rules for inter

§ 8. He who denies the existence of a Moral Craving after Law of Nature, of that Law of our Moral-Mental national conduct. Organism, which constitutes the highest stage of Creation on Earth reserved to Mankind (§ 1), cannot believe in a standard of Justice and Benevolence, and must make good and evil dependent upon ever varying conditions; for there cannot be any standard of the Good without the correlative conception of a condition forming part of the Universal Law of Nature, that is, that Law of the Good, which we called the Moral Law of Nature.

But, furthermore, this inspiration of the Soul, this longing toward the Good, as the natural consequence of our Moral-Mental Organism, is corroborated by History in all its stages, and is most conspicuous in the process of development of Societies or States, in Europe as elsewhere. This is a plain indication of the influence which the Moral Law has on the growth of civilization, and which is exhibited by the general craving after some positive rules of conduct calculated to bring the principles of this Law, which in the inwardly conscientious man is universally felt to exist, into practical or visible shape, for the regulation of the mutual rights and obligations of men, and for the peaceful intercourse between

nations.

Mr. Hall, in his recent great work, gives the following historical account of the way in which the conception of International Law arose. The state of things which presented itself in Europe, for a considerable time before International Law came into existence, is described by him as follows:

1. "Such material restraint as was supplied at an earlier period over the greater part of civilized Europe by the feudal relations, and over much

of it by the superiority of the Empire, had disappeared, and such moderating influences as had been exercised by the Church had also disappeared, influences, in other words, which, whatever their material power, had at one time deeply affected the imagination, had died away.'

2. "No means existed of setting up any authority of a like external nature, competent to maintain international order; and no habit of reference to a formulated moral standard, independently of external authority, had grown up."

3. "Rules of conduct were becoming daily more necessary, through the increasing intercourse between both States themselves and the subjects of States, and through the wider area over which the relations of States were continually spreading."

"Under such circumstances it was natural, that a craving should be felt for the discovery of a rule of international conduct, capable of impressing itself on the Mind with something of the force of Law. That such a craving was generally felt, there are many indications, and, in fact, without its existence as a powerful motive among the European peoples at large, international law could obviously not have obtained recognition. The only distinct attempts to satisfy it were however made by legal writers; and it was by them, as the medium through which the ideas found expression which were latent in the general mind, that International Law was placed upon its original speculative basis. To understand how that basis came to be adopted, therefore, it is only necessary to examine the works of the writers by whom the advent of Law was prepared."*

*W. E. HALL. International Law, Edit. 1880, page 657.

Cause of that

§ 9.-What, then, was the cause of this general craving. craving, of this universal and urgent demand for law? Of course, there was a general sense of the necessity of establishing some rules of conduct between nations and men, who, being freed from material restraint and blind obedience, were, with their degenerated consciences, cast adrift in a sea of boundless doubts as to what was right or wrong in their mutual dealings, until brought to the sense of Justice by the regenerating, selfacting power of the free Moral Law of Nature. The latter is the source of the sense of Justice, that powerful motive, which gave birth to the ideas, which were latent in the popular Conscience but found expression through the leading minds of the time, by men like Franciscus à Vitoria, Covarruvias, Soto, Saurez, Melanchthon, Olendorp, Hemming, Albericus Gentilis. Their arguments were finally summed up conclusively by Hugo Grotius before the grand jury of civilized humanity, and the verdict was thereupon given which saved modern civilization from drifting back into the chaos of the dark ages of European barbarism.

Hugo de Groot, more generally known as Grotius. Grotius, the acknowledged founder of the science of International Law, the blessed reformer who stemmed the current of moral corruption caused by the policy of dissimulation, injustice and crime, as taught by Machiavelli and his school in that dark period of European Society, in which criminal frauds and treacherous artifices made up the policy called Reasons of State, maintained, in his famous work, "The Laws of War and Peace," *

* DE JURE BELLI AC PACIS, of which the last Latin edition, corrected by the Author, appeared at Amsterdams in 1642, has been repeatedly translated. The best French translation is that of Mr. Pradier Fodéré, published in 1867.

The Popular
Conscience.

The National
Spirit of Law.

the existence of a fixed standard of right, and thus of a real distinction between right and wrong. He also taught that the rule of conduct imposed by our Conscience, which enjoins certain actions while it condemns others, a rule which is indispensable for the maintainance of any society of rational human beings, constitutes the Law of Nature (Jus Naturale). *

$10. This craving after Justice, which has been defined as "a constant and perpetual disposition to render every man his due," is the result of the working of the Moral Law of Nature in the individual minds of the thinking and leading members of Society, by which process, and more or less perfect, in conformity with the degree of susceptibility possessed by those minds regarding the influence of the Moral Law, the Popular Con

science is formed.

Scarcely two individual members of any Society will be found to think exactly alike or to have the same perception of what is right or wrong, for it is seldom that individual minds are in the same condition of soundness and purity which would enable them to develop the intuitions of the Soul into identical conclusions, though, as regards the main principles, many leading minds of the Society may agree, and form on this agreement a common conclusion.

§11. This common conclusion, the outcome of the principles on which all agree, is the manifestation of the Popular Conscience, which is then applied as a standard of measure or ultimate test of the laws of that Society or, in other words, as its law-giver, to teach its Jurisprudence or to explain the facts of History, and it is then called the Spirit of Law.

*De JURE BELLI ac PACIS. Lib. I. Cap. I, §10.

This Popular Conscience or Spirit of Law, being the reflex of the progress made on the road to civilization by the respective Society, Nation or State, for which reason it is also called the National Spirit of Law,-must naturally change its aspect with every stage on this road, made by the subject whose immanent phenomenon it is, i.e., by the collective leading minds of the respective Nation. In the same proportion as civilization progresses, the Spirit of Law approaches in a rising scale towards the standard of the Good, but likewise any retrogression in that respect caused by any disturbance of the harmony of the Moral Law within the individual mind, must have a depressing effect on that scale.

The Spirit of Law having given birth to the usages of Society, these, gradually developing, become, through the expressed or tacit sanction of the faculty invested with sovereign power in the Society, consolidated into Positive Law, for the government of that Society as Body-Politic and for the definition of the reciprocal relations between individual members and between these and the sovereign power of the. Society or State formed by them. Thus the Spirit of Law of every State and every period manifests itself through the Law (Jus, Droit, Recht) with which it correlatively changes on the road to civilization, according to the fixed rules of the Moral Law of Nature, which are beyond the caprices of the day (§1). Every era in the history of a Nation has its own Spirit of Law and its correlative usages and Positive Law. In consequence thereof, the Positive Law of each individual State differs from that of another State, in proportion to its respective condition, history, tradition, morals, climate, nature of the soil and other inherent natural circumstances. It is not possible to make,