or them has been the same at any given stage in civilization. The
eighteenth century asked for liberty, property, and happiness. We are
putting a rather different meaning, or perhaps a different stress on the
words, not only here but throughout the civilized world, and the main
movements of legal change are in the same direction everywhere.

One word about the two kinds of law known as Public and Private
International law.

The fact that the laws of different countries are different gives rise
to problems whenever the Courts of one country have to deal with a set
of facts where some foreign element is involved, for instance a citizen
or an inhabitant of another country, or property which is in another
country, or a contract or transaction which took place abroad. Now we
have long got past the stage at which the Courts could simply disregard
the foreign element, could say this man is a foreigner, therefore he has
no rights; or this event took place abroad, and therefore we will treat
it as if it had never happened. On the other hand it will not do for
the Court to apply simply its own law. Grave injustice would be done,
for instance, if a transaction made on the faith of law which will give
a certain effect to it, were treated as made under another law which
will give it a different effect or no effect at all. For this reason the
Courts of every country have formed rules (sometimes called Private
International Law; sometimes, and as some hold, more properly, called
'Conflict of Laws') by which they determine how far, where a foreign
element is involved, the foreign law is to be carried out rather than
the law which the Court applies in ordinary cases. These rules are not
the same in every country, because differences of opinion are possible
as to what justice requires. But the very existence of such rules shows
that the Courts hold that the world of law is one, however much
diversified, and that no one territorial law can blindly go on its way
without taking account of its neighbours.

International law in the more proper sense of the word, that is Public
International Law, or the law which governs the relations between
States, is a very different thing. Something of the kind was not unknown
in the ancient world; the Greeks, for instance, had rules against the
poisoning of wells, the proper treatment of envoys, and the making and
keeping of treaties. But in its modern form it dates just from the time
when States were w