If there is anywhere a safe negative conclusion, it is that an institution grown mischievous by obsolescence need not be replaced by a substitute.
Instances of such mischievous institutional arrangements, obsolete or in process of obsolescence, would be, e.g., the French monarchy of the ancient regime, the Spanish Inquisition, the British corn laws and the "rotten boroughs," the Barbary pirates, the Turkish rule in Armenia, the British crown, the German Imperial Dynasty, the European balance of powers, the Monroe Doctrine.

In some sense, at least in the sense and degree implied in their selective survival, these various articles of institutional furniture, and many like them, have once presumably been suitable to some end, in the days of their origin and vigorous growth; and they have at least in some passable fashion met some felt want; but if they ever had a place and use in the human economy they have in time grown imbecile and mischievous by force of changing circumstances, and the question is not how to replace them with something else to the same purpose after their purpose is outworn.

A man who loses a wart off the end of his nose does not apply to the _Ersatz_ bureau for a convenient substitute.
Now, a large proportion, perhaps even substantially the whole, of the existing apparatus of international rights, pretensions, discriminations, covenants and provisos, visibly fall in that class, in so far as concerns their material serviceability to the nation at large, and particularly as regards any other than a warlike purpose, offensive or defensive.

Of course, the national dignity and diplomatic punctilio, and the like adjuncts and instrumentalities of the national honour, all have their prestige value; and they are not likely to be given up out of hand.

In point of fact, however solicitous for a lasting peace these patriotically-minded modern peoples may be, it is doubtful if they could be persuaded to give up any appreciable share of these appurtenances of national jealousy even when their retention implies an imminent breach of the peace.