In ancient times the comity of nations was virtually restricted to groups of cities or nations of kindred descent, or which had become confederate by reason of contiguity. This circumstance has been adduced by Sir G. C. Lewis to stop in limine the theory of a law of nations;[315] as if it was necessarily in denial of a tradition of morality common to all nations. Yet, I think that I shall be able to show instances of its recognition as between the groups, but it is precisely in its restricted application within the groups, and in the channels thus provided, that I think we shall find common features, and dimly and obscurely, though certainly, catch glimpses of the tradition.
If I may complete my thought, these confederations were so many types and anticipations of that Amphictyonic Council, which, if things had not persistently gone wrong in the world, might have been formed in mediæval times by Christendom under the presidency of the Popes,[316] and which may yet be realised in the triumph of religion which seems to be signified in the motto lumen in cœlo, as attaching to the successor of the present Pope, whose pontificate has been so singularly prefigured in the indication crux de cruce.[317]
In the Times, November 29, 1867, it was said, “If this theory [‘the states of Christendom constituted as a species of commonwealth’] could be rendered effectual, international law would be furnished at once with its greatest need, a court to enforce its behests; but nothing is plainer than that for such arbitration the arbitrators must be fetched from another planet.”
But, inasmuch as Abraham Lincoln practically remarked, you cannot have “a cabinet of angels” in this world, the thing is to discover the arbitrator who is the furthest removed from sublunary influences. Now, how strong soever may be our national mistrusts and prejudices, we cannot refuse to recognise that the Papacy ostensibly satisfies these conditions, and this irrespective of the belief of the preponderant section of the Christian world that he is the infallible guide, and the divinely appointed interpreter of the tradition of morals.
Its representatives being always old men naturally inclined to peace,[318] the sovereign of a small state which a general war would imperil—professing maxims and therefore pledged to a programme of peace—(so that any deviation from it, as in the case of Julius II., would render glaring and abnormal acts which would have been unnoticed in an ordinary sovereign), a sovereign without a family (and whatever may be said of nepotism, it must be conceded that a man who has only collateral relatives is less tempted to found a family than one who has sons), a sovereign, in fine, representing the oldest line of succession in the world,[319] in the oldest city, in the centre of tradition, and like Noah in the traditional symbols (ante, [p. 220]), linking the new world with the old.
This, I find (I quote from a series of important papers on “English statesmen and the independence of Popes,” Tablet, November 1870), was fully recognised by our greatest minister, Mr Pitt. In 1794, “Pitt suggested, through François de Conzié, Bishop of Arras, that the Pope should put himself at the head of a European league.” “On more than one occasion,” he wrote, “I have seen the continental courts draw back before the divergences of opinion and of religion which separate us. I think that a common bond ought to unite us all. The Pope alone can be this centre.... We are too much divided by personal interests or by political views. Rome alone can raise an impartial voice, and one free from all exterior preoccupations. Rome, then, ought to speak according to the measure of her duties, and not merely of her good wishes, which no one doubts.”
There have been at different periods of the world various projects of universal pacification;[320] but it is worthy of remark that they have almost all, from that of Henri IV. to the one recently broached by the Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, taken the traditional lines of a confederation of states more or less circumscribed with an amphictyonic council. This has its significance from the point of view I am indicating, but I do not see that it is satisfactorily accounted for on any other view.[321]
It would seem, then, that there has always existed in the world the tradition, and since the triumph of Christianity, the conditions by which, if it had so willed, it might have recovered the golden age of peace and happiness of which it has never entirely lost the tradition.
Until this consummation we must fall back upon the law of nations,[322] though even here it must be borne in mind that Christianity has exercised an indirect influence, and has raised the standard of morality for the world at large.[323] But when all is abated the law of nations remains the lex legum, deeply founded in the maxims, sentiments, and usages of mankind. These maxims in their tradition have been concurrently interpreted, adapted, and in a certain sense moulded by the intellect of legists, whose discriminations or conclusions have received the tacit approbation of mankind. Rarely has the production of any profane writer received such an unanimous ratification as the great work of Hugo Grotius, mainly, as we have seen (ante, [p. 4]), based on tradition. Again, the agreement and correspondence among the legists of different nationalities is substantial, and is only to be accounted for upon the supposition that each in his own groove faithfully incorporated and elaborated a tradition; and if you say that this was only an argument among the separate traditions of the Roman law, you only put back the argument one remove, as I have attempted to demonstrate. If conversely you say that the law of nations as we find it is purely the work and elaboration of legists, and the conclusions of abstract reason, put it to this test, bring all the legists of the world into a congress—such a congress is much needed just now—with instructions to create a new code on abstract principles, and upon the basis of the rejection of what is of custom and tradition, and see what they will accomplish! Do not all our difficulties begin exactly where, owing to the complications of modern civilisation, tradition ceases? For the rest we shall presently see what the Congress of Paris, in 1856, was able to effect in this kind.