APPENDIX TO PART FIRST. 13 



Grotius says emphatically: "Nimirum humana jura multa constit- 

 uere possunt pr^eter naturam, contra nihil." 



John Voet speaks with great energy to the same effect: "Quod si 

 contra rectce rationis dictamen gentes usu qucedam introduxerint, non ea 

 jus gentium recti dixeris, sed pessimam potius morum nuMANi gen- 

 eris CORRUPTELAM." 



Suarez, who has discussed the philosophy of law in a chapter which 

 contains the germ of most that has been written upon the subject, 

 says: " Leges autem ad jus genii ion pertinentes vera' leges sunt, ut expli- 

 catum manet, propinquiores sunt legi naturali quam leges civiles, ideoque 

 impossibile est esse contr arias cvquitati naturali." 



Wolff, speaking of his own time, says: " Omnium fere animos occupavit 

 perversa ilia opinio, quasi fons juris gentium sit utilitas pro- 

 pria; undue contingit, id potentkc cocequari. Damnamus hoc in privatis, 

 damnamus in rectore civitatis; sed .eque idem damnandum est in 



GENTIBUS." 



Mackintosh nobly sums up this great argument: " The duties of men, 

 of subjects, of princes, of lawgivers, of magistrates, and of states, are 

 all parts of one consistent system of universal morality. Between the 

 most abstract and elementary maxim of moral philosophy, and the 

 most complicated controversies of civil or public law, there subsists a 

 connection. The principle of justice, deeply rooted in the nature and 

 interest of man, pervades the whole system, and is discoverable in every 

 part of it, even to its minutest ramification in a legal formality, or in 

 the construction of an article in a treaty." 



[Henry Sumner Maine, International Law, pages 13-47.] 



In modern days the name of International Law has been very much 

 confined to rules laid down by one particular class of writers. They 

 may be roughly said to begin in the first half of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, and to run three parts through the eighteenth century. The 

 names which most of us know are, first of all that of the great Hugo 

 Grotius, followed by Puffendorf, Leibnitz, Zouch, Selden, Wolf, Bynker- 

 shoek, and Vattel. The list does not absolutely begin with Grotius, 

 nor does it exactly end with Vattel, and indeed, as regards the hither 

 end of this series the assumption is still made, and I think not quite 

 fortunately, that the race of law-creating jurists still exists. * * * 

 Their [the writers named and a few others] system is that convention- 

 ally known as International Law. 



####### 



A great part, then, of International Law is Roman law spread over 

 Europe by a process exceedingly like that which a few centuries earlier 

 had caused other portions of Roman law to filter into the interstices of 

 every European legal system. The Roman element in International 

 Law belonged, however, to one special province of the Roman system, 

 that which the Romans themselves called natural law, or, by an alter- 

 native name, Jus Gentium. In a book published some years ago on 

 " Ancient Law" I made this remark : " Setting aside the Treaty Law of 

 Nations, it is surprising how large a part of the system is made up of 

 pure Roman law. Wherever there is a doctrine of the Roman juris- 

 consults affirmed by them to be in harmony with the Jus Gentium, the 

 Publicists have found a reason for borrowing it, however plainly it 

 may bear the mark of a distinctive Roman origin." * * * 



Seen in the light of stoical doctrine the law of nations came to be 

 identified with the law of nature j that is to say, with a number of sup- 



