equity whence it comes to pass that they, while they are good authorities for making new laws, are bad interpreters of laws already made. They are to be listened to with most attention when they give their testimony to such customs as make the law of nations in our time.

55. The masters of the third class, who include themselves within the limits of the Roman law and either never or in a very slight degree travel into that common or natural law, have scarcely any use in reference to our argument. They join the subtilty of the Schoolmen with a knowledge of the laws and canons, so that two of them, Spaniards, Covarruvias and Vasquius, did not abstain from the controversies even of peoples and of kings, the latter very freely, the former more modestly, and not without showing some exactness of judgment. The French have introduced the practice of connecting history more with the study of the law, among whom Bodin and Hotoman have a great name, the former in the general scheme of his work, the latter in questions scattered through the progress of his. Both the opinions and the arguments of these writers will often require our consideration, and will supply us with materials for truths.

56. In the whole course of my work I have had in view these things especially, to make my definitions and reasons as clear as I could, to arrange in due order the matters I had to treat of, and to distinguish clearly things which were really different, though they seemed identical.

57. I have refrained from discussing points which belong to another subject, as the utility of this or that course; for these belong to a special art,— namely, the art political, which Aristotle rightly treats as a separate subject, mixing with it nothing of any other kind, thus differing from Bodinus, in whom this art is confounded with jus in our sense. In some cases, however, I have made mention of the utility of acts, but collaterally only, and in order to distinguish that question the more plainly from the question of right.

58. The reader will do me injustice if he judges me to have written with a regard to any controversies of our own time, either such as already exist or such as can be foreseen as likely to arise. I profess, in all sincerity, that, as mathematicians consider their figures as abstracted from body, so did I, in treating of rights, abstract my mind from every particular fact. 59. As to the style, I was unwilling, by adding prolixity of

language to the multitude of the matters treated of, to weary the reader whom I wished to benefit. I, therefore, have followed a concise and didactic mode of treatment, that they who have to manage public affairs may see, at one view, the kinds of controversies which are wont to arise and the principles by which they are to be decided. This being known, it will be easy to accommodate their own discourses to the subject and to expand the discussion as much as they please.

60. I have adduced the words of the authors themselves, when they were such as either carried with them authority or exhibited especial elegance, and this I have sometimes done in Greek authors; but mostly, when either the quotation was short or one of which I despaired of imitating the grace in a Latin translation, such a translation I have, however, added in every instance for the benefit of those who find the Greek difficult.

61. I beg all readers into whose hands my work may come to take the same liberty in judging of my opinions and expressions which I have taken with regard to those of others. They cannot be more ready to admonish me when I am in error than I shall be to attend to their admonition.

And now, if I have said anything which is at variance with sound piety, with good morals, with holy Scripture, with the unity of the Christian Church, with truth in any form, let that be as unsaid.

THE DEBT DUE TO HUGO GROTIUS.

Extracts from the address by Hon. Andrew D. White, delivered on the Fourth of July, 1899, at Delft, Holland, at the celebration given by the American Commission in honor of Grotius, at which, in presence of the members of the Peace Conference, he laid a silver wreath upon the tomb of Grotius, in accordance with instructions from the President, and in behalf of the people of the United States.

The Commission of the United States comes here this day to acknowledge, in behalf of our country, one of its many great debts to the Netherlands. This debt is that which, in common with the whole world, we owe to one of whom all civilized lands are justly proud,― the poet, the scholar, the historian, the statesman, the diplomatist, the jurist, the author of the treatise De Jure Belli ac Pacis. Of all works not claiming divine inspiration, that book, by a man proscribed and hated both for his politics and his religion, has proved the greatest blessing to humanity. More than any other it has prevented unmerited suffering, misery, and sorrow. More than any other it has promoted the blessings of peace and diminished the hor

rors of war.

His name has become too great to be celebrated by his native country alone: it can only be fitly celebrated in the presence of representatives from the whole world. For the first time in human history there are now assembled delegates with a common purpose from all the nations; and they are fully represented here. I feel empowered to speak words of gratitude not only from my own country, but from each of these. I feel that my own country, though one of the youngest in the great sisterhood of nations, utters at this shrine to-day not only her great gratitude, but that of every part of Europe, of all the great powers of Asia, of the sister republics of North and South America. From nations now civilized, but which Grotius knew only as barbarous, from nations which in his time were yet unborn, from every land where there are men who admire genius, who reverence virtue, who respect patriotism, who are grateful to those who have given their lives to toil, hardship, disappointment, and sacrifice for humanity,- from all these come thanks and greetings heartily mingled with our own.

This is the ancient and honored city of Delft. From its Haven, not distant, sailed the "Mayflower," bearing the Pilgrim Fathers who, in a time of obstinate and bitter persecution, brought to the American Continent the germs of that toleration which had been especially developed among them during their stay in the Netherlands, and of which Grotius was an apostle. In this town Grotius was born, in this temple he worshipped. These pavements he trod when a child. Often was this place revisited by him in his boyhood; at his death his mortal body was placed in this hallowed ground. In the vast debt which all nations owe to Grotius, the United States acknowledges its part gladly. Perhaps in no other country has this thought penetrated more deeply and influenced more strongly the great mass of the people. In all parts of our country the law of nations is especially studied by large bodies of young men in colleges and universities, studied not professionally merely, but from the point of view of men eager to understand the fundamental principles of international rights and duties. The work of our compatriots, Wheaton, Kent, Field, Woolsey, Dana, Lawrence, and others, in developing more and more the ideas to which Grotius first gave life and strength, show that our country has not cultivated in vain this great field which Grotius opened.

An American jurist naturally sees, first, the relations of Grotius to the writers who preceded him. He sees other and lesser mountain peaks of thought emerging from the clouds of earlier history; and he acknowledges a debt to such men as Isidore of Seville, Suarez, Ayala, and Gentiles. But, when all this is acknowledged, he clearly sees Grotius, while rising from among these men, grandly towering above them. He sees in Grotius the first man who brought the main principles of those earlier thinkers to bear upon modern times,-increasing them from his own creative mind, strengthening them from the vast stores of his knowledge, enriching them from his imagination, glorifying them with his genius. His great mind brooded over that earlier chaos of opinion; and from his heart and brain, more than from those of any other, came a revelation to the modern world of new and better paths toward mercy and peace. But his agency was more than that. His coming was like the rising of the sun out of the primeval abyss: his work was both creative and illuminative. We may reverently insist that, in the domain of International Law, Grotius said: "Let there be light," and there was light. I need hardly remind you that

it was mainly unheeded at first. Yet we see that the great light streaming from his heart and mind continued to shine, that it developed and fructified human thought, that it warmed into life new and glorious growths of right reason as to international relations; and we recognize the fact that, from his day to ours, the progress of reason in theory, and of mercy in practice, has been constant on both sides of the Atlantic.

My honored colleagues of the Peace Conference, the germ of this work in which we are all so earnestly engaged lies in a single sentence of Grotius's great book. Others, indeed, had proposed plans for the peaceful settlement of differences between nations, and the world remembers them with honor. To all of them, from Henry IV. and Kant and St. Pierre and Penn and Bentham, down to the humblest writer in favor of peace, we may well feel grateful; but the germ of arbitration was planted in modern thought when Grotius, urging arbitration and mediation as preventing war, wrote these solemn words in the De Jure Belli ac Pacis: "Maxime autem christiani reges et civitates tenentur hanc inire viam ad arma vitanda." *

From this tomb of Grotius I seem to hear a voice which says to us as the delegates of the nations: "Go on with your mighty work. Avoid, as you would avoid the germs of pestilence, those exhalations of international hatred which take shape in monstrous fallacies and morbid fictions regarding alleged antagonistic interests. Guard well the treasures of civilization with which each of you is intrusted; but bear in mind that you hold a mandate from humanity."

These are the words which an American seems to hear issuing from this shrine to-day; and I seem also to hear from it a prophecy. I seem to hear Grotius saying to us: "Fear neither opposition nor detraction. As my own book, which grew out of the Eighty Years' and the Thirty Years' War, contained the germ from which your great Conference has grown, so your work, which is demanded by a world bent almost to breaking under the weight of ever-increasing armaments, shall be a germ from which future Conferences shall evolve plans ever fuller, better, and nobler."

I know of nothing which better marks the high moral tone of modern history than that the sublime code of international law should have come into form and established its authority over the civilized world within so short a time; for it is now scarcely more than two hundred years since it took its being. In the most polished and splendid age of Greece and Grecian philosophy, piracy was a lawful and even honorable occupation. Man upon the waters and the shark in them had a common right to feed on what they could subdue. Nations were considered as natural enemies; and for one people to plunder another by force of arms and to lay their country waste was no moral wrong, any more than for the tiger to devour the lamb. In war no terms of humanity were binding, and the passions of the parties were mitigated by no constraints of law. Captives were butchered or sold into slavery at pleasure. In time of peace it was not without great hazard that the citizen of one country could venture into another for purposes of travel or business.

Go now with me to a little French town near Paris, and there you shall see in his quiet retreat a silent, thoughtful man, bending his ample

*“Especially are Christian kings and states bound to try this way of avoiding war."

shoulders and more ample countenance over his table, and recording with a visible earnestness something that deeply concerns the world. This man has no office or authority to make him a lawgiver other than what belongs to the gifts of his own person,- -a brilliant mind enriched by the amplest stores of learning and nerved by the highest principles of moral justice and Christian piety. He is, in fact, a fugitive and an exile from his country, separated from all power but the simple power of truth and reason. But he dares, you will see, to write De Jure Belli et Pacis. This is the man who was smuggled out of prison and out of his country, by his wife, to give law to all the nations of mankind in all future ages. On the sea and on the land, on all seas and all lands, he shall bear sway. In the silence of his study he stretches forth the sceptre of law over all potentates and peoples, defines their rights, arranges their intercourse, gives them terms of war and terms of peace, which they may not disregard. In the days of battle, too, when kings and kingdoms are thundering in the shock of arms, this same Hugo Grotius shall be there in all the turmoil of passion and the smoke of ruin, as a presiding throne of law commanding above the commanders, and, when the day is cast, prescribing to the victor terms of mercy and justice, which not even his hatred of the foe nor the exultation of the hour may dare to transcend.- From Horace Bushnell's Address on The Growth of Law.

Hugo Grotius was born at Delft, in Holland, in 1583, and died in 1645. He was one of the greatest scholars of his time,- or, indeed, of any time, and this in almost every field of the learning of the age. At the age of fifteen he was engaged in editing classical texts; and he wrote three dramas in Latin. Taking the degree of doctor of laws at Leyden, he entered upon practice as an advocate, and soon became advocate-general of the fisc for the provinces of Holland and Zeeland. He wrote largely on theological subjects. In 1603 the United Provinces appointed him the official historian of their struggle with Spain. In 1613 he was one of a deputation to the English court to adjust certain differences between the two young maritime powers. He was soon plunged into the theological controversies in Hol land; and he was condemned to imprisonment at the same time that Barnevelt was condemned to death. Escaping from prison through his wife's ingenuity, he took refuge in France, and there, in exile and poverty, composed his great work, De Jure Belli et Pacis, the principles and plan of which had been conceived as early as 16c4, when he was a youth of twenty-one. It was published in 1625. After fruitless attempts to re-establish himself in Holland, he accepted service under the crown of Sweden as ambassador to the court of France. He died at Rostock in 1645 on a return journey from Stockholm.

There is no adequate book upon Grotius and his work in English, although there are important discussions by Hallam and many others. William Evats published an English translation of De Jure Belli et Pacis in 1682; and in 1738 another translation was published, anonymously, including the valuable notes of Barbeyrac. In 1853 William Whewell published a critical edition in three volumes, giving the full Latin text accompanied by an abridged translation; and this is emphatically the work to be commended to the English student of Grotius. The introduction to Grotius's work given in the present leaflet, stating the fundamental principles of the work, is Whewell's translation.

PUBLISHED BY

THE DIRECTORS OF THE OLD SOUTH WORK, Old South Meeting-house, Boston, Mass.