DEITY'S NAME IN TREATIES.

New Zealand Tablet, 5 February 1920, Page 29

DEITY'S NAME IN TREATIES.

It is said that Senator Gore is very much dissatisfied with the treaty because the name of God nowhere appears in it, and proposes to offer an amendment remedying the defect (says the Catholic Bulletin of St. Paul, U.S.A.) The Oklahoma senator is rather late with his objections, since most of the treaties to which we have been and are parties are open to the same objection. In the old days it used to be good form—and it was hardly more than' that —to begin treaties with the words, "In the name of the Most Holy and Indivisible Trinity," and several of our treaties are thus prefaced. This is true of our treaty with Brazil, negotiated in the administration of that stout Unitarian, John Quincy Adam s . And so of the treaty with Chile in 1832 and of that with Costa Rica in 1851. On the other hand, there is no mention of the Deity in our treaty with France in 1778, or in the great treaty of alliance agreed to the same year, or in that with Great Britain m 1782, though the definite treaty of the same year begins with the old formula. The words do not appear in the treaty of Ghent, in 1814, which marked the formal termination of the War of 1812. In the treaty of 1822 with Great Britain we recurred to the old precedent. The Guadalupe-Hidalgo treaty with Mexico in 1848 begins with the words, "In the name of Almighty God," and so of the treaties with Morocco in 1836 and 1865. It was "In the name of God, the clement and the merciful," that we came to an agreement with Persia in 1856. The Deity is. recognised in our treaties with Colombia of 1824 and 1850, and also in our treaties with Portugal in 1840 and Russia in 1824 and 1852. Our treaty with Tunis in 1797 begins with the words, "God is infinite."