Any attempt to establish orderly legal relationships between states must, therefore, be carried out by the harmonious co-operation of those states. At the end of the sixteenth century a great French statesman, Sully, inspired Henry IV with a scheme of a Council of Confederated European Christian States; each of these states, fifteen in number, was to send four representatives to the Council, which was to sit at Metz or Cologne and regulate the differences between the constituent states of the Confederation. The army of the Confederation was to be maintained in common, and used chiefly to keep the peace, to prevent one sovereign from interfering with any other, and also, if necessary, to repel invasion of barbarians from without. The scheme was arranged in concert with Queen Elizabeth, and twelve of the fifteen Powers had already promised their active co-operation when the assassination of Henry destroyed the whole plan. Such a Confederation was easier to arrange then than it is now, but probably it was more difficult to maintain, and it can scarcely be said that at that date the times were ripe for so advanced a scheme.[224] To-day the interests of small states are so closely identified with peace that it is seldom difficult to exert pressure on them to maintain it. It is quite another matter with the large states. The fact that during the past half century so much has been done by the larger states to aid the cause of international arbitration, and to submit disputes to international tribunals, shows how powerful the motives for avoiding war are nowadays becoming. But the fact, also, that no country hitherto has abandoned its liberty of withdrawing from peaceful arbitration any question involving "national honour" shows that there is no constituted power strong enough to control large states. For the reservation of questions of national honour from the sphere of law is as absurd as would be any corresponding limitation by individuals of their liability for their acts before the law; it is as though a man were to say: "If I commit a theft I am willing to appear before the court, and will probably pay the penalty demanded; but if it is a question of murder, then my vital interests are at stake, and I deny altogether the right of the court to intervene." It is a reservation fatal to peace, and could not be accepted if pleaded at the bar of any international tribunal with the power to enforce its decisions. "Imagine," says Edward Jenks, in his _History of Politics_, "a modern judge 'persuading' Mr. William Sikes to 'make it up' with the relatives of his victim, and, on his remaining obdurate, leaving the two families to fight the matter out." Yet that is what was in some degree done in England until medieval times as regards individual crimes, and it is what is still done as regards national crimes, in so far as the appeal to arbitration is limited and voluntary. The proposals, therefore--though not yet accepted by any