Grotius, is not now
possible to decide, for as a matter of fact the Reformation
annihilated all its potential elements except one. Beginning in
Germany, it divided the princes of the empire by a gulf too broad to
be bridged over by the Imperial supremacy, even if the Imperial
superior had stood neutral. He, however, was forced to take colour
with the church against the reformers; the Pope was, as a matter of
course, in the same predicament; and thus the two authorities to whom
belonged the office of mediation between combatants became themselves
the chiefs of one great faction in the schism of the nations.
Feudalism, already enfeebled and discredited as a principle of public
relations, furnished no bond whatever which was stable enough to
countervail the alliances of religion. In a condition, therefore, of
public law which was little less than chaotic, those views of a state
system to which the Roman jurisconsults were supposed to have given
their sanction alone remained standing. The shape, the symmetry, and
the prominence which they assumed in the hands of Grotius are known to
every educated man; but the great marvel of the Treatise "De Jure
Belli et Pacis," was its rapid, complete, and universal success. The
horrors of the Thirty Years' War, the boundless terror and pity which
the unbridled license of the soldiery was exciting, must, no doubt, be
taken to explain that success in some measure, but they do not wholly
account for it. Very little penetration into the ideas of that age is
required to convince one that if the ground plan of the international
edifice which was sketched in the great book of Grotius had not
appeared to be theoretically perfect, it would have been discarded by
jurists and neglected by statesmen and soldiers.

It is obvious that the speculative perfection of the Grotian system is
intimately connected with that conception of territorial sovereignty
which we have been discussing. The theory of International Law assumes
that commonwealths are, relatively to each other, in a state of
nature; but the component atoms of a natural society must, by the
fundamental assumption, be insulated and independent of each other. If
there be a higher power connecting them, however slightly and
occasionally by the claim of common supremacy, the very conception of
a common superior introduces the notion of positive law, and excludes
the idea of a law natural. It follows, therefore, that if the
universal suzeraint