hended from the ambitious designs of the houses of Austria and Bourbon, was at last realized from the genius of one man, who wielded with unexampled energy the vast natural resources of France, whose power of aggression had been fearfully augmented by revolution and conquest. This long protracted and violent struggle was too often marked in its course by the most flagrant violations of the positive law of nations, almost always accompanied, however, by a formal recognition of its general maxims, and excused or palliated on the ground of overruling necessity, or the example of others justifying a resort to retaliation. The mighty convulsion, in which all the moral elements of European society seemed to be mingled in confusion, at last subsided, leaving behind it fewer traces of its destructive progress than might have been expected, so far as regards a general respect for the rules of justice acknowledged by civilized communities in their mutual intercourse.'
Of Henry Wheaton's Elements of International Law little need be said. It is a standard work, on which the author's History may be taken as the best commentary. The work was published first in 1836 at Philadelphia and at London. It was published again at Philadelphia in 1844. Later it was issued in French, at Leipzig in 1848, and at Paris in 1852 and 1853. The first English edition proper was published at London in 1878; the fifth[1] was published in 1916. In the words of a German appreciation of Wheaton as the historian of International Law, the author united the accomplishments of a public jurist and of a practical diplomat—of the school of Franklin and Jefferson—to those of a scholar with an established reputa-
- ↑ Edited by C. Phillipson. The historical portions have been retained and expanded. Examples of conduct from recent wars have been added, and the references to cases have been increased. It is necessary for the unwary reader to distinguish between the original text and the editor's additions.
