till 1625, more than twenty years after, had already been conceived
by a youth of twenty-one. It has always been a question
what it was that determined Grotius, when an exile in Paris in
1625, to that particular subject, and various explanations have
been offered; among others a casual suggestion of Peiresc in a
letter of early date. The discovery of the MS. of the De jure
praedae discloses the whole history of Grotius’s ideas, and shows
that from youth upwards he had steadily read and meditated
in one direction, that, namely, of which the famous De jure belli
was the mature product. In the De jure praedae of 1604 there is
much more than the germ of the later treatise De jure belli.
Its main principles, and the whole system of thought implied
in the later, are anticipated in the earlier work. The arrangement
even is the same. The chief difference between the two treatises
is one which twenty years’ experience in affairs could not but
bring—the substitution of more cautious and guarded language,
less dogmatic affirmation, more allowance for exceptions and
deviations. The Jus pacis was an addition introduced first
in the later work, an insertion which is the cause of not a little
of the confused arrangement which has been found fault with
in the De jure belli.
The De jure praedae further demonstrates that Grotius was originally determined to this subject, not by any speculative intellectual interest, but by a special occasion presented by his professional engagements. He was retained by the Dutch East India Company as their advocate. One of their captains, Heemskirk, had captured a rich Portuguese galleon in the Straits of Malacca. The right of a private company to make prizes was hotly contested in Holland, and denied by the stricter religionists, especially the Mennonites, who considered all war unlawful. Grotius undertook to prove that Heemskirk’s prize had been lawfully captured. In doing this he was led to investigate the grounds of the lawfulness of war in general. Such was the casual origin of a book which long enjoyed such celebrity that it used to be said, with some exaggeration indeed, that it had founded a new science.
A short treatise which was printed in 1609, Grotius says without his permission, under the title of Mare liberum, is nothing more than a chapter—the 12th—of the De jure praedae. It was necessary to Grotius’s defence of Heemskirk that he should show that the Portuguese pretence that Eastern waters were their private property was untenable. Grotius maintains that the ocean is free to all nations. The occasional character of this piece explains the fact that at the time of its appearance it made no sensation. It was not till many years afterwards that the jealousies between England and Holland gave importance to the novel doctrine broached in the tract by Grotius, a doctrine which Selden set himself to refute in his Mare clausum (1632).
Equally due to the circumstances of the time was his small contribution to constitutional history entitled De antiquitate reipublicae Batavae (1610). In this he vindicates, on grounds of right, prescriptive and natural, the revolt of the United Provinces against the sovereignty of Spain.
Grotius, when he was only thirty, was made pensionary of the city of Rotterdam. In 1613 he formed one of a deputation to England, in an attempt to adjust those differences which gave rise afterwards to a naval struggle disastrous to Holland. He was received by James with every mark of distinction. He also cultivated the acquaintance of the Anglican ecclesiastics John Overall and L. Andrewes, and was much in the society of the celebrated scholar Isaac Casaubon, with whom he had been in correspondence by letter for many years. Though the mediating views in the great religious conflict between Catholic and Protestant, by which Grotius was afterwards known, had been arrived at by him by independent reflection, yet it could not but be that he would be confirmed in them by finding in England a developed school of thought of the same character already in existence. How highly Casaubon esteemed Grotius appears from a letter of his to Daniel Heinsius, dated London, 13th of April 1613. “I cannot say how happy I esteem myself in having seen so much of one so truly great as Grotius. A wonderful man! This I knew him to be before I had seen him; but the rare excellence of that divine genius no one can sufficiently feel who does not see his face, and hear him speak. Probity is stamped on his features; his conversation savours of true piety and profound learning. It is not only upon me that he has made this impression; all the pious and learned to whom he has been here introduced have felt the same towards him; the king especially so!”
After Grotius’s return from England the exasperation of theological parties in Holland rose to such a pitch that it became clear that an appeal to force would be made. Grotius sought to find some mean term in which the two hostile parties of Remonstrants and Anti-remonstrants, or as they were subsequently called Arminians and Gomarists (see Remonstrants), might agree. A form of edict drawn by Grotius was published by the states, recommending mutual toleration, and forbidding ministers in the pulpit from handling the disputed dogmas. To the orthodox Calvinists the word toleration was insupportable. They had the populace on their side. This fact determined the stadtholder, Maurice of Nassau, to support the orthodox party—a party to which he inclined the more readily that Olden Barneveldt, the grand pensionary, the man whose uprightness and abilities he most dreaded, sided with the Remonstrants.
In 1618 Prince Maurice set out on a sort of pacific campaign, disbanding the civic guards in the various cities of Guelders, Holland and Zeeland, and occupying the places with troops on whom he could rely. The states of Holland sent a commission, of which Grotius was chairman, to Utrecht, with the view of strengthening the hands of their friends, the Remonstrant party, in that city. Feeble plans were formed, but not carried into effect, for shutting the gates upon the stadtholder, who entered the city with troops on the night of the 26th of July 1618. There were conferences in which Grotius met Prince Maurice, and taught him that Olden Barneveldt was not the only man of capacity in the ranks of the Remonstrants whom he had to fear. On the early morning of the 31st of July the prince’s coup d’état against the liberties of Utrecht and of Holland was carried out; the civic guard was disarmed—Grotius and his colleagues saving themselves by a precipitate flight. But it was only a reprieve. The grand pensionary, Olden Barneveldt, the leader of the Remonstrant party, Grotius and Hoogerbeets were arrested, brought to trial, and condemned—Olden Barneveldt to death, and Grotius to imprisonment for life and confiscation of his property. In June 1619 he was immured in the fortress of Louvestein near Gorcum. His confinement was rigorous, but after a time his wife obtained permission to share his captivity, on the condition that if she came out, she should not be suffered to return.
Grotius had now before him, at thirty-six, no prospect but that of a life-long captivity. He did not abandon himself to despair, but sought refuge in returning to the classical pursuits of his youth. Several of his translations (into Latin) from the Greek tragedians and other writers, made at this time, have been printed. “The Muses,” he writes to Voss, “were now his consolation, and appeared more amiable than ever.”
The ingenuity of Madame Grotius at length devised a mode of escape. It had grown into a custom to send the books which he had done with in a chest along with his linen to be washed at Gorcum. After a time the warders began to let the chest pass without opening it. Madame Grotius, perceiving this, prevailed on her husband to allow himself to be shut up in it at the usual time. The two soldiers who carried the chest out complained that it was so heavy “there must be an Arminian in it.” “There are indeed,” said Madame Grotius, “Arminian books in it.” The chest was carried to the house of a friend, where Grotius was released. He was then dressed like a mason with hod and trowel, and so conveyed over the frontier. His first place of refuge was Antwerp, from which he proceeded to Paris, where he arrived in April 1621. In October he was joined by his wife. There he was presented to the king, Louis XIII., and a pension of 3000 livres conferred upon him. French pensions were easily granted, all the more so as they were never paid. Grotius was now
