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International Law. A Treatise. Volume 1 (of 2)

Note 40 — Chapter II · DEVELOPMENT AND SCIENCE OF THE LAW OF NATIONS

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See Balch, "Le Nouveau Cynée de Émeric Crucée" (1909); Darby, "International Arbitration" (4th ed. 1904), pp. 22-33; Vesnitch, "Deux Précurseurs Français du Pacifism, etc." (1911), pp. 29-54.

The schemes enumerated in the text are those which were advanced before the appearance of Grotius's work "De Jure Belli ac Pacis" (1625). The numerous plans which made their appearance afterwards—that of the Landgrave of Hesse-Rheinfels, 1666; of Charles, Duke of Lorraine, 1688; of William Penn, 1693; of John Bellers, 1710; of the Abbé de St. Pierre (1658-1743); of Kant, 1795; and of others—are all discussed in Schücking, "Die Organisation der Welt" (1909), and Darby, "International Arbitration" (4th ed. 1904). They are as utopian as the pre-Grotian schemes, but they are nevertheless of great importance. They preached again and again the gospel of the organisation of the Family of Nations, and although their ideal has not been and can never be realised, they drew the attention of public opinion to the fact that the international relations of States should not be based on arbitrariness and anarchy, but on rules of law and comity. And thereby they have indirectly influenced the gradual growth of rules of law for these international relations.

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