324 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW. 



The Dissolution of Christendom. 

 It was, as Professor Moore has pointed out, among the Christian 

 states that international law had its beginning ; and for a long period 

 they alone were regarded as constituting the society of states and 

 entitled to the consideration which that law demanded. But long 

 before the admission of non-Christian nations into that community, 

 Christendom had completely lost its original unity ; fraternity be- 

 tween the nations had almost vanished ; schism in religion and the 

 rivalry of dynasties had destroyed all but the ceremonial relations 

 between states; and, although philosophic jurists, like Pufendorf 

 and Wolf, propounded theories that rendered plausible the estab- 

 lishment of a world-state, the political conditions of Europe rendered 

 them illusory. 



Projects for a World-State. 



It is especially interesting at this time to recall the fact, that 

 most of the great projects for a thoroughgoing legal organization of 

 the world have had their origin in periods of time when human 

 reason and conscience have been roused to protest by the infamies 

 that accompany great wars. Thus it was that, in the midst of the 

 Thirty Years' War, Emeric Cruce proposed that A^enice be chosen 

 as the permanent seat of a corps of ambassadors who by their votes 

 should settle all international differences. It was during the " Rob- 

 ber Wars " of Louis XIV. that William Penn, whom Montesquieu 

 has called " the modern Lycurgus," propounded his plans for uni- 

 versal peace. It was at the conclusion of the struggle for the Spanish 

 Succession that Fenelon presented to the Congress of Utrecht his 

 famous dissertation, in which he said: 



" Neighboring states are not only under obligation to treat one another 

 according to the rules of justice and good faith; they ought in addition, for 

 their own safety, as well as for the common interest, to form a kind of 

 general society and republic." 



It was upon the same occasion, that the Abbe de Saint-Pierre elab- 

 orated his extension of Sully's alleged " Great Design," in which — 

 anticipating the present program of the League to Enforce Peace 

 — he proposed not only the submission of differences to judi- 



