Chapter XIV · SIR H. MAINE ON THE LAW OF NATIONS.

Dr Newman in his inaugural discourse as Rector of the Dublin University (“On the Place held by the Faculty of Arts in the University Course”), which I think never received the attention it deserved, has with a few masterly touches sketched the history of Western civilisation, which in its main lines may be considered to run into, and be found identical with, the tradition I am now regarding—with this difference, that Dr Newman regards Western civilisation in its progressive, whereas we are concerned with its traditive aspects. Dr Newman says: “I take things as I find them on the surface of history, and am but classing phenomena (I have nothing to do with ethnology). Looking, then, at the countries which surround the Mediterranean seas as a whole, I see them from time immemorial the seat of an association of intellect and mind such as to deserve to be called the intellect and mind of human kind. Starting and advancing from certain centres, till their respective influences intersect and conflict, and then at length intermingle and combine, a common thought has been generated, and a common civilisation defined and established. Egypt is one starting-point, Syria another, Greece a third, Italy a fourth (of which, as time goes on, the Roman empire is the maturity, and the most intelligible expression), North Africa a fifth, ... and this association or social commonwealth, with whatever reverses, changes, and momentary dissolutions, continues down to this day.... I call it, then, pre-eminently and emphatically Human Society, and its Intellect the Human Mind, and its decisions the sense of mankind and its humanised and cultivated states—civilisation in the abstract; and the territory on which it lies the orbis terrarum, or the world. For unless the illustration be fanciful, the object which I am contemplating is like the impression of a seal upon the wax; which rounds off and gives form to the greater portion of the soft material, and presents something definite to the eye, and pre-occupies the space against any second figure, so that we overlook and leave out of our thoughts the jagged outline or unmeaning lumps outside of it, intent upon the harmonious circle which fills the imagination within it.” (“There are indeed great outlying portions of mankind, ... still they are outlying portions and nothing else, fragmentary, &c., protesting and revolting against the grand central formation of which I am speaking, but not uniting with each other into a second whole.”) The same orbis terrarum, which has been the seat of civilisation, has been the seat of the Christian polity. “The natural and the divine associations are not indeed exactly coincident, nor ever have been.” “Christianity has fallen partly outside civilisation and civilisation partly outside Christianity; but on the whole the two have occupied one and the same orbis terrarum.... The centre of the tradition is transferred from Greece to Rome.... At length the temple of Jerusalem is rooted up by the armies of Titus, and the effete schools of Athens are stifled by the edict of Justinian.... The grace stored in Jerusalem, and the gifts which radiate from Athens, are made over and concentrated in Rome. This is true as a matter of history. Rome has inherited both sacred and profane learning; she has perpetuated and dispensed the traditions of Moses and David in the supernatural order, and of Homer and Aristotle in the natural. To separate these distinct teachings, human and divine, is to retrograde; it is to rebuild the Jewish temple and to plant anew the groves of Academus; ... and though these were times when the old traditions seemed to be on the point of failing, somehow it has happened that they have never failed.... Even in the lowest state of learning the tradition was kept up;” ... and this experience of the past we may apply to the present, “for as there was a movement against the classics in the Middle Ages, so has there been now.... Civilisation has its common principles, and views, and teaching, and especially its books, which have more or less been given from the earliest times, and are in fact in equal esteem and respect, in equal use, now, as they were when they were received in the beginning. In a word, the classics and the subjects of thought and study to which they give rise, or to use the term most to our present purpose, the arts have ever on the whole been the instruments which the civilised orbis terrarum has adopted; just as inspired works, and the lives of saints, and the articles of faith and the Catechism have been the instrument of education in the case of Christianity. And this consideration you see, gentlemen (to drop down at once upon the subject of discussion which has brought us together), invests the opening of the schools in arts[282] with a solemnity and moment of a peculiar kind, for we are but engaged in reiterating an old tradition, and carrying on those august methods of enlarging the mind, and cultivating the intellect and ripening the feelings, in which the process of civilisation has ever consisted.”—Dr Newman on Civilisation.

Before examining Sir H. Maine’s view on the Law of Nature and the Law of Nations, it will perhaps facilitate the inquiry if I gather up, out of the evidence which has accumulated in the previous chapters, such conclusions as will show how we stand in regard to Sir H. Maine’s general theory.

I. Accepting Sir H. Maine’s dictum that “the family and not the individual was the unit of ancient society;” and, in a certain sense, the further position, that it is difficult “to know where to stop, to say of what races of men it is not allowable to lay down that the society in which they are united was originally organised on the patriarchal model,”[283] I venture to maintain against Sir H. Maine the continuance of family life in a quasi state of nature, before either the development or creation of the State.

II. But in maintaining that there was a period in human history anterior to the formation of governments, I am far from asserting—on the contrary, I distinctly repudiate the notion—that there was ever an ante-social state. Society is complete within the family circle;[284] and society in any wider organisation is only the requirement and consequence of imperfection and corruption within the family, or of collision between families. Undoubtedly, there were instances in which the State grew up imperceptibly out of the extension of the family into the patriarchal system;[285] but these instances will probably have occurred among the families who remained stationary, whether by right of seniority, or by virtue of superior power, at the central point from which the Dispersion commenced. So long, however, as family government sufficed, there would have been nothing but the family; but when mankind increased, and actual relationship died out, disputes must have multiplied and become complicated—not only between individuals but between families; hence the necessity of State government—hence the necessity of an appeal on the part of individuals from the family to some supreme authority. This would be the first mode in which governments would have arisen among those who came under the action of the Dispersion. But even here—assuming the family groups to have descended from the same progenitor—we see first the family, first property, then the State. The second mode would be where several families, differing in language and race, came together and formed States.[286] Although they would have come together on unequal and varying conditions, yet they would necessarily have come together on some conditions, and for the mutual protection of their rights, their property, and their personal security. In all such cases there would have been something of a recognition and adjustment of rights, something of the nature of a compact more or less explicit, but much more formal and explicit in this mode than in the former. In any case, the end and intention of the formation of States and governments would have been the security of rights, as Cicero tells us:—“Hanc enim ob causam maxime ut sua tuerentur respublicæ civitatesque constitutæ sunt. Nam etsi, duce naturæ, congregabantur homines, tamen spe custodiæ rerum suarum urbium præsidia quærebant.” But does not Sir H. Maine himself supply similar testimony? Referring to the notions of “primitive antiquity,” he says:—

“How little the notion of injury to the community had to do with the earliest interferences of the State, through its tribunals, is shown by the curious circumstance, that in the original administration of justice the proceedings were a close imitation of the series of acts which were likely to be gone through in private life by persons who were disputing, but who afterwards suffered their quarrel to be appeased. The magistrate carefully simulated the demeanour of a private arbitrator, casually called in.”—Chap. x. 374; vide also pp. 375, 376.

III. We come to the conclusion that the collation of the sentiments and maxims, as preserved in tradition by the families who had coalesced into States, would have formed the basis of the morality and of the jurisprudence of the States so constituted; and that in every case of oppression appeal would have been made to their pre-existing and natural rights.

IV. That whilst certain traditions—the tradition of religion, for instance—would have been perhaps more faithfully preserved in the patriarchal governments of the East, and we find evidence of this in the monotheism of the Persians; on the other hand, if there was a tradition of a law common to all nations, it would be more likely to be preserved in States formed by the amalgamation of many distinct families and races.[287]

V. That such was the origin and history of the Greeks and Romans—the two nations which formed the nucleus of the orbis terrarum within which, as Dr Newman tells us (supra, p. 339), is found the centre of Christianity and the seat of civilisation.

VI. That, whether the Roman law goes back in tradition, or, as Sir H. Maine will say, in fiction only—the fact remains, that it does so trace itself back to remote antiquity, and that the Roman law subsists to this day as the foundation of most of the codes of Europe, and has extended its ramifications to all; and that outside the circle of its influence other nations equally retrace their codes to remote antiquity, and, as a rule, to revelations made to their earliest founder. That nothing is more striking in ancient times than the manner in which their codes, which are the embodiment of laws previously in tradition, were held as a sacred deposit. This was the reason why the laws of the Medes and the Persians might not be altered; and that, according to the laws of the Visigoths, no judge would decide in any suit unless he found in their code a law applicable to the case; and perhaps we may find trace of it in the phrases familiar to us—nolumus leges Angliæ mutari, stare super vias antiquas, and so, too, in the ita scriptum est, which, as Sir H. Maine says (p. 31), silenced all objections in the Middle Ages.

VII. That the fact of a tradition of “a law common to all nations” and of “a lost code of nature,” is in accordance with the historical and scriptural evidence which would render such a tradition probable.

Sir H. Maine, with whose argument I now propose to deal, is, as far as I am aware, the most conspicuous opponent of the common belief in the “Law of Nations;” and yet it appears to me that we shall find testimony to the tradition even in the very terms in which he repudiates it. I must at least consider this a recognition on his part of the strength and inveteracy of the opposite view. In the following extracts I shall suppose my readers fresh from the perusal of Sir H. Maine.

Sir H. Maine says (“Ancient Law,” pp. 7, 8), that the further “we penetrate into the primitive history of thought, the further we find ourselves from the conception of law of any sort.” And again, “It is certain that in the infancy of mankind, no sort of legislation, not even a distinct author of law, is contemplated or conceived of.” Now if Sir H. Maine had said nothing more, I should have felt bound to take this assertion upon his authority; but Sir H. Maine adds:—“Law has scarcely reached the footing of custom; it is rather a habit. It is, to use a French phrase, ‘in the air,’” [Is not Sir H. Maine here hunting for a phrase which shall not imply that it is in tradition?] “The only authoritative statement of right and wrong is a judicial sentence after the facts, not one presupposing a law which has been violated, but one which is breathed for the first time by a higher power into the judge’s mind at the moment of adjudication.”

This passage may be adduced in evidence of the tradition of Noah and his heavenly-inspired judgments, but apparently it is in contradiction to the view of a law of nature, since it supposes the judge to decide through direct inspiration, or in the way of stet pro ratione voluntas, and not with reference to a “law which has been violated.” Now, Sir H. Maine comes to his conclusion upon the ground of the “Themistes” of the Homeric poems. “The earliest notions connected with the conception ... of a law or rule of life are those contained in the Homeric words ‘Themis’ and ‘Themistes’” (p. 4). “The literature of the heroic ages discloses to us law in the germ under the ‘Themistes,’ and a little more developed in the conception of ‘Dike’” (p. 9).If this were so, law according to the conception of “Themistes” and law according to the conception of “Dike” were never contemporaneous, but necessarily successive, or rather progressive; but at page 8 we read, “The Homeric word for a custom in the embryo is sometimes ‘Themis’ in the singular, more often ‘Dike,’ the meaning of which visibly fluctuates between ‘a judgment’ and a ‘custom’ or ‘usage.’ ‘Νομος,’ a law ... does not occur in Homer.”[288]

Well, allow that there need not be as yet the metaphysical conception of law, or law as a positive enactment, embracing indifferently a variety of cases. Eliminate the word “law.” Instead of the phrase “law of nature” substitute “natural justice,” and “the sense of right and wrong;” and it suffices that we detect “usage,” “custom,” right; for even if it were conceded that right is a post-Homeric rendering of δικη, yet “custom” and “usage” in their definition would have been in recognition of pre-existing right. This becomes more clear if we consider the alternative opinion. Sir H. Maine says that “under the patriarchal despotism,” “every man was practically controlled in all his actions by a regimen not of law but of caprice” (p. 8). The judgments, then, of the patriarchal times were mere “caprice,” and rights were defined without reference to any sense of justice. From “Themistes” of caprice they would proceed to legislation upon “caprice,” and, ultimately, to codes which would represent nothing but a digest of the precedents of “caprice.” It is difficult, then, to understand in what way and at what point the sense of justice, the conception of “dike,” originated, and most of all, if this is true, it is difficult to account for the “Themistes” being regarded as akin to inspiration, as well as for the veneration with which, we have the authority of Sir H. Maine (vide infra) for saying, that Archaic law was held, and, moreover, for the persistent tendency to revert to the past.[289]

If, however, we follow Sir H. Maine in his illustration taken from English law, we shall find ourselves reinstated in our original convictions. Sir H. Maine says (p. 8), “An Englishman should be better able than a foreigner to appreciate the historical fact that the ‘Themistes’ preceded any conception of law;” but at page 32, he says, “Probably it will be found that originally it was the received doctrine that somewhere in nubibus [Q. “in the air”], or in gremio magistratuum there existed a complete, coherent, symmetrical body of English law, of an amplitude sufficient to furnish principles which would apply to any conceivable combination of circumstances.” If, then, we take the analogy of the English law, we come also to the identical conclusion for which I contend—viz. that the “Themistes,” whether they partook of the character of commands or of judgments, were still in recognition of a “law which was violated.”

If the “Themistes” had no reference to a law which was violated; if they were mere caprice, I have already asked, whence arose the regard for ancient law among the nations of antiquity? and I may add, how came it about that their ideas of justice were inseparably connected with the notions of morality? Does Sir H. Maine deny either of these facts? On the contrary, he affirms them:—

“Quite enough, too, remains of these collections [‘ancient codes’] both in the East and in the West, to show that they mingled up religious, civil, and merely moral ordinances without any regard to differences in their essential character; and this is consistent with all we know of ancient thought from other sources, the severance of law from morality, and of religion from law, belonging very distinctly to the later stages of mental progress” (p. 16).

And at p. 121, “Much of the old law which has descended to us, was preserved merely because it was old. Those who practised and obeyed it did not pretend to understand it; and in some cases they even ridiculed and despised it. They offered no account of it except that it had come down to them from their ancestors.”

Does Sir H. Maine dispute the persistency of tradition in general? No. At p. 117, vide supra, I have quoted a passage in which he explicitly maintains it.

I must observe further, that in the very passages in which he repudiates the notion of a “law of nature,” two things irresistibly transpire—(1.) That there was a persistent tradition in ancient society of a law of nature; (2.) That this tradition was invariably associated with the golden age, e.g.:—

“After nature had become a household word in the mouths of the Romans, the belief gradually prevailed among the Roman lawyers,[290] that the old jus gentium was in fact the lost code of nature, and that the prætors, in framing an edictal jurisprudence on the principles of the jus gentium, were gradually restoring a type from which law had only departed to deteriorate” (p. 56). “But then, while the jus gentium had little or no antecedent credit at Rome, the theory of a law of nature came in surrounded with all the prestige of philosophical authority, and invested with the charms of association with an elder and more blissful condition of the race” (p. 60). “The law of nature confused the past and the present. Logically it implied a state of nature which had once been regulated by natural law; yet the juris-consults do not speak clearly or confidently of the existence of such a state, which indeed is little noticed by the ancients except when it finds a poetical expression in the fancy of a golden age” (p. 73). “Yet it was not on account of their simplicity and harmony that these finer elements were primarily respected, but on the score of their descent from the aboriginal reign of nature” (p. 74). “Yet it is a remarkable proof of the essentially historical character of the conception that, after all the efforts which have been made to evolve the code of nature from the necessary characteristics of the natural state [i.e. à priori] so much of the result is just what it would have been if men had been satisfied to adopt the dicta of the Roman lawyers without questioning or reviewing them. Setting aside the conventional or treaty law of nations, it is surprising how large a part of the system is made up of pure Roman law” (p. 97). [Because the Roman law was in the main stream of the tradition.][291]

I now come to what I may call the exposition of Sir H. Maine’s argument proper, and, although I feel the full difficulty of doing this, in the case of so subtle and able a writer, I shall endeavour to condense into as short a space as possible whatever is material to Sir H. Maine’s position. Sir H. Maine says (p. 46):—

“I shall attempt to discover the origin of these famous phrases, Law of Nations, Law of Nature, Equity, and to determine how the conceptions which they indicate are related to one another. The most superficial student of Roman history must be struck by the extraordinary degree in which the fortunes of the Republic were affected by the presence of foreigners under different names on her soil. The causes of this immigration are discernible enough at a later period, for we can readily understand why men of all races should flock to the Mistress of the World; but the same phenomenon of a large population of foreigners and denizens meets us in the very earliest records of the Roman State—no doubt the instability of society in ancient Italy.... It is probable, however, that this explanation is imperfect, and it could only be completed by taking into account those active commercial relations, which though they are little reflected in the military traditions of the Republic, Rome appears certainly to have had with Carthage and with the interior of Italy in pre-historic times.... In the early Roman Republic the principle of the absolute exclusion of foreigners pervaded the civil law no less than the constitution. The alien or denizen could have no share in any institution supposed to be coeval with the State. He could not have the benefit of the Quiritarian Law, &c.... Still neither the interest nor the security of Rome permitted him to be quite outlawed.... Moreover, at no period of Roman history was foreign trade entirely neglected. It was therefore probably half as a measure of policy and half in furtherance of commerce that jurisdiction was first assumed in disputes to which the parties were either foreigners or a native and a foreigner. The assumption of such a jurisdiction brought with it the immediate necessity of discovering some principles on which the questions to be adjudicated upon could be settled.... They refused, as I have said before, to decide the new cases by pure Roman civil law. They refused, no doubt, because it seemed to involve some kind of degradation, to apply the law of the particular State from which the foreign litigant came. The expedient to which they resorted was that of selecting the rules of law common to Rome, and to the different Italian communities in which the immigrants were born. In other words, they set themselves to form a system answering to the primitive and literal meaning of jus gentium, i.e. law common to all nations. Jus gentium was, in fact, the sum of the common ingredients in the customs of the old Italian tribes, for they were all the nations whom the Romans had the means of observing, and who sent successive swarms of immigrants to the Roman soil.... The jus gentium was, accordingly, a collection of rules and principles determined by observation to be common to the institutions which prevailed among the various Italian tribes. The circumstances of the origin of the jus gentium was probably a sufficient safeguard against the mistake of supposing that the Roman lawyers had any special respect for it. It was the fruit in part of their disdain of all foreign law, and in part of their disinclination to give the foreigner the advantage of their own indigenous jus civile. It is true that we, at the present day, should probably take a very different view of the jus gentium.... We should have a sort of respect for rules and principles so universal.... But the results to which modern ideas conduct the observer, are, as nearly as possible, the reverse of those which were instinctively brought home to the primitive Roman. What we respect or admire, he disliked or regarded with jealous dread. The points of jurisprudence which he looked upon with affection were exactly those which a modern theorist leaves out of consideration as accidental and transitory—the solemn gestures ... the endless formalities, &c.... The jus gentium was merely a system forced on his attention by a political necessity. He loved it as little as he loved the foreigners from whose institutions it was derived, and for whose benefit it was intended. A complete revolution in his ideas was required before it could challenge his respect.... This crisis arrived when the Greek theory of a law of nature was applied to the practical Roman administration of the law common to all nations.”—Sir H. Maine’s Ancient Law, 46–52.

Sir H. Maine’s theory may be summarised as an attempt to identify the “Law of Nations” with the history of Roman law, leaving out of sight the tradition of it which may be traced in other nations. Now, although there is nothing, as Napoleon used to say, which one nation hates more than another nation—and this certainly holds true of the Roman people—yet it is scarcely possible to point to any which, from the circumstances of its origin, would have been less predisposed to look in the abstract with disdain upon the laws and customs of surrounding nations, however much they may have hated them as concrete nationalities; and least of all would they have had this feeling for the institutions of the Latins, a people whom, from their peculiar connection with themselves, they would principally have had as residents among them. Sir H. Maine seems unable to shake off the prepossession, which the analysis of Roman law, to the exclusion of other evidence, would tend to lead him, viz. that the Romans were a homogeneous people, and we have just heard him speak of their “own indigenous jus civile.” This indigenous jus civile was compounded, as was their nationality, of many miscellaneous elements. Whatever truth may be attached to the legends as to the foundation of Rome, and they are various, it cannot well be disputed that there was a strong trace of Sabine[292] and Etruscan,[293] in addition to the original miscellaneous Roman, or, if not miscellaneous, pure Latin element; to which, in any case, in the subsequent reigns a large Latin immigration must be added, when Rome, through the conquest of Alba Longa, became the head of the Latin league, and the infusion of a Greek in addition to an Etruscan element in the dynasty of the Tarquins. The Latin league has its significance over and above its bearing upon the present argument; and to this I shall presently revert. But to go no further, does not the existence of the Latin league[294] sufficiently account for the large influx of strangers into Rome, on account of which Sir H. Maine sees the necessity for an extension of the Roman jurisprudence? But, if this be so, his theory must fall to the ground; for, if the Roman element was distinctive at all, and was a pure Latin population, miscellaneously collected by Romulus, and not a miscellaneous population of various tribes—it was Latin quâ Roman. How then, supposing the Roman element to have become predominant, did it come to contemn the Latin element and the law of the Latins? That it excluded them is another thing, or that they were kept in a subordinate position, and not admitted to the full privileges of naturalisation, is quite conceivable on other grounds; but that there should have existed a feeling of contempt for the laws and customs of the people among whom, if their legends were true (and at any rate we have nothing else to go upon), was found the cradle of their race, is hard to understand, yet this assumption is essential to Sir H. Maine’s position.

Again, the Roman family and tribal system, with their principle of agnatic relationship, was in all probability part of their organisation for war: it was the secret of their strength. Grant that they shrank from applying the principles of their domestic law, which in their application would have involved in time an organisation in conformity with it, we can at once see why they withheld the principles of their jurisprudence without withholding it in mere scorn of an alien nationality.

We rather see influences which would have predisposed them to look with reverence on the laws and customs of a people among whom they must have known that they had sprung, even if there had been no tradition of a law common to all nations “of the lost code of nature,” a notion which the edicts of the prætors of the later period would hardly have generated if it had had no foundation in tradition.

If you change the venue to Etruria, the same arguments will apply. In proof, I quote the following passage from a competent, if somewhat antiquated (1837) authority—(Pastoret, “Hist. de la Legislation,” xi. 355)—more especially as it mentions a circumstance to which I do not remember that Sir H. Maine adverts, and which would make it a matter of some difficulty for the prætors to introduce laws and principles of their own making: “Peu amis de la guerre, Ancus Martius voulut du moins ajouter à l’art de la faire quelques formalités pour la declarer; elles étoint d’usage avant lui chez des peuples voisins; ce sont les lois féciales, lois que nous avons déjà fait connoître (c. iii. 286). L’adoption des lois étrusques par les Romains reçoit une force nouvelle d’un fait conservé par Dénys et Halicarnasse (Liv. ii. § 27); c’est que après l’abolition de la monarchie on exposa dans la place publique de Rome à la vue de tous les citoyens toutes les lois et coutûmes de la patrie, avec les lois étrangeres nouvellement introduites, afin que le droit publie ne changeât pas en même temps que les pouvoirs du magistrat.”

Sir H. Maine says, at p. 151, “The prætors early laid hold on cognation as the natural form of kinship, and spared no pains in purifying their system from the older conception [i.e. older according to Roman law]. Their ideas have descended to us, but still traces of agnation are to be seen in many of the modern rules of succession after death.”

The reader will find (from p. 146 to 160)[295] in Sir H. Maine the distinction between cognation and agnation very completely and lucidly stated. I may say roughly, however, that cognation is the form of relationship which we acknowledge and which is familiar to us, descending in graduated degrees, including males and females alike, from common ancestors. Agnatic relationship is rigidly confined to the male lines, excluding the connections and descendants of females, upon the maxim, Mulier est finis familiæ, though including unmarried females on the side of the father.

Now, I venture to think that the argument which may be drawn from the passage which I have quoted ought not lightly to be dismissed as a mere argumentum ad hominem.

Sir H. Maine says that the prætors early laid hold on cognation as the natural form of kinship. Either, then, they did this really detecting this principle as inhering in the natural law which was in tradition, or as detecting it as the “law common to all the nations known to the Romans.” In the latter case, it shows that, whereas cognation was common among the surrounding nations, agnation obtained among the Romans. The latter was therefore their peculiar institution, which sustains the argument which I have just put. If, on the contrary, they detected cognation underlying the institutions of all nations, and as part of their traditional law of nature, we cannot wish for a better and clearer instance of the natural law cropping up. And it is an instance, too, of the advantage at which those argue who have on their side the authority of Scripture, indicating the landmarks. Knowing that mankind sprang from a single pair, we can see that cognation must have been the law from the commencement: for it stands to reason that commencing with common ancestors the normal and natural mode would be to include all the relations according to degrees of descent, until there was some object in excluding them. With some political necessity or expediency for the limitation to males and the exclusion of females would agnation have commenced. If we require a case in point we have it in the relationship of Laban to Jacob. According to agnatic relationship they were second cousins, but according to cognatic relationship Laban was his maternal uncle, and such accordingly he is called in the sacred text (Gen. xxviii. 2). But in the seventh century before Christ, in the thickness of Paganism, men would scarcely have come to this conclusion, since they had apparently lost, as far as we know, the knowledge of their origin; although, as we have already seen, they retained dimly the tradition of many things of which they had forgotten the specific history. From the information we derive from Sir H. Maine, the memory of cognation, as the earliest and most natural scheme of kinship, must somehow have subsisted in tradition. It was not certainly in their power to verify the truth of the tradition as we can by a reference to revelation, and yet it would seem as if, having come to this conclusion, that it was almost within the grasp of human reason to have inferred from it the origin from a single pair, and thus to have recovered the knowledge they had lost from the tradition they had preserved.[296]

A few points in Sir H. Maine’s argument (supra, p. 352) remain to be noticed. I must take exception, for instance, to his averment “that what we respect and admire,” viz. “principles so universal,” the Roman “regarded with jealous dread.” “The parts of jurisprudence which he looked upon with affection, and the solemn gestures, &c., were the parts which a modern theorist leaves out of consideration,” for he seems to have recognised their justice, and allowed them to operate so effectually that his whole system of jurisprudence, which was originally based on agnatic kinship, came round to the principle of cognation.[297] In the process, and through the action so skilfully evolved and unfolded in Sir H. Maine’s pages, two principles, equally to our mind, were brought into gradual recollection, viz. the comity of nations and equality before the law. The “solemn gestures,” "the nicely-adjusted questions and answers of the verbal contract,“ "the endless formalities,” are at least in evidence of the tradition.

And this suggests a reflection upon the basis of Sir H. Maine’s argument, viz. that the Romans could only draw their induction from “the customs of the old Italian tribes, as these were all the nations whom the Romans had the means of observing.” Now, if we attach the weight which is due to Dr Newman’s remarkable view (vide supra) as to the course and confines of civilisation, we shall be, I think, struck with the fact that the two nationalities of Greece and Rome, which were destined to form its heart and centre, had as their common substratum a very peculiar people, whose characteristics exactly adapted them to retain traditions, and to carry out the scriptural saying about the people, “And they shall maintain the state of the world”—a people who were the first occupiers of the soil of Greece and Italy, and who, if not directly and historically, can through philology be traced back to the most primitive times;[298] a people tenacious of customs and traditions,[299] who were the guardians of the worship and tradition of the Dodonæan Jupiter,[300] and in possession of his shrine when the worship of Jupiter was only the thinly-disguised corruption of the worship of the true God;[301] a people to whom, according to Mr Gladstone, the Greek religion owed its sacerdotal and ceremonial development,[302] and who also inclines to the opinion, which has a more especial significance, and bearing on the present argument, that the Amphictyonic Council was a Pelasgian institution.

Now, let us consider this special significance of the Amphictyonic Council. On the one hand, it is attributed to Amphictyon, the son of Deucalion; on the other hand (as I shall presently show), we see the almost identical institution in Italy in contact with Roman law. What, then, was the Amphictyonic Council? Those who have written upon it appear to me to have endeavoured to regard it too much as a federation. Hence a double error. On the one side it was found that, instead of being a federation of all Greece, at most it was only a federation of twelve cities; it was further found that it had no external action, and that on occasions, as, e.g. the Persian war, in which the whole nation of Greece acted as one people, it made no appearance.[303] A feeling of disappointment necessarily supervened, and it was asked, if not a federation, what was it? On the other hand, although not a federation for the purposes of government or war, it would be an equal error to deny that it was a federation for certain purposes, more or less invisible to the eye, and which for such purposes retained sufficient vitality to assemble deputies twice a year, and during several centuries, for it is certain that it subsisted to the close of Grecian history, when, indeed, we are astonished to find that when faith in everything else had died out, belief in the Amphictyons again flickers into life. It is true that we know little, but the little that has transpired implies so much more. Were it not for a casual passage in a speech of Æschines, we should hardly have known more than of their existence. As it is, we are thrown back upon conjecture, and upon what we can recover indirectly from tradition. Now, if we suppose the Amphictyonic Council to have tradited down, and to have been a federation for the purposes of traditing down from primitive times, even in their rudimentary form, the rules and principles of the laws of nations, much that is strange and mysterious in its history will disappear.[304] It will at once account for its duration and prestige, in spite of its inactivity and merely passive existence, even supposing that it is reduced in our estimation to a sort of convocation, powerless for action, and merely keeping alive a tradition of the past. From this point of view, the fact of its merely being a federation of twelve States, which is generally adduced to reduce it to unimportance, taken in connection with another fact which I shall presently substantiate, really militates in favour of my argument. It shows that instead of being the one typical institution of the sort, it is only the one which stands out most prominently in history, and merely handed down a tradition which was common to many others. I have already alluded to the Latin league, through which, apparently, the Romans recovered their tradition of the law common to all nations. If all these isolated federations retained their tradition of a law common to all nations—although practically limited to the members of their own confederation—is it not at once in evidence of the action of the Dispersion and at the same time of a tradition anterior to the disruption? Without pretending to have gone over the ground necessary to present an exhaustive catalogue of such federations, I may present the following facts in evidence and illustration.

Outside the Amphictyonic union there were other federations, even within the confines of Greece itself:—

“Qui avoient le même caractère, et peut-étre un caractère plus intime d’association entre des etats voisins, pour honorer ensemble des dieux, ou pour se prêter, dans certains cas, un appui necessaire. Il s’en reunissoit une non loin de Trezime ou Argolide, une autre à Corinthe, une autre à Onchiste en Beotie; on en trouve de semblables encore dans plusieurs îles de la Grece, et dans les colonies de l’Asie Mineure.[305] Ces associations, au reste, ne seconderent pas moins la civilisation generale que n’auroit pu le faire un Amphictyonat universel.”—Pastoret, Hist. de la Legis., v. 27.

We find the same federations when we come to Italy:—

“Among the other works of Servius Tullius was a temple of Diana, which he erected on the Aventine, apparently near the present church of Sta. Prisca. This temple, in imitation of the Amphictyonic confederacy, was to be the common sanctuary and place of meeting for the cities belonging to the Latin league, of which Rome had become the chief through the conquest of Alba Longa; and her supremacy was tacitly acknowledged by the temple being erected with money contributed by the Latin cities. It is said to have been an imitation of the Artemisium, or temple of Diana at Ephesus. (Liv. i. 45; Dionys. iv. 26; Varro, L. L. v. § 43; Val. Max., vii. 3, § 1.) The brazen column containing the terms of the league, and the names of the cities belonging to it, was preserved in the time of Dionysius.”—Dyer’s Hist. of City of Rome, p. 51.

Compare this with Niebühr, Hist. ii. chap. ii. (Travers Twiss’ “Epitome.”)

“So long as Latium had a dictator, none but he could offer sacrifice on the Alban mount, and preside at the Latin holidays, as the Alban dictator had done before. He sacrificed on behalf of the Romans likewise, as they did in the temple of Diana on the Aventine for themselves and the Latins.... The opinion that the last Tarquinius or his father constituted the festival is quite erroneous, as its antiquity is proved to have been far higher. It is true that Tarquinius converted it into a Roman festival, and probably, too, by throwing it open to a larger body, transformed the national worship of the Latins into the means of hallowing and cementing the union between the states. The three allied republics had each its own place of meeting—at Rome, at the spring of Ferentina, and at Anagnia, where the concilium of the Hernican tribes was held in the circus; that the sittings of the diets were connected with the Latin festival, seems to be evinced by the usage, that the consuls never took the field till after it was solemnised; and by its variableness, which implies that it was regulated by special proclamation. Like the Greek festivals it ensured a sacred truce.”

In these extracts we come upon a federation resembling the Amphictyonic league, whose union is also cemented at a religious festival, the origin of which must be sought for in remote antiquity, and which festival has a direct connection with questions of peace and war. We also catch glimpses of similar federation among the Hernici and Marsi.

Now, let us go to quite an opposite point; and, if we find the same stratification cropping up, may we not conjecture it to have been once the same throughout.

“When the Europeans made their first settlements in America, six such nations had formed a league, had their Amphictyons or states-general, and by the firmness of their union, and the ability of their councils, had obtained an ascendant from the mouth of the St Lawrence to that of the Mississippi. They appeared to understand the objects of the confederacy as well as those of separate nations; they studied a balance of power.... They had their alliances and treaties, which, like the nations of Europe, they maintained or they broke upon reasons of state, and remained at peace from a sense of necessity or expediency, and went to war upon any emergency of provocation or jealousy.”[306]

In Mexico also there was “that remarkable league, which indeed has no parallel in history (?) It was agreed between the States of Mexico, Tezcuco, and the neighbouring little kingdom of Tlascopan, that they should mutually support each other in their wars, offensive and defensive, and that in the distribution of the spoil one-fifth should be assigned to Tlascopan, and the remainder be divided—in what proportions is uncertain—between the two other powers.... What is more extraordinary than the treaty itself, however, is the fidelity with which it was maintained.”—Prescott’s Mexico, i. p. 17. And in the republic of Tlascala, it is said (id. i. 378) “after the lapse of years, the institutions of the nation underwent an important change [they had previously separated into three divisions, of which Tlascala was the largest]. The monarchy was divided, first into two, afterwards into four separate states, bound together by a sort of federal compact, probably not very nicely defined. Each state, however, had its lord or superior chief, independent in his own territories, and possessed of co-ordinate authority with the others in all matters concerning the whole republic. The affairs of government, especially all those relating to peace and war, were settled in a senate or council, consisting of the four lords, with their inferior nobles.” The Tlascalans subsequently incorporated the Othonius, or Otomius (p. 378).

Here, as in the Greek and Latin Leagues, the primary objects of the law of nations seem to have been secured within the limits of their confederation, or of what they would have deemed the pale of civilization. The requirements of their horrible worship (i.e. the necessity of procuring human victims for their sacrifices) seems, however, to have overridden every other consideration, and to have impelled them to frequent wars with the nations outside the pale. In the case of the Tlascalans, the traditional lines seem more clearly defined. I have already hinted, in a note, with reference to the Greek and Latin Leagues that the Atlantis of Plato was, as indeed it professes to be, an embodiment of tradition, and not, as it is commonly regarded, as a figment of the imagination; but this strikes me still more forcibly when the League of the Ten Kings in the Atlantis is compared with the League of the Tlascalans.

Plato says: “The particulars respecting the governors were instituted from the beginning as follows. Each of the ten kings possessed absolute authority, both over the men and the greater part of the laws in his own division and in his own city, punishing and putting to death whomsoever he pleased. But the government and communion of these kings with each other were conformable to the mandates given by Neptune; and this was likewise the case with their laws. These mandates were delivered to them by their ancestors on a pillar of orichalcum, which was erected about the middle of the island, in the temple of Neptune. These kings, therefore, assembled together every fifth, and alternately, every sixth year, for the purpose of distributing an equal part both of the even and the odd; and when they assembled they deliberated on the public affairs, inquired if any one had acted improperly ... a sacrifice of bulls was made in the temple of Neptune, at the foot of the pillar of orichalcum.... But on the pillar, besides the laws, there was an oath, supplicating mighty imprecations against those who were disobedient.... There were also many other laws respecting sacred concerns, and such as were peculiar to the several kings; but the greatest were the following: that they should never wage war against each other, and that all of them should give assistance if any one person in some one of their cities should endeavour to extirpate the royal race. And as they consulted in common respecting war, and other actions, in the same manner as their ancestors, they assigned the empire to the Atlantis family.”—Plato’s Works, Sydenham and Taylor’s tr., ii. 589.

I think it will then be conceded, that whether or not there was a tradition “of a law common to all nations,” there were at any rate channels provided, well adapted to conduct and disseminate it, and that these channels everywhere converge upon the most primitive times. Before proceeding to ascertain whether anything has in fact been transmitted, I must draw attention more particularly to the circumstance that the tradition of all law is everywhere closely connected with the traditions of religion, has been handed down in a similar manner; and, so far as it retains the purity of primitive truth, under the same sanction. From this point of view the following passages from Cicero appears to me to be very significant:

“Hanc igitur video sapientissimorum fuisse sententiam legem neque hominum ingeniis excogitatum, neque scitum aliquod esse populorum, sed æternum quiddam quod universum mundum regerat imperandi, prohibendique sapientiâ.... Quæ non tum denique incipit lex esse, cum scriptum est, sed tum cum orta est; orta autem simul est cum mente divina.” “Jam ritus familiæ patrumque servari, id est quoniam antiquitas proxima accedit ad Deos, a Deis quasi traditam, religionem tueri.”—Cicero de Legibus, ii. 4, 11.

There is another curious passage which seems to prove that the oracles originally existed simply for the preservation of the primitive tradition; and, although mixed up with imposture, that they seem to have had the knowledge, or at least the instinct, that their prestige and power of influence was within the limits of the traditions which they had corrupted or preserved.[307]

“Deinceps in lege est, ut de ritibus patriis coluntur optimi, de quo cum consulerent Athenienses Apollinem Pythium, quas potissimum religiones tenerent, oraculum editum est eas quæ essent in more majorum. Quo cum iterum venissent, majorumque morem dixissent, sæpe esse mutatum, quæsivissentque quem morem potissimum sequerentur, e variis respondit, optimum. Et perfecto ita est ut id habendum sit antiquissimum et a Deo proximum quod sit optimum.”[308]—Cicero de Legibus, ii. 16.

But this sentiment and tradition was not only common to the people of Greece and Rome, but to the yet uncivilised tribes of Germany.

“Or les dispositions, où la coutume barbare et la loi romaine s’accordent, sont encore celles qui semblent faire le fond des législations grèques: non que les douze tables aient été copiées, comme on l’a cru, sur les lois de Solon, mais à cause de l’étroite parenté des peuples de la Grèce et du Latium. A travers l’obscurité des siècles héroïques, on découvre un sacerdoce puissant qui a ses premiers établissements en Thrace, en Samothrace, à Dodone, et qui perpétuera son autorité par l’institution des mystères. On voit aussi la resistance d’une race belliqueuse.”—Ozanam, “Les Germains avant le Christianisme,” vol. i. chap. “Les Lois.”

“Au premier abord rien ne semble plus contraire aux mœurs barbares que la loi romaine, si subtile, si précise, si bien obéie. Cependant si l’on en considère les origines, on n’y trouve pas d’autres principes que ceux dont la trace subsistait dans les vieilles coutumes de la Germanie. Le droit primitif du Rome, comme celui du Nord, est un droit sacré.”—Ib. p. 148.

“Il existait chez les Germains une autorité religieuse, dépositaire de la tradition, et qui y trouvait l’idéal et le principe de tout l’ordre civil. Cette autorité avait créé la propriété immobilière en la rendant respectable par des rites et des symboles, ... elle l’engageait dans les liens de la famille légitime, consacrée par la sainteté du mariage, par le culte des ancêtres, par la solidarité du sang: elle l’enveloppait dans le corps de la nation sédentaire, ou elle avait établi une hierarchie de caste et de pouvoir, à l’exemple de la hierarchie divine de la création” (p. 147). “Dans cette suite de scènes dont se compose pour ainsi dire le drame judiciaire, on reconnaît un pouvoir religieux, qui cherche à sauver la paix, à désarmer la guerre et qui s’y prend de trois façons différentes” (p. 142).

Now, if we are agreed that fitting channels for the diffusion of the tradition existed; if, further, we find that all law seems to trace itself back to a common source of supernatural revelation; if the resemblances in the traditions concerning the lawgivers of antiquity—and, with the exception of Lycurgus, the agreement in the fundamentals of their codes—in the great lines of the family, property, and the external relations of life, seems to require the supposition of some common fountain-head at which they all filled the pitcher—we shall, I think, when we come to the question of public law, only require further some evidence of a tradition of maxims, rules, and precedents of procedure in war, founded on and appealing to natural right, and claiming the sanction of the gods, to establish the existence of a law common to all nations different from that which would have arisen from the judgment of the prætors, merely applying the rules and maxims common to the Romans and the adjoining nations, in case of conflict where the law of the State was not allowed to be applied (supra, Maine).

I shall, doubtless, be reminded that this was only part of Sir H. Maine’s argument, and that it was this, taken in connection with the influence of the Stoics on Roman law, and the stoical conception of nature,[309] which created the fiction of a law of nature, and of a law common to all nations.

Let it then be granted that the theories and maxims of the Stoics had their influence on Roman society and Roman law. It was only part of the influence which stole over and everywhere impregnated the field of primitive tradition. Sir H. Maine shows us how it at once seized upon the element of law, which, be it in fiction only, was said to be common to all nations. Would it the less have seized upon it if, instead of being a fiction, it had been a reality?—à fortiori, it would have done so. Therefore Sir H. Maine leaves the question as to the belief among the ancients in a “law common to all nations” still open, or rather, so far as there is an argument, it is only with the previous part of his theory that it is necessary to deal; for all that Sir H. Maine’s finely-drawn reasoning and subtle detection of the influence of Grecian stoicism on Roman law accounts for—so far as the present argument is concerned—is the greater attention and respect which was henceforward paid to the fiction, supposing that it had not heretofore and always been paid to the fact, that there was a traditional law common to all nations.

I have previously (p. 3) pointed out the distinction between the law of nations and international law, and I am under the impression that I made the distinction before the publication of Sir H. Maine’s work—certainly before I had become acquainted with it. The manner in which Sir H. Maine makes the distinction does not appear to me to be quite accurate. He says:—“It is almost unnecessary to add that the confusion between jus gentium, or law common to all nations, and international law, is entirely modern. The classical expression for international law is jus feciale, or the law of negotiation and diplomacy” (p. 53). The Fecial College was very far from corresponding with our Corps Diplomatique, neither was its law a law of negotiation and diplomacy; and the distinction between the law of nations and international law was made in modern times, precisely because in antiquity treaty law was subordinate to, and identified with, the traditional law. The Fecial College corresponded much more nearly to what our Heralds’ College would be, supposing the Heralds’ College invested with the authority of our Admiralty Courts, and also made the trustees of the foundation for the study of international law, which Dr Whewell’s bequest had the intention of instituting at Cambridge. We should then have, as in ancient times, a body of men who would be at once the depositaries, the interpreters, and the heralds of a tradition, though, to complete the picture, we should have to invest them with a sacred character, and in some way to give to their decisions the sanction of religion. Dionysius of Halicarnassus tells us that they were priests chosen from the best families at Rome, and that their special intention was to see that the Romans never made an unjust war. “The seventh part of the Sacred Laws was devoted to the college of the Fecials, whom the Greeks call εἰρηνοδικαι.[310] They are men selected from the most illustrious families, and are dedicated during their whole life to this priesthood.... It would take long to enumerate all the various duties of the Fecials, which were multifarious, ... but in the main they are these,—to take heed lest the Romans should ever undertake an unjust war with a city with which they were in league” (Lib. ii.); it was their duty to demand reparation, and, failing, to declare war; in case of differences with allies, they acted as mediators, and they adjudicated in case of disputes. It was for them to decide what constituted an injury to the person of an ambassador, and whether or not the generals had acted according to their oaths; to draw up the articles of treaties, truces, and the like; and to decide as to their nullity and validity, and to communicate accordingly with the Senate, which deliberated upon their report.

What Cicero tells us is not less to the point:—

“There are certain peculiar laws of war also, which are of all things most strictly to be observed.... As we are bound to be merciful to those whom we have actually conquered, so should those also be received into favour who have laid down their arms.... Our good forefathers were most strictly just as to this particular, the custom of those times making him the patron of a conquered city or people who first received them into the faith and allegiance of the people of Rome. In short, the whole right and all the duties of war are most rigorously set down in the fecial laws, out of which it is manifest that no war can be justly undertaken unless satisfaction has been first demanded, and proclamation of it made publicly beforehand.”—Cicero, Offices, i. xi.; again, also, vide iii. xxxi.

Compare these passages with Mr Gladstone’s account of the Homeric age:—

“In that early age, despite the prevalence of piracy, even that idea of political justice and public right, which is the germ of the law of nations, was not unknown to the Greeks. It would appear that war could not be made without an appropriate cause, and that the offer of redress made it the duty of the injured to come to terms. Hence the offer of Paris in the third Iliad is at once readily accepted; and hence, even after the breach of the act, arises Agamemnon’s fear, at the moment when he anticipates the death of Menelaus, that by that event the claim to the restoration of Helen will be practically disposed of, and the Greeks will have to return home without reparation for a wrong, of which the corpus, as it were, will have disappeared.”—Iliad, iv. 160–62.[311]

It is certainly not within the scope of this chapter to indicate the multiform applications of the law of nations, which it would require a legist’s special knowledge (to which the writer can lay no claim) to determine with any exactness. My object has been merely to sustain the traditional belief against those who deny it. I shall indeed, for the purposes of illustration, go into detail on one point, viz. the declaration of war; but I may mention incidentally that the Fecial and Amphictyonic law presumably extended to many other points, such as treaties, trophies,[312] truces,[313] hostages, and the like. Moreover, the maritime law of Rhodes and the islands of the Ægean, known to the Romans long before it was embodied in their code (which was not probably until they had extended maritime relations), presents, as Pastoret (ix. 118) informs us, “analogies et rapprochemens multipliés” with modern maritime legislation from the time of the Romans to the “ordonnance de la marine” drawn up by order of Louis XIV.

In an article on “Belligerent Rights at Sea” (in the Home and Foreign Review, July 1863), in which there will be found a nice discrimination of these questions, Mr E. Ryley says:—

“The very largest rule of belligerent rights limits the voluntary destruction of life and property by the necessity of the occasion and the object of the war. Bynkershock and Wolf insist that everything done against the enemy is lawful, and admit fraud, poison, and the murder, as we should call it, of non-combatants, as permissible expedients for attaining the object of the war. But these are the writers who lay the foundations of the law of nations in reason and custom, and ignore that perception and judgment of right and wrong which God has communicated to man. It is true that for the most part, and practically, we know the law of nations by reason and usage; but this law is founded not on that by which we know its decisions, but on justice; and reason must admit, and usage must adopt, whatever is clearly shown to be just and right, however this may be against precedent, and what has hitherto been held to be sound reason. There is no law without justice, nor any justice without conscience, nor any conscience without God. Grotius thus admirably expresses himself:—‘Jus naturale est dictatum rectæ rationis, indicans actui aliqui, ex ejus convenientiâ aut disconvenientiâ cum ipsa naturâ rationali, inesse moralem turpitudinem, aut necessitatem moralem, ac consequenter ab auctore naturæ, Deo, talem actum vetari aut præcipi. Actus, de quibus tale extat dictatum, debiti sunt aut illiciti per se, atque ideo a Deo necessario præcepti aut vetiti intelliguntur.’[314] And this principle obtains greater force from the objections which have been made to it, and the efforts to establish another foundation for the law of nations. Thus the principle of utility is only a feeble attempt to give another name to the law of justice which God has implanted in His creatures; and to pretend to found a law on general usage and tacit consent is to mistake the evidence of justice for justice itself.”

At first sight the passage quoted from Mr Ryley’s article would seem to militate against my position; in reality we merely take up different weapons against Bynkershock and Wolf. If custom means merely precedent, it may or may not be in accordance with “that perception of right and wrong which God has communicated to man;” but if there is a tradition of a law of nations, the fact creates so great a presumption in favour of its pronouncements, that what is of usage and custom will be the criterion of what is right until the human intellect has shown that what has hitherto been held to be permissible was founded in a precedent of iniquity. On the other hand, we are agreed that the law of nations must be such as to stand the test of the “perception and judgment of right and wrong.” As this perception, however, has never wholly died out among mankind, whatever is of general acceptance carries with it an assurance that it has stood this test; and “general usage and the tacit consent” is so much “the evidence of justice,” that it has practically been taken, or mistaken by mankind “for justice itself,” and the law of nations has always been discussed on the basis of usage. This, I contend, would not have been the case if there had not been behind usage the immemorial sanction and tradition, or if the tacit consent had been only acquiescence in wrong. I am the more confirmed in this view on perceiving that Mr Ryley, after stating his own opinion as to the right of blockade, finds his conclusions, when he has discriminated such precedents as were of an exceptional and retaliatory character, to be in conformity with usage and the decision of legists.

From this point of view those who contend for the basis of tradition and those who contend for the basis of natural justice mean the same thing. They both affirm that there are limitations to human passion even in war. They are both opposed to precedents based on force, and are equally hostile to “the principle of utility,” for if, as Mr Ryley puts it, “the principle of utility” is only “another name for the law of justice which God has implanted in His creatures,” the phrase is an understatement of the truth, liable to misconstruction, and tends to lower the standard of right; and if it means something different or distinct from this, it means that against which the tradition of mankind protests.

I have already said that international law, as distinguished from the law of nations, requires to be constantly discriminated by the intellect or the conscience of mankind, and more especially now that diplomatists are no longer legists.

There was a certain indirect and collateral influence arising out of the tradition of a law of nations from the fact that a body of men existing as its interpreters, or at least as its depositaries, which it appears to me was destined to operate powerfully in the interests of peace. The existence of such a body of men perpetuated a public opinion in these matters, they fostered an esprit de corps stronger even than the spirit of nationality which then reigned supreme and dominated society. When a violation of treaties or an unjust aggression took place there was thus found a body of men who would stigmatise or at least recognise it as such. The sentiment thus sustained was not all-influential for the purposes of peace, but it was operative to the extent of arresting the attention and perturbing the consciences of mankind. In like manner I venture to say that the diplomatic body, although the depositaries only of a bastard tradition, subserve this purpose also after a fashion, and I much doubt whether many well-intentioned men, in striving to compass its abolition would not, as matters stand, destroy the last breakwater which secures the peace of Europe.

In ancient times the comity of nations was virtually restricted to groups of cities or nations of kindred descent, or which had become confederate by reason of contiguity. This circumstance has been adduced by Sir G. C. Lewis to stop in limine the theory of a law of nations;[315] as if it was necessarily in denial of a tradition of morality common to all nations. Yet, I think that I shall be able to show instances of its recognition as between the groups, but it is precisely in its restricted application within the groups, and in the channels thus provided, that I think we shall find common features, and dimly and obscurely, though certainly, catch glimpses of the tradition.

If I may complete my thought, these confederations were so many types and anticipations of that Amphictyonic Council, which, if things had not persistently gone wrong in the world, might have been formed in mediæval times by Christendom under the presidency of the Popes,[316] and which may yet be realised in the triumph of religion which seems to be signified in the motto lumen in cœlo, as attaching to the successor of the present Pope, whose pontificate has been so singularly prefigured in the indication crux de cruce.[317]

In the Times, November 29, 1867, it was said, “If this theory [‘the states of Christendom constituted as a species of commonwealth’] could be rendered effectual, international law would be furnished at once with its greatest need, a court to enforce its behests; but nothing is plainer than that for such arbitration the arbitrators must be fetched from another planet.”

But, inasmuch as Abraham Lincoln practically remarked, you cannot have “a cabinet of angels” in this world, the thing is to discover the arbitrator who is the furthest removed from sublunary influences. Now, how strong soever may be our national mistrusts and prejudices, we cannot refuse to recognise that the Papacy ostensibly satisfies these conditions, and this irrespective of the belief of the preponderant section of the Christian world that he is the infallible guide, and the divinely appointed interpreter of the tradition of morals.

Its representatives being always old men naturally inclined to peace,[318] the sovereign of a small state which a general war would imperil—professing maxims and therefore pledged to a programme of peace—(so that any deviation from it, as in the case of Julius II., would render glaring and abnormal acts which would have been unnoticed in an ordinary sovereign), a sovereign without a family (and whatever may be said of nepotism, it must be conceded that a man who has only collateral relatives is less tempted to found a family than one who has sons), a sovereign, in fine, representing the oldest line of succession in the world,[319] in the oldest city, in the centre of tradition, and like Noah in the traditional symbols (ante, p. 220), linking the new world with the old.

This, I find (I quote from a series of important papers on “English statesmen and the independence of Popes,” Tablet, November 1870), was fully recognised by our greatest minister, Mr Pitt. In 1794, “Pitt suggested, through François de Conzié, Bishop of Arras, that the Pope should put himself at the head of a European league.” “On more than one occasion,” he wrote, “I have seen the continental courts draw back before the divergences of opinion and of religion which separate us. I think that a common bond ought to unite us all. The Pope alone can be this centre.... We are too much divided by personal interests or by political views. Rome alone can raise an impartial voice, and one free from all exterior preoccupations. Rome, then, ought to speak according to the measure of her duties, and not merely of her good wishes, which no one doubts.”

There have been at different periods of the world various projects of universal pacification;[320] but it is worthy of remark that they have almost all, from that of Henri IV. to the one recently broached by the Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, taken the traditional lines of a confederation of states more or less circumscribed with an amphictyonic council. This has its significance from the point of view I am indicating, but I do not see that it is satisfactorily accounted for on any other view.[321]

It would seem, then, that there has always existed in the world the tradition, and since the triumph of Christianity, the conditions by which, if it had so willed, it might have recovered the golden age of peace and happiness of which it has never entirely lost the tradition.

Until this consummation we must fall back upon the law of nations,[322] though even here it must be borne in mind that Christianity has exercised an indirect influence, and has raised the standard of morality for the world at large.[323] But when all is abated the law of nations remains the lex legum, deeply founded in the maxims, sentiments, and usages of mankind. These maxims in their tradition have been concurrently interpreted, adapted, and in a certain sense moulded by the intellect of legists, whose discriminations or conclusions have received the tacit approbation of mankind. Rarely has the production of any profane writer received such an unanimous ratification as the great work of Hugo Grotius, mainly, as we have seen (ante, p. 4), based on tradition. Again, the agreement and correspondence among the legists of different nationalities is substantial, and is only to be accounted for upon the supposition that each in his own groove faithfully incorporated and elaborated a tradition; and if you say that this was only an argument among the separate traditions of the Roman law, you only put back the argument one remove, as I have attempted to demonstrate. If conversely you say that the law of nations as we find it is purely the work and elaboration of legists, and the conclusions of abstract reason, put it to this test, bring all the legists of the world into a congress—such a congress is much needed just now—with instructions to create a new code on abstract principles, and upon the basis of the rejection of what is of custom and tradition, and see what they will accomplish! Do not all our difficulties begin exactly where, owing to the complications of modern civilisation, tradition ceases? For the rest we shall presently see what the Congress of Paris, in 1856, was able to effect in this kind.