Page:Two Introductory Lectures on the Science of International Law.djvu/31

 “The sentences of poets and orators have less weight than those of history; and we often make use of them, not so much to corroborate what we say, as to throw a kind of ornament over it.”

Mr. Hallam concurs with Sir James Mackintosh, when he says that it will be seen, on reference to this passage, that Grotius proposes to quote poets and orators cautiously, and rather as ornamental than authoritative supports of his argument. “In no one instance,” writes Mr. Hallam, will he be found to “enforce a moral duty, as Paley imagines, by their sanction. It is nevertheless to be fairly acknowledged, that he has sometimes gone a good deal further than the rules of a pure taste allow, in accumulating quotations from poets, and that, in an age so impatient of prolixity as the last, this has stood much in the way of the general reader.”

I shall touch very briefly on the criticism of Jeremy Bentham, who condemns the work as having no definite stamp or character, but being sometimes political or ethical, sometimes historical or juridical, sometimes expository or censorial. From such charges it is not possible, perhaps it is not desirable, to vindicate Grotius altogether. There is no doubt a profusion of learning in his work, which sometimes rather encumbers than adorns it. The method is also somewhat disorderly; and too many scattered digressions occur. But the same objections may be taken to Adam Smith’s great work on the Wealth of Nations. The nature, however, of the subject, substantially demanded at the hands of the great master, that he should cite examples from the history of mankind to illustrate and support the application of the general principles of law and politics; on the