A HISTORICAL ARBITRATION

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 21, 21 May 1903, Page 17

A HISTORICAL ARBITRATION

IPL ING'S blackboard, in 'A I)»y'« Work,' told the audience all it knew — which did not amount to much. It also told them a great deal that it did not know. In one respect the I ondon correspondents of some of our New Zealand dailies have ju«fc been playing a similar

part. An exhibition of more or loss historical

curios ia in progress in the great metropolis in 'commemoration of the third centenary of the deatli of Queen Elizabeth. Among the exhibits is a copy of the

historic Propaganda map of 1529, containing the line from the north to the south pole by which, in 1493, Pope Alexander VI defined the spheres of influence of Spain and 1 ortugal, the two foremost powers of the time in commerce, geographical discovery, and colonisation. One correspondent moralises on the incident as a melancholy example of colossal vanity on the part of a Roman Pontiff. Another knocks Pope Alexander on the head with a literary slung-shot for his ineffable presumption in bestowing upon others that of which he had not the right to dispose. Faithful reporting of current incident is by no means what an American humorist-philosopher would term a universal * berth-rite » of foreign newspaper correspondents. Much less can we look to them for strict accuracy in recording events of distant bygone days. There they ought to be. if they are not uniformly, at home. Here they are treading the twilight ways of what is to most, if not all, of them aa unexplored and mysterious land. And they have come back from their brief excursion into those distant regions with a budget of ' travellers' tales ' ; like Kipling's blackboard, they have told some things which they did not know. For Pope Alexander's historic line is not a monument of 'human vanity ' ; neither is it a record of the free gift of the western world, by one who had not the disposal of it, to those who were its first discoverers and colonisers.

Pope Alexander's famous line is the most remarkable application of the principle of international arbitiation of which history bears a record. The good offices of the peacemaker are as sorely needed to-day as at any previous period in the annals of our race ; for—in Lord Palmerston's words—man still remains by nature a fighting and quarrelling animal in just as great a degree as ever. Pope Alexander's pacific action at the close of the fifteenth century contains a useful lesson to the age that seeks release from the imminent and deadly peril of vast rival armaments in the attempted — and by no means conspicuously successful — establishment of a tribunal of international arbitration at the Hague. At the time when the historic line of demarcation was drawn upon the map of the Atlantic, Europe had but ' one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism.' Ihe seamless robe of the unity of Western Christendom had not yet been broken by the great religious revolution of the sixtet nth century. ' The Holy See,' says Dr. Ludwig Pastor in ihe sixth volume of his ' History of the Popes,' ' was still regarded by all Christian princes and nations as the international arbiter, the highest tribunal for the decision of all national rights and important political questions.' When Portuguese navigators, in their quaint, broad-bowed, high -pooped ships, made their series of discoveries along the West Coast of Africa, it was to the Pope — the recognised arbitrator in international boundary disputes — that they naturally turned to obtain security over their trading and colonising rights in the new lands that the skill and daring of their adventurous sailors had opened to European commerce. This dispute between the two great rival powers was peacefully settled by Pope Calixtus 111. and agreed to by Spain at the peace of Alcacevas in 1479.

The discovery of America by Columbus in 1492 opened up enormous possibilities of conflict between Spain and Portugal, then the dominant powers of Europe. King Emmanuel of Portugal claimed the newly-discovered lands by virtue of the treaty of Alcacevas. King Ferdinand of Spain claimed them by righl of prior discovery ; for Columbus's grtat project had been douched with cold water and rejected as impracticable by the Portuguese court, and it was Ferdinand and Isabella of fr-pain who, through the iniuence of a pious monk, (quipped the historic expedition which opened up the western world to Christian civilisation. The relations between the two countries became strained almost to the point of rupture. Both were on the verge of an appeal to the ' jus gladii ' the arbitrament of the naked steel : it was merely a question as to which would 'kindle the dead coals of war.' At this critical juncture King Ferdinand appealed to Eome to bring the dispute to a peaceful endicg. The result was the publication of an award in three memorable documents in May 1493. 'The First,' says Pastor, 'dated 3rd May, confers on Spain an exclusive right of possession over all the islands and countries now discovered by Columbus, and all future discoveries of his, on condition of propagating the

Christian faith in them, and provided such lands are not already occupied by a Christian power. Thus Spain received exactly the same rights and privileges as those which had been bestowed upon Portugal for her colonies on the West Coast of Africa. The second, dated on the same day, described these rights in detail ; while the third, dated 4th May, defined the limits of what we should now call the spheres of influence of Spain and Portugal. The boundary between the two powers was drawn from the nortli to the south pole, 100 Spanish leagues to the west of the most westerly isles of the Azores. All that was east of the line belonged to Portugal, and all that was west of it to Spain.' The treaty of Tordesillas, on June 7, 1494, pushed the line of demarcation 270 leagues further west into the Atlantic. Peace was secured. A boundary question of a peculiarly difficult nature was settled by an act of peaceful arbitration which constitutes one of the glories of the Papacy. Uncritical historians, like the Abingdon courts of long ago, first ' Hang 1 and draw, Then hear the cause by Lidford law.' But the newspapers correspondents who want to spring the trap on * Rome ' must go elsewhere than to Alexander's line for monuments of pitiful human vanity.

It is equally misleading to state that the Pope gave away to Spain that which in no way belonged to him. It is true that the word ' grant ' occurs in the Bull. But, as the - foremost historian of the period remarks, the word 'here signifies nothing more than the confirmation of a title legitimately acquired, and was understood in that sense by contemporary and later theologians, and by the Spaniards themselves. How little,' he adds, 'such grants were looked upon as controlling the liberties of even heathen nations is shown by the fact that, in a similar concession to Portugal in 1497, the same word " grant " is used, with the condition appended of the free consent of the inhabitants. If this formula is wanting in the document of 1493, it is merely because it was understood as included in the title itself. In all these deeds the grant refers to the other European princes, and not to the population of the New World.' Another writer packs the whole matter into the following nutshell : ' These privileges conferred on the monarchs who received them a "i^'nt of priority in regard to the territories discovered by them. As nowadays patents are given for inventions, and copyrights for literary productions and works of art, so in former times a Papal Bull, enforced by the censures of the Church, protected the laborious discoverer from having the hard-won fruits of his toil wrested from him by a stronger hand.'

This is the bank-note age. And the first-fruits sought in its conquests and explorations are trade and money, and ever more money and trade. No so in the days of the Spanish conquistadores. J heir expeditions wera chiefly crusades for the spread of Christianity and civilisation in the newly discovered lands. This was their first care, this the earliest obligation imposed upon them in the Papal awards. And thus in the Papal arbitration of those far-off days peace and charity, Christian faith and civilisation, went hand in hand in the World. And in the lands that owned the sway of Spain the native races have been raised to a high culture, two-thirds of Mexico's population to-day are of Indian stock, the race endures and has a bright future before it, and the red man of Central and South America has been happily preserved from the withering decay and blighting ruin which followed aboriginal tribes wherever they came in contact with powers that were bound by mere ledger principles of colonisation. The last quarteicentury has witnessed a mnrked return, in statesmanship as in labor, to the old Cat! olic principle of arbitration, as opposed to the brute-force resort to fang and claw. But in politics the movement drags along with slow find leaden heels. For contending parties will not trust to any groat extent kings, kaisers, czars, presidents, supreme-court judges, and such-hke arbitrators to divest themselves of a leaning to sectional interests or to slongh the bkin of their national prejudices and susceptibilities Hence an international tribunal constituted like that of The Hague must ever remain, at best, a very qualified success. Lffective international arbitration requires a universal system. And, thus far, the Papacy alone embodies the conditions of

success Leo Xirr. has arbitrated, with the happiest results, between Germany and Spain and other disputants. *or the purposes of international arbitration the position of the Roman Pontiff is unique. His uprightness and independence are unquestioned by the nations. To him rank or power is nothing. Seated on a throne from which no power can move him, he overlooks the kings and emperors and presidents who put their trust in quick-firers and loaded magazine-rifles. He, of all others, can afford to take a comprehensive survey of any dispute between State and btate and decide, without disturbance from any secondary cause, what is the course that makes for justice. He is still— though in a somewhat different way from the olden time— the natural Grand Referee of the nations