[611] Meadows, Observations, p. 3. Raleigh, A Discourse on the Invention of Ships.
[612] Cunningham, The Growth of English Industry and Commerce during the Early and Middle Ages, p. 418.
[613] Le Droit International, i. 20.
[614] De Potestate Legis Pœnalis, lib. ii. c. 14. Quoted by Nys, Les Origines du Droit International, p. 382, and by Grotius, Mare Liberum, c. vii.
[615] D. Fernandus Vasquius, Controversiæ Illustres, Venice, 1564, lib. ii. c. lxxxix. s. 30 (p. 356, ed. Frankfurt, 1668).
[616] Mare Libervm sive de Jvre qvod Batavis competit ad Indicana Commercia Dissertatio. Lugdvni Batauorvm. Ex officinâ Ludovici Elzevirij Anno 1609. The name of Grotius did not appear on the title-page until the second edition in 1618 (Hvgonis Groti Mare Libervm sive ... vltima editio. Lvgdvni Batavorum, anno 1618), the year in which he was arrested; and that he was not generally known to be the author until this time is shown by Welwood referring to Mare Liberum in 1613 as written by “an unknown author,” and by an English State Paper, prepared for the negotiations with the Dutch ambassadors in 1618, which contains excerpts out of a book called Mare Liberum (Brit. Mus. MSS. Lansd., 142, fol. 383). Grotius was then one of the most prominent men in Holland. Another edition was published, also at Leyden, in 1633, together with Paul Merula’s Dissertatio de Maribus and Boxhorn’s Apologia pro Navigationibus Hollandorum adversus Pontem Hevtervm, under the title, Hugo Grotius, De Mare Libero. It was also included in Hagemeier’s De Imperio Maris, variorum Dissertationes, published in 1663. A translation in the vernacular appeared at Haarlem in 1636,—no doubt in consequence of the publication of Selden’s Mare Clausum,—H. Groti, Vrye Zeevaert, ofte Bewys van het Recht dat de Inghesetenen deser gheunieerde Landen toekomt over de Oost ende West-Indische Koophandel. Hugo de Groot was born at Delft in 1583; he was appointed Advocate-General before he was twenty-four years of age, and settled at Rotterdam in 1613, where he became Pensionary of that town; he was sent to England as one of the Dutch envoys in that year. In 1618 he was arrested in connection with the Barnevelt troubles, and in the following year condemned to perpetual imprisonment; but he escaped to Paris, where he lived for eleven years, and then entering the service of the Queen of Sweden, he was employed as her ambassador at the Court of France. He died at Rostock in 1645. Some of his works were translated into almost all European languages, and even into Persian, Greek, and Arabic.
[617] Tiele, Opkomst van het Nederlandsch Gezag in Oost-Indie; Fruin, Een onuitgegeven werk van Hugo de Groot, in De Gids, Derde ser. zesde Jaargang, 1868, vierde del; M’Pherson, Annals of Commerce, ii. 209, 226.
[618] “Ante annos aliquot, cum viderem ingentis esse momenti ad patriæ securitatem Indiæ quæ Orientalis dicitur commercium, id vero commercium satis appareret obsistentibus per vim atque insidias Lusitanis sine armis retineri non posse, operam dedi ut ad tuenda fortiter quæ tam feliciter cœpissent nostrorum animos inflammarem, proposita ob oculos causæ ipsius iustitia et æquitate, unde nasci το ἑυελπι recte a ueteribus traditum existimabam. Igitur et universa belli prædæque iura, et historiam eorum quæ Lusitani in nostros sæue atque crudeliter perpetrassent, multaque alia ad hoc argumentum pertinentia eram persecutus amplo satis commentario, quem edere hactenus supersedi.” Hugonis Grotii Defensio Capitis quinti Maris liberi oppugnati a Gulielmo Welwodo Iuris Civilis professore capite XXVII. eius libri scripti Anglico sermone cui titulum fecit Compendium legum Maritimaram. This manuscript of Grotius was discovered in 1864, along with the work De Jure Prædæ, to which he refers, in a collection of MSS. brought to auction, which belonged to the family of Cornets de Groot of Bergen-op-Zoom, who had descended in a direct line from the great publicist (Fruin, op. cit.) It was printed by Muller in 1872 (Mare Clausum, p. 331). The greater work, edited by Hamaker, was published in 1868, Hugo Grotius de Jure Prædæ Commentarius.
[619] “Hujus generis est Aër, duplici ratione, tum quia occupari non potest, tum quia usum promiscuum hominibus debet. Et eisdem de causis commune est omnium Maris Elementum, infinitum scilicet ita, ut possideri non queat, et omnium usibus accommodatum: sive navigationem respicimus, sive etiam piscaturum.” Cap. v.
[620] Cap. v. “Similiter reditus qui in piscationes maritimas constituti Regalium numero censenter, non rem, hoc est mare, aut piscationem, sed personas non obligant. Quare subditi, in quos legem ferendi potestas Reipublicæ aut Principi ex consensu competit, ad onera ista compelli forte poterunt: sed exteris jus piscandi ubique immune esse debet, ne servitus imponatur mari quod servire non potest.... Quod in aliis difficile videtur, in hac omnino fieri non potest: quod in aliis iniquum judicamus, in hac summe barbarum est, atque inhumanum.... In tanto mari si quis usu promiscuo solum sibi imperium et ditionem exciperet, tamen immodicæ dominationis affectator haberetur: si quis piscatu arceret alios, insanæ cupiditatis notam non effugeret.”