Page:Two Introductory Lectures on the Science of International Law.djvu/20

 Leicester, he was promoted to the chair of Civil Law in the university of Oxford. His writings on Roman jurisprudence are numerous; and his treatise on the law of embassy was dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney. His attention, however, was more especially directed to questions of international law, by the circumstance of his being the advocate of the Spanish embassy before the Prize Court in London; and his treatise entitled “Advocationes Hispanicae” may be regarded as the earliest collection of judicial decisions on the maritime Law of Nations. His most remarkable work was a Treatise on the Right of War, published in 1589, and dedicated to Lord Essex, and to which work Grotius was indebted in a greater degree than to that of Ayala. Grotius himself acknowledges his obligation, both directly in the Prolegomena to his great work, and indirectly by adopting almost precisely the same order and division of subjects in his first and third books, as Gentilis had sketched out. Gentilis, it must be admitted, had ranged over the whole field of public faith, and discussed the rights both of war and victory; but he had only set up the framework, whilst Grotius constructed a complete edifice; and where the heading of many chapters in both writers is the same, it will be found that Grotius enters more deeply into the subject, and reasons much more from principles, whilst he relies less on the authority of mere precedent or of legal opinions, not a few of which, he observes, are adopted to suit the interest of those who consult the framers of them; in a word, to use Mr. Hallam’s vigorous language, Grotius in almost every chapter is a philosopher, where Gentilis is a compiler.

It is not proposed on the present occasion to