Page:Diplomacy and the Study of International Relations (1919).djvu/129

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Juristic Literature
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tion.[1] Similar in its content and spirit is the appreciation of a highly qualified English authority of to-day. In Wheaton's Elements, says Sir Frederick Pollock in an Introduction to the fifth English edition of the work, those principles that make up the Law of Nations and that, 'down to the present war,' have been 'fairly well observed by most nations and ostensibly respected by all, in spite of lacking any defined sanction', have been expounded 'on a more spacious historical scene and with more detailed illustration than can be found in most modern text-books. Wheaton stands for the opinions received or allowed among the best instructed publicists during the period following the Congress of Vienna, sometimes called the Forty Years' Peace.' He had the qualifications of 'a good scholarly lawyer of the first generation of American independence'; and these, added to his combination of forensic, judicial, and diplomatic experience, 'gave him almost unique advantage in handling this subject'.[2]

Of more recent works on International Law only three need here be mentioned—that of Sir Robert Phillimore, that of Sir Travers Twiss, and that of Mr. W. E. Hall. Phillimore's Commentaries upon International Law—a work in four volumes—appeared first in the years 1854–61. A third edition was published from 1879 to 1889. In a Preface, repeated from the first edition, the author gives a sketch (pp. xv–xxvi) of the history of International Law, and proceeds to a history (pp. xxvi–l) of International Jurisprudence in England. For the work of Grotius he claims that 'no uninspired work has more largely contributed to the welfare of the Commonwealth of States. It is a monument which can only perish with the civilized intercourse of nations, of which it has laid down the master principles with a master's hand, Grotius first awakened the

  1. See Kellen, Henry Wheaton (Boston, 1902), p. 45.
  2. See pp. xxxix–xliv of the fifth English edition (1916) of the Elements.