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270 ] Notes on Sources
Fox, in 1787, indignantly asked the government, "whether England were no longer
in the situation to hold the balance of power in Europe and to be looked up to as
the protector of her liberties?" He claimed it as England's due to be accepted as the
guarantor of the balance-of-power system in Europe. And Burke, four years later,
described that system as the "public law of Europe" supposedly in force for two
centuries. Such rhetorical identifications of England's national policy with the
European system of the balance of power would naturally make it more difficult
for Americans to distinguish between two conceptions which were equally ob-
noxious to them.
2.
Balance of power as a historical law. Another meaning of the balance of
power is based directly on the nature of power units. It has been first stated in
modern thought by Hume. His achievement was lost again during the almost to-
tal eclipse of political thought which followed the Industrial Revolution. Hume
recognized the political nature of the phenomenon and underlined its indepen-
dence of psychological and moral facts. It went into effect irrespective of the mo-
tives of the actors, as long as they behaved as the embodiments of power. Experi-
ence showed, wrote Hume, that whether "jealous emulation or cautious politic"
was their motive, "the effects were alike." F. Schuman says: "If one postulates a
States System composed of three units, A, B, and C, it is obvious that an increase
in the power of any one of them involves a decrease in the power of the other two."
He infers that the balance of power "in its elementary form is designed to main-
tain the independence of each unit of the State System." He might well have gener-
alized the postulate so as to make it applicable to all kinds of power units, whether
in organized political systems or not. That is, in effect, the way the balance of
power appears in the sociology of history. Toynbee in his
Study of History men-
tions the fact that power units are apt to expand on the periphery of power groups
rather than at the center where pressure is greatest. The United States, Russia, and
Japan as well as the British Dominions expanded prodigiously at a time when even
minor territorial changes were practically impossible of attainment in Western
and Central Europe. A historical law of a similar type is adduced by Pirenne. He
notes that in comparatively unorganized communities a core of resistance to ex-
ternal pressure is usually formed in the regions farthest removed from the power-
ful neighbor. Instances are the formation of the Frankish kingdom by Pepin of
Heristal in the distant north, or the emergence of Eastern Prussia as the orga-
nizing center of the Germanies. Another law of this kind might be seen in the Bel-
gian De Greef's law of the buffer state which appears to have influenced Frederick
Turner's school and led to the concept of the American West as "a wandering Bel-
gium." These concepts of the balance and imbalance of power are independent of
moral, legal, or psychological notions. Their only reference is to power. This re-
veals their political nature.
3.
Balance of power as a principle and system. Once a human interest is recog-
nized as legitimate, a principle of conduct is derived from it. Since 1648, the inter-
est of the European states in the status quo as set up by the Treaties of Miinster and