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 'It is not my disposition', said Sir James Mackintosh, in reference to Vattel and his predecessors,

It is a relief to the student of history and the appraiser of actual policy to pass from the qualified naturalism of Vattel to the clear-voiced positivism of G. F. von Martens. The change is as bracing as a course of The Federalist after a considerable dose of The Social Contract. It is highly appropriate that the author of the Précis du Droit des Gens moderne should be also the originator of the best Collection of Treaties; and the attitude of mind he brought to bear on his analysis and exposition of the law of nations is almost sufficiently revealed in the full title of his work. The work, which was first published in the year before the outbreak of the French Revolution,