up to an exposition of principles, the citation and examination of authorities,[1] and an exposition of the maritime practice of other peoples than the British, peoples Eastern and Western, and at all ages in the world's history down to the author's own day. The second book,[2] consisting of thirty-two chapters, states and enforces the case for Britain by an examination of facts, claims, and records from Roman times down to the time when Selden was called upon by Charles I to proceed with the completion of a work which he had already presented to James I in 1618.[3] He is generous in his appreciation of the learning and distinction of Grotius,[4] an author of vast erudition and wide
- ↑ e.g. cap. xxiv: Ad Obiectionem ex Iurisconsultis Veteribus depromptam Responsio: and cap. xxvi: Recentiorum Iurisconsultorum sententiis, qua adversantur, maxime Fernandi Vasquii & Hugonis Grotii, respondetur.
- ↑ Secundo, Serenissimum Magnae Britanniae Regem Maris circumflui, ut individuae atque perpetuae Imperii Britannici appendicis, Dominum esse, asseritur.
- ↑ Selden, Vindiciae Maris Clausi, in Selden's Works (1776); ii, p. 1425; Twiss, Black Book of the Admiralty, i. xiii. One of the reasons assigned for the withholding of publication at that time is the apprehension of James, that there were passages in the work which might offend the King of Denmark from whom he was endeavouring to obtain a loan of money. This was the explanation given by Selden in 1652 when a Dutch lawyer, Graswinckel, a cousin of Grotius, taunted him with having written it to get release from prison. Graswinckel was selected by the States-General to prepare a reply to Selden's Mare Clausum which made a considerable impression on the Dutch. The reply was not published, the States apparently accepting the advice tendered, that the freedom of the sea must be protected with the sword, and not merely with the pen.—Vreeland, Grotius, p. 48, citing Fruin's Verspreide Geschriften, iii, p. 408. Graswinckel published in 1653 a work against Welwod.
- ↑ In lib. I, c. ii, in alluding to the more recent writers who have opposed the dominion of the sea, Selden writes of Vasquius and Grotius as 'clarissimi quidem utrique, sed eruditione et nitore ingenii impares'. Of Grotius:
non esse Commune, sed Dominii privati seu Proprietatis capax, pariter ac Tellurem, esse demonstratur.'
