[319] “The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilisation. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when the cameleopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday when compared with the line of the supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century, to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable.... The Catholic Church is still sending forth to the farthest ends of the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustine, _and still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila.”—Macaulay’s Essays, “Review of Ranke’s Popes._”
[320] Sir G. C. Lewis, “Method, &c.,” ii. 285, enumerates several.
[321] In De Quincey’s Works, xii. 140, there is a disquisition on Kant’s scheme “of a universal society founded on the empire of political justice,” where it is competent that as the result of wars man must be inevitably brought “to quit the barbarous condition of lawless power and to enter into a federal league of nations, in which even the weakest number looks for its rights and protection—not to its own power, or its own adjudication, but to this great confederation (fœdus amphictyonum), to the united power, and the adjudication of the collective will,” and is said to be “the inevitable resource and mode of escape under that pressure of evil which nations reciprocally inflict,” and which seems to contemplate a situation like the present. “Finally war itself becomes gradually not only so artificial a process, so uncertain in its issue, but also is the after-pains of inextinguishable national debts (a contrivance of modern times) so anxious and burdensome; ... that at length those governments which have no immediate participation in the war, under a sense of their own danger, offer themselves as mediators, though as yet without any sanction of law, and thus prepare all things from afar for the formation of a great primary state-body or cosmopolitic Areopagus, such as is wholly unprecedented in all preceding ages.” I am fully aware of the divergence of this view from that which I have indicated, but I wish to point out that it is only “unprecedented” in so far as it is cosmopolitic and extends to all humanity; but so extending it ought not to include the traditional notions of an “Areopagus”—fœdus amphictyonum—or confederation of states. It ought rather to talk of an interfusion of states, the only condition upon which the cosmopolitic Areopagus would be possible; yet it inevitably falls into the traditionary lines. Moreover, before mankind can attain to this inter-fusion of states, one supreme difficulty, which seems always to be over-looked, must be overcome, we must bring mankind back to be “of one lip and one speech.” The scheme, on the other hand, of a federation cannot be pronounced impracticable until it has been tried; yet, although it lies latent in the idea of Christendom, and although it has had a sort of informal recognition in the theory and policy of the balance of power, there has never been any understanding from which we can gather what the results would be, if the bond of federation were ever cemented by any solemn pledge or sanction.
[322] “Historicus” (Letter in the Times, February 12, 1868) writes—“The system of international law professes to be a code of rules which ought to govern, and in fact in a great degree does govern, the conduct of independent nations in their dealings with one another.... How can one doubt that in fact such a rule exists and does operate? Let us test the matter by an example. When the news of the affair of the Trent reached England, what was the first question that every one asked? Was it not this, ‘Is this act conformable to the law of nations, or is it not?’ Did not the English Cabinet summon all the most distinguished jurists to advise them what the law of nations was? Was not the decision absolutely dependent on their advice.... The code of the law of nations, based on all other laws, on morality, deduced by the reasoning of jurists from well established principles, illustrated by precedents, gathered from usage, confirmed by experience, has become from age to age more and more respected as the arbiter of the rights and duties of nations, ... and now, after this system has been elaborated with so much care, and has yielded results so beneficial to the human race, we are to be told that the only real question in differences between nations is, ‘Whether, all things considered, it is or is not worth while to go to war?’ not, be it observed, right or wrong to go to war. This is exactly the doctrine set forth in the celebrated Thelian controversy recorded in Thucydides.” W. Oke Manning, “Commentaries on the Law of Nations” (p. 17), says, “Sir J. Mackintosh in his ‘Hist. of the Progress of Ethical Philosophy’ (prefixed to the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ p. 315), speaks of Suarez as the writer who first saw that international law was composed not only of the simple principles of justice applied to intercourse between states, but of those usages long observed in that intercourse by the European race which have since been more exactly distinguished as the consuetudinary law acknowledged by the Christian nations of Europe and America. But Suarez himself speaks of this distinction as already recognised by previous writers.”
[323] “La religion Chrétienne, qui ne semble avoir d’objet que la félicité de l’autre vie, fait encore notre bonheur dans celle-ci.... Que d’un côté, l’on se mette devant les yeux les massacres continuels des rois et des chefs grecs et romains, ... et nous verrons que nous devons au Christianisme, et dans le gouvernement un certain droit politique, et dans la guerre un certain droit des gens, que la nature humaine ne saurait assez reconnaître.”—Montesquieu, “Esprit des Lois,” i. xxiv. chap. 3.
[324] I must here do Mr Urquhart the justice to point out that he has been the principal advocate of this doctrine, that the declaration of war is the turning-point upon which everything depends, and more than any other man has laboured to enforce it. (Vide “Effects on the World of the Restoration of Canon Law,” by D. Urquhart, 1869.) At p. 61, Mr Urquhart refers to the action taken by the Fecials. I have the misfortune to differ with Mr Urquhart on many points, but I have pleasure in bearing testimony as above.
[325] The Very Rev. Dr Rock (“Textile Fabrics,” p. xii.) says—”The ancient British speciality was wool, and the postulants asking admission to the different castes, the sacerdotal, bardic, and the leeches or natural philosophers, were distinguished by stripes of white [Cicero (De Legibus, ii. 18) says, “Color autem albus præcipere decorus deo est quum in cateris tum maxima in textili”], blue, and green severally on their mantles, although the bards themselves were distinguished by some one of the colours above-mentioned (vide infra). [The significance of this will be noted at [p. 391].] I may further remark, parenthetically, that here is an instance of national civilisation being pari passu with religious traditions. The British speciality was wool—query, because “of the heavy stress laid upon the rule which taught that the official colour in their dress,” &c. (Id., vide ante, chap. xii. [p. 292.])
St Paul says (Heb. ix. 19), “For when every commandment of the Lord had been read by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people” (Goguet, “Origin of Laws,” ii. p. 9). The Spaniards in 1643 made a treaty of peace with the Indians of Chili; they have preserved the memory of the forms used at the ratification. It is said that the Indians killed many sheep, and stained in their blood a branch of the cane-tree, which the deputy of the Caciques put into the hands of the Spanish general in token of peace and alliance.” Goguet also refers to Heb. ix. 19.
[326] De Fresquet, “Droit Romain,” i. 48.
[327] Compare with the description of Saturn, “Saturnus, velato capite falcam gerens.”—Fulgent. Mythol. i. c. 2.