t need scarcely
be said, to place it on an entirely new basis, and it is
unquestionable that in the course of this displacement they altered
much of its structure, though far less of it than is commonly
supposed. Having adopted from the Antonine jurisconsults the position
that the Jus Gentium and the Jus Naturae were identical, Grotius, with
his immediate predecessors and his immediate successors, attributed to
the Law of Nature an authority which would never perhaps have been
claimed for it, if "Law of Nations" had not in that age been an
ambiguous expression. They laid down unreservedly that Natural Law is
the code of states, and thus put in operation a process which has
continued almost down to our own day, the process of engrafting on the
international system rules which are supposed to have been evolved
from the unassisted contemplation of the conception of Nature. There
is too one consequence of immense practical importance to mankind
which, though not unknown during the early modern history of Europe,
was never clearly or universally acknowledged till the doctrines of
the Grotian school had prevailed. If the society of nations is
governed by Natural Law, the atoms which compose it must be absolutely
equal. Men under the sceptre of Nature are all equal, and accordingly
commonwealths are equal if the international state be one of nature.
The proposition that independent communities, however different in
size and power, are all equal in the view of the law of nations, has
largely contributed to the happiness of mankind, though it is
constantly threatened by the political tendencies of each successive
age. It is a doctrine which probably would never have obtained a
secure footing at all if International Law had not been entirely
derived from the majestic claims of Nature by the Publicists who wrote
after the revival of letters.

On the whole, however, it is astonishing, as I have observed before,
how small a proportion the additions made to International Law since
Grotius's day bear to the ingredients which have been simply taken
from the most ancient stratum of the Roman Jus Gentium. Acquisition of
territory has always been the great spur of national ambition, and the
rules which govern this acquisition, together with the rules which
moderate the wars in which it too frequently results, are merely
transcribed from the part of the Roman law which treats of the modes
of acquiring property _jure gentium_. These modes