being considered in force until the consent of both parties to its abrogation had been given—or by a distinet avowal on the part of one nation of its intention no longer to abide by it, and to take, therefore, its chances of being made war upon in consequence. Neither of these courses has been pursued by the United States Government in its treaty-breaking with the Indians.
Vattel says, on the dissolution of treaties: “Treaties may be dissolved by mutual consent at the free-will of the contracting powers.”
Grotius says: “If either party violate the League, the other party is freed; because each Article of the League hath the form and virtue of a condition.”
Kent says: “The violation of any one article of a treaty is a violation of the whole treaty. * * *
“It is a principle of universal jurisprudence that a compact cannot be rescinded by one party only, if the other party does not consent to rescind it, and does no act to destroy it. * * *
“To recommence a war by breach of the articles of peace, is deemed much more odious than to provoke a war by some new demand or aggression; for the latter is simply injustice, bat in the former case the party is guilty both of perfidy and injustice.”
It is also said, with unanswerable irrelevancy, by some who seek to defend or palliate the United States Government’s continuous violation of its treaties with the Indians, that it was, in the first place, absurd to make treaties with them at all, to consider them in any sense as treaty-making powers or nations. The logic of this assertion, made as a justification for the breaking of several hundred treaties, concluded at different times during the last hundred years, and broken as fast as concluded, seems almost equal to that of the celebrated defence in the case of the kettle, which was cracked when it was lent, whole when returned, and, in fact, was never borrowed at
