Page:Two Introductory Lectures on the Science of International Law.djvu/29

 very full and able analysis which is to be found in the third volume of Mr. Hallam’s “History of the Literature of Europe.”

I have already alluded to the opposition which the treatise de Jure Belli et Pacis experienced during the lifetime of its author. Such a result was, perhaps, to be expected; error does not readily give way to truth. In England, indeed, the influence of Grotius was more slowly extended, and was ultimately much less general than on the continent of Europe. The peculiarity of our laws and some other reasons readily suggest themselves in explanation of this fact. Amongst other causes, some weight may be given to the controversy which Selden maintained in his Mare Clausum, composed as an answer to the treatise of Grotius de Mari Libero, which latter work was calculated to awaken a prejudice amongst Englishmen against anything else which came from the pen of its author. But it was hardly to be expected, that the new school of philosophy which sprang up in France in the eighteenth century, should have ventured to treat the work with contempt, and its author with contumely. When a book is little read it is easily misrepresented; and Rousseau, in his Contrât Social, has not hesitated to insinuate that Grotius confounds the fact with the right, and the duties of nations with their practice.

In our own country there have not been wanting writers who have assailed his style, or objected to his method. Paley, in his Moral Philosophy, finds fault with Grotius for quoting the opinions of poets and orators, of historians and philosophers, as authorities from whom there is no appeal. From this charge Sir James Mackintosh has amply vindicated