was entitled Précis du Droit des Gens moderne, fondé sur les Traités et l'Usage.[1] It might well appear, as he admitted in 1801, in the Preface to the second French edition of his work, that the European convulsions resulting from the Revolution in France, and that the triumph of might which these convulsions seemed to make manifest and even to be justifying by events, had cut away the ground in standpoint and reasoning that had been appropriate enough before the bursting of the storm in 1789. Even in the Preface, written in 1820, to the third edition, the author could still, however, record his tribute to the immutable principles of natural law which serves as the basis of international rights. But his work was not rendered obsolete, just because even from its first inception it was designed to be of use in the practice of affairs, and for the author that claim may be made which was put forward for himself by the hard student of fact and observer of forces and power: writing for such as can see his meaning, he deemed it the more feasible course to be taken in tow by the truth showing itself in accomplished facts, than to follow vain imaginings.[2] 'You are a teacher of public law; that will have to be modernized. Does not public law consist to-day simply in the right of the stronger?' Thus was Martens
- ↑ The full title is not given by Vergé in his edition (Paris, 2 vols., 1858). The work was developed from a work written in Latin by the author, and published in 1785. An edition in German, translated by the author, appeared in 1796; a second edition in French in 1801, a third in 1820, a fourth in 1831, with notes by Pinheiro-Ferreira. The edition of M. Ch. Vergé is the fifth in French. An English translation made by William Cobbett—in parts a paraphrase—was published at Philadelphia in 1794, and, according to Cobbett himself, was subscribed to by the President, the Vice-President, and every member of the Congress ('Advertisement to the first London edition'). Cobbett's translation was published in England in 1802 for the first time; a fourth edition appeared in 1829.
- ↑ The Prince, ch. 15.
