Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume X.djvu/228

 222 LAW OF NATIONS mulch to the grass, and ultimately to decay and enrich the soil. There can be no greater or- nament to a place than a well kept lawn, and it should not be cut up by useless paths or nu- merous flower beds. Masses of flowers nowhere appear to such advantage as in a setting of turf, but these should be so judiciously intro- duced as not to break up the expanse of grass. Several years ago it was proposed to use spergula pilifera, a relative of the common chickweed, as a substitute for grass in lawn making, but it had only a limited application. For covering soils so poor that grass will not grow upon them, the French horticulturists give high praise to a composite, which is said to afford a dense and .lasting verdure, pyre- thrum Tchihatcheffi, from Asia Minor. LAW OF NATIONS, according to Mr. Wheaton, "maybe defined as consisting of those rules of conduct which reason deduces, as conso- nant to justice, from the nature of the society existing among independent nations, with such modifications and deviations as may be estab- lished by general consent." International ju- risprudence is a science of modern origin. In its present sense the law of nations was quite unknown to the two great states of antiquity. In Greece the amphictyonic council bore in some sort the character of an international tribunal, but it concerned itself chiefly with the internal affairs of the members of the league ; the few relations which Greece main- tained with foreign nations were defined by special compacts, and the general principles of right were rarely invoked in their adjustment. A nicer sense of international obligation was early evinced by the Roman state. The colle- gium fetialium is said to have been introduced among the religious orders of Rome by Numa Pompilius. It was the office of these fetiales not only to perform the ceremonies which at- tended a declaration of war, but also to ar- range truces and to conclude peace. They performed the sacrificial rites with which al- liances and treaties were solemnized, were in- trusted as the representatives of the state with their enforcement, and guarded the security of foreign ambassadors at Rome. Indeed, Nie- buhr expressly styles them "judges of inter- national law." The rules of their procedure in these various functions constituted the jus fetiale ; but though the order continued to exist until the time of the emperors, the fecial law had been in the insolence of conquest often disregarded, and with the world-wide exten- sion of the empire it had necessarily fallen into disuse. The works of Cicero, Sallust, Livy, and other writers of the best age of Rome, do indeed contain allusions which imply a recog- nized law of nations ; yet it is certain that the Roman law, as it existed at the dismemberment of the empire of the West, embodied no system of rules for governing the intercourse of states, or for deciding questions of right which might arise between them. During the middle ages, the pope was often the judge and arbitrator in the affairs of nations. His authority reached its height when Alexander VI. presumed to parcel out the new world to Spanish and Por- tuguese princes. The doctrines involved in the papal grant were supported by the jurists of Bologna, but their reasonableness was denied by a Dominican monk of the time, Franciscus & Victoria, professor in the university of Sala- manca, who published in 1557" a collection of dissertations entitled Relectiones Theologicce. Of these the 5th, De Indis, contested the va- lidity of the papal pretensions ; and the 6th, De Jure Belli, discussed exclusively the law of war. These essays are perhaps the earliest works written in the spirit of the modern in- ternational jurisprudence. Grotius mentions them in his Prolegomena, but includes them among the productions which, "whether com- posed by theologians or doctors of law, had, in the discussion of the laws of war, alike mingled and confounded natural law, the divine law, the civil and the canon law, and the law of na- tions." In 1581 Balthasar Ayala composed a treatise De Jure et Offidis Bellicis, which Hal- lam considers the first systematic one upon the practice of nations in the conduct of war. The honor of being the founder of the science of the law of nations has also been claimed for Albericus Gentilis, a native of Ancona. Genti- lis became professor of civil law at Oxford, and attained high rank as a civilian by his works upon the Roman jurisprudence. As advocate of the Spanish embassy in the prize court at London, his attention was directed to questions of international rights; his most remarkable work upon topics of this nature was an essay upon the law of war. In 1625 appeared at Paris the celebrated treatise De Jure Belli et Pads, by Hugo Grotius. " Grotius was," says Sir James Mackintosh, "without dispute, the first to give a new form to the law of na- tions, or rather to create a science of which only rude sketches and undigested materials were scattered over the writings of those who had gone before him." Hallam says that the publication of the book marks an epoch in the philosophical, and it may be said in the political history of Europe. It was very early translated into various European languages, and great jurists made it the subject of elab- orate commentaries. In 1656 it was made the text of lectures on public law in the univer- sity of Tubingen, and in 1661 a professorship was created in Heidelberg for expounding the law of nature and of nations from the writings of its author. The treatise De Jure Belli et Pads is not limited to the law of war and of peace ; it embraces also a view of the general principles which should govern the intercourse of nations. In the Roman law, the phrase jus gentium was not always used in an exact and specific sense, but it generally signified what modern writers have called the natural law, viz., the principles of right which are dictated by reason, and are common to all men alike. The jus gentium might assume the form of posi-