two or three of pre-eminent importance.
The first of all is expressed in the position that there is a
determinable Law of Nature. Grotius and his successors took the
assumption directly from the Romans, but they differed widely from the
Roman jurisconsults and from each other in their ideas as to the mode
of determination. The ambition of almost every Publicist who has
flourished since the revival of letters has been to provide new and
more manageable definitions of Nature and of her law, and it is
indisputable that the conception in passing through the long series of
writers on Public Law has gathered round it a large accretion,
consisting of fragments of ideas derived from nearly every theory of
ethics which has in its turn taken possession of the schools. Yet it
is a remarkable proof of the essentially historical character of the
conception that, after all the efforts which have been made to evolve
the code of nature from the necessary characteristics of the natural
state, so much of the result is just what it would have been if men
had been satisfied to adopt the dicta of the Roman lawyers without
questioning or reviewing them. Setting aside the Conventional or
Treaty Law of Nations, it is surprising how large a part of the system
is made up of pure Roman law. Wherever there is a doctrine of the
jurisconsults affirmed by them to be in harmony with the Jus Gentium,
the publicists have found a reason for borrowing it, however plainly
it may bear the marks of a distinctively Roman origin. We may observe
too that the derivative theories are afflicted with the weakness of
the primary notion. In the majority of the Publicists, the mode of
thought is still "mixed." In studying these writers, the great
difficulty is always to discover whether they are discussing law or
morality--whether the state of international relations they describe
is actual or ideal--whether they lay down that which is, or that
which, in their opinion, ought to be.

The assumption that Natural Law is binding on states _inter se_ is the
next in rank of those which underlie International Law. A series of
assertions or admissions of this principle may be traced up to the
very infancy of modern juridical science, and at first sight it seems
a direct inference from the teaching of the Romans. The civil
condition of society being distinguished from the natural by the fact
that in the first there is a distinct author of law, while in the last
there is none,