Page:Diplomacy and the Study of International Relations (1919).djvu/132

 laedere, Suum cuiquetribuere"'. Further, it has been contended that the doctrine of a Law of Nations, as resting upon the common agreement of mankind, was merely an empty fiction, to which nothing corresponds in fact. But, says Sir Travers Twiss, Grotius did not intend to set up a rule like that which theologians have termed the Golden Rule of Vincentius Lirinensis, 'Quod semper et ubique et ab omnibus'; and he quotes the words of Grotius himself: 'There are two ways of investigating the Law of Nations. We ascertain this Law, either by arguing from the nature and circumstances of mankind, or by observing what is generally approved by all Nations, or at least by all civilized Nations. The former is the more certain of the two, but the latter will lead us, if not with certainty, yet with a high degree of probability, to the knowledge of this Law; for such an universal approbation must arise from some universal principle, and this principle can be nothing else than the common sense or reason of mankind.'

Two opinions have already been cited regarding the effects of the upheavals of the era of the French Revolution and Napoleon. Even more emphatic in its favourable view is the estimate of Sir Travers Twiss. It is not too much to say, he remarks, that 'in accordance with the maxim "La guerre enfante le Droit", the twenty years of almost uninterrupted warfare, during which the First Napoleon endeavoured to erect an Empire, only second to that of Charlemagne, on the foundations of the French Republic of 1793, evoked a spirit of combined action among the Nations of Europe, cemented by a carefully considered system of General Treaties, the outcome of which has been an European Concert of Public Law'. The result has been that each State, without surrendering or ignoring its special interests, has also interests that belong to it in common with the general body of States. 'The