collapse of the experiments in federation which followed the Congress of
Vienna as proof that similar experiments will similarly fail to-day or
to-morrow, I reply that this view is based on a false interpretation of
the statement that 'history repeats itself'. A psychological or
sociological experiment is not the same when fundamental changes have
taken place in the psychical and social conditions. We have already
recognized that the nineteenth century has seen a series of vital
changes in the economic and spiritual structure of civilization. The
evidence of 1815 cannot, therefore, be conclusive as regards the
possibilities of 1915. To those who insist on the sovereignty and
independence of the national state as an eternal verity, I will make no
further reply than to say that such language has for me no more meaning
than talk of 'the divine right of kings', 'the natural rights of man',
or any other phrase of the abracadabra of metaphysical politics. The
actual world in which we live knows no such absolutes. Sovereignty and
independence, like all other legal claims, are subject to modification
and compromise. Every bargain made by treaty or agreement with another
state, every acceptance of international law or custom, involves some
real diminution of sovereign independence, unless indeed the liberty to
break all treaties and to violate all laws is expressly reserved as an
inalienable right of nations. Moreover, within the limits of a single
nation, sovereignty is itself divided and distributed. Alike in the
United States of America, the Swiss Republic, and the German Empire, the
constituent states as well as the nations are recognized as sovereign,
possessing certain rights or powers safeguarded by the constitution
against all encroachments of the central or federal government. So again
within the state itself, the sovereignty is often no longer concentrated
in a single person or a single body of persons, but is exercised by the
joint action of several organs, as in Great Britain, where the king and
the Houses of Parliament are the joint administrators of the sovereignty