c.; so that now, by treaty as well as by legislation, the commerce and trade of each of the two countries are placed upon that footing of equality with those of the other, and upon that basis of complete reciprocity, which both parties have ever professed to desire, and which the United States sought to attain by reciprocal and equalizing legislation. It is worthy of remark that the negotiators of the treaty of 1782 declare that it is concluded with the object of 'establishing the most perfect equality and reciprocity for the basis of their agreement,' while the negotiators of the treaty of 1852 declare that the two powers were then desirous of placing the two countries on a footing of greater mutual equality. If the treaty of 1782, creating the most perfect equality,' was in force in 1852, why should the parties have thought it necessary to provide for an equality greater than the most perfect one already existing? To ask such a question is to suggest the answer. "It was because the treaty of 1782 had long ceased to be operative, and because the mutual commercial relations of the two powers which each desired to increase, and to remove from the influence of fluctuating legislation, demanded further protection, that the parties concluded the successive treaties of 1839 and 1852. And in these instruments, influenced by the liberal views which now prevail, the parties agreed to measure the equality and the reciprocity which they desired to give each to the other, not by the favors which they might grant to any other, even the most favored nation, but by the impositions to which the national vessels of each were subjected in its own ports. It seems to me that an agreement which goes beyond this just measure, and which aims to give to the vessel under the foreign flag a preference over a vessel which carries the national ensign, is founded in injustice, and when enforced can only tend to decrease the friendliness and cordiality which commercial treaties should aim to foster. Happily no such engagement exists between the United States and the Netherlands. "The laws of the United States impose a tonnage tax of thirty cents per ton on the first entry or clearance, according to priority of a vessel from or to the West India Islands, the British provinces of North America, Mexico, or any port or place south of Mexico, down to and including Aspinwall and Panama, or any port or place in the Sandwich Islands, or the Society Islands, provided that no tonnage tax has been paid on such vessels within one year. They also impose a tax of the same amount on vessels engaged in commerce between the United States and foreign ports or places other than those specified above, to be levied on the first entry, and thereafter on each entry made after the expiration of a year from any previous payment of the dues. "All vessels of the commercial marine of the United States are subject to and pay this tax. The commercial marine of Holland, being placed by treaty on the same footing with the commercial marine of the United States, is subject to no other or higher duties than these, but is subject to these tonnage dues so long as they shall continue to be imposed by law upon the vessels of the United States. "If, as I flatter myself has been shown, the treaty of 1782 is no longer binding on the parties, their commercial relations are now regulated by the treaties of 1839 and 1852 only. Neither of these instruments, however, promises to place the vessels of Holland in the ports of the United States on the same footing as those of the most favored nation. When they were concluded, Holland probably supposed that she had a sufficient security against any discrimination in the stipulation that her vessels were to have the same treatment in our ports as our own. At that time no tonnage duties were levied in the ports of the United States. Events have since occurred, however, which, in the judgment of Congress, made such a change necessary." Mr. Fish, Sec. of State, to Mr. De Westenberg, Apr. 9, 1873. MSS. Notes, Netherlands. For. Rel., 1873. On this topic see Mr. J. C. B. Davis, in "Notes to Treaties," tit., Netherlands, 1782. See, also, infra, § 155. A successful revolution does not relieve the country revolutionized from liability on its prior engagements to foreign states. Mr. Fish, Sec. of State, to Mr. Bassett, Feb. 21, 1877, MSS Inst., Hayti. IX. ABROGATION BY CONSENT, BY REPUDIATION, OR BY CHANGE OF CIRCUMSTANCES. § 137a. A treaty may be modified or abrogated under the following circum stances: (1) When the parties mutually consent. (2) When continuance is conditioned upon terms which no longer exist. (3) When either party refuses to perform a material stipulation. (6) When performance becomes physically or morally impossible. (7) When a state of things which was the basis of the treaty, and one of its tacit conditions, no longer exists. In most of the old treaties were inserted the "clausula rebus sic stantibus," by which the treaty might be construed as abrogated when material circumstances on which it rested changed. To work this effect it is not necessary that the facts alleged to have changed should be material conditious. It is enough if they were strong inducements to the party asking abrogation. The maxim, " Conventio omnis intelligitur rebus sic stantibus," is held to apply to all cases in which the reason for a treaty has failed, or there has been such a change of circumstances as to make its performance impracticable except at an unreasonable sacrifice. Whart. Com. Am. Law, § 161. See infra, § 138. "The first point to be determined in this inquiry, is, as you properly suggest, whether the treaty of March 20, 1833 [with Siam], is superseded by the subsequent treaty of May 29, 1856. As a general rule, as you are well aware, unless a particular contract undertakes to abrogate all former contracts between the parties, it only vacates such portions of former contracts as are inconsistent with its terms. The same rule is applied to statutes covering more or less the ground of former legis. lation. If this rule be applied in the present case, then the clause in the treaty of 1833 precluding the importation or sale in Siam (except to the King) of munitions of war' is still in force." Mr. Bayard, Sec. of State, to Mr. Phelps, Jan. 7, 1886. MSS. Inst., Gr. Brit. "The Duke (of Wellington, then rime minister) has left a memorandum on the cabinet table showing clearly from treaties that this (the overthrow of the Bourbons in 1830) is not a case in which we were bound to interfere. We engaged to support a constitutional monarch against revolutionary movements, but the monarch having violated the constitution has broken the condition." 2 Lord Ellenborough's Diary, &c., 341, entry of Aug. 23, 1830. But see supra, $137. The intention to abrogate a treaty must plainly appear. Chin A. On, in re; 18 Fed. Rep., 506. As to abrogation by subsequent legislation, see infra, §§ 137, 248. The question of the abrogation of the treaties with France, of 1778, is considered infra, §§ 148, 248. At present the following notes may be sufficient to exhibit the points at issue: The act "annulling" the treaties is as follows: "Whereas the treaties concluded between the United States and France have been repeatedly violated on the part of the French Govern ment, and the just claims of the United States for reparation of the injuries so committed have been refused, and their attempts to nego tiate an amicable adjustment of all complaints between the two nations have been repelled with indignity; and whereas, under authority of the French Government, there is yet pursued against the United States a system of predatory violence, infracting the said treaties and hostile to the rights of a free and independent nation: "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the United States are of right freed and exonerated from the stipulations of the treaty and of the consular convention heretofore concluded between the United States and France, and that the same shall not henceforth be regarded as legally obligatory on the Government or citizens of the United States. "Approved July 7, 1798." 1 U. S. Stat. L., 578. This annulling act, however, whatever might be its municipal effect, by itself could not internationally release the United States from its obligations to France. Supra, § 9 (last clause). In Chirac v. Chirac, 2 Wheat., 272, Marshall, C. J., said that there was in July, 1799, "no treaty in existence between the two nations." This, however, applies merely to the municipal operations of the treaty. The act of Congress was sustained by the American envoys, iu a letter to the French envoys, dated at Paris, July 23, 1800, on the ground of prior violation by France. (Infra, § 248.) "It was remarked that a treaty, being a mutual compact, a palpable violation of it by one party did, by the law of nature and of nations, leave it optional with the other to renounce and declare the same to be no longer obligatory; and that, of necessity, there being no common tribunal to which they could ap peal, the remaining party must decide whether there had been such violation on the other part as to justify its renunciation. For a wrong decision it would doubtless be responsible to the injured party, and might give cause for war; but even in such case its act of public renunciation, being an act within its competence, would not be a void, but a valid act, and other nations whose rights might thereby be beneficially affected would so regard it. "That it had become impossible for the United States to save their commerce from the depredations of French cruisers but by resorting to defensive measures; and that as, by their Constitution, existing treaties were the supreme law of the land, and the judicial department, who must be governed by them, is not under the control of the executive or legislative, it was also impossible for them to legalize defensive measures, incompatible with the French treaties while they continued to exist. Then it was that they were formally renounced. "To the still further suggestion that the laws of nations admitted of a dissolution of treaties only by mutual consent or war, it was remarked by the undersigned that their conviction was clearly otherwise, and that Vattel in particular, the best approved of modern writers, not only held that a treaty violated by one party might, for that reason, be renounced by the other, but that where there were two treaties between the same parties, one might be rendered void in that way, and the other remain in force; whereas when war dissolves, it dissolves all treaties between the parties at the time." Messrs. Ellsworth, Davie, and Murray to the French negotiators, July 23, 1800, "At the close of the wars of Napoleon, the treaty of 1795 with Spain alone, of all of the commercial treaties, survived. President Madison contemplated using the opportunity to mould all the treaties of this nature into a general system. Mr. Monroe, in an early stage of negotiations with Holland, for this purpose, informed the Dutch minister at Washington that the treaties between the United States and some of the powers of Europe having been annulled by causes proceeding from the state of Europe for some time past, and other treaties having ex pired, the United States have now to form their system of commercial intercourse with every power, as it were, at the same time.' But the only general commercial treaties which Monroe succeeded in concluding, either as Secretary of State under President Madison, or as President with John Quincy Adams as Secretary of State, were the treaty of 1815 with Great Britain, the limited arrangements made with France in 1822, and the treaty with Colombia in 1824." Mr. J. C. B. Davis, Notes, &c. See infra, § 161. The treaty of Paris, assented to by the congress of Vienna (1814-15), consolidated Holland and Belgium. In 1830 the five powers, who were parties to the treaty of Vienna, determined (December 20, 1830) that "in forming, by the treaties in question, the union of Belgium and Holland, the powers who signed those treaties had in view the establishment of a just equilibrium in Europe, and the assurance of the maintenance of general peace. Unhappily the events of the last few months have shown that the full and complete amalgamation which the powers desired to produce in those countries has not been obtained; that it would henceforth be impossible to effectuate that purpose; that thus the very object of the union of Belgium and Holland was destroyed, and that henceforth it becomes indispensable to recur to other arrangements in order to accomplish the intention, the means of executing which this union ought to serve." Abdy's Kent (1878), 52; citing Brit. and For. St. Pap., 1830-31, vol. 19, p. 749. "History is full of broken guarantees and alliances, and of disputes about the casus fœderis, which have not arisen from bad faith, nor from the common uncertainties of language, but are peculiar to this class of compacts, and against which no precision of phrase can ever completely join. Multiply engagements as you will; clinch them firmly as you may; but never count on them to make a nation draw sword in a quarrel it deems unjust, and for objects in which it is to have no share. The successive coalitions against the first Napoleon showed how hard a task it is to induce several powers to act steadily together, even in the presence of a general, instant, and formidable danger." Bernard on Diplomacy, 85. "In 1814 and 1815 a set of treaties were made by a general congress of the states of Europe, which affected to regulate the external, and some of the internal, concerns of the European nations, for a time altogether unlimited. These treaties, having been concluded at the termination of a long war, which had ended in the signal discomfiture of one side, were imposed by some of the contracting parties, and reluc tantly submitted to by others. Their terms were regulated by the interests and relative strength at the time of the victors and vanquished, and were observed as long as those interests and that relative strength remained the same. But as fast as any alteration took place in these elements, the powers, one after another, without asking leave, threw off, and were allowed with impunity to throw off, such of the obligations of the treaties as were distasteful to them, and not sufficiently important to the others to be worth a fight. The general opinion sustained some of those violations as being perfectly right; and even those which were disapproved were not regarded as justifying a resort to war. Europe did not interpose when Russia annihilated Poland, when |