source of private emolument, just as regular and settled as the right of the landholder to the products of the earth.

Meanwhile, however, the different nations of Europe had respectively acquired their distinct public organization; alliances and other conventions were become frequent; princes appealed to the mediation of other princes, and addressed themselves to the common judgment of Christendom; occasional diplomatic relations between them gradually came into more constant use: and thus the elements of the modern law of nations began to develope themselves all over Europe. It will be satisfactory to have some of the great usages and institutions pointed out, which were developed during the period under review.

In the outset we have Christianity preeminent in its general influence over the civilization of Europe, and distinctly useful in respect of the reciprocal relations of sovereignties. Of sovereignties, because, in those times, Europe was divided, not into nations exclusively, but into federative sovereignties, somewhat similar in principle to the organization of the United States, except that the sovereignties were composed for the most part of the feudal barons in behalf of themselves and their vassals, not of the vassals in the aggregate, considered as a state or political community.

Remember that the invading barbarians were pagans, emphatically so, and the professors of a superstition of drunkenness and blood; and that the first glimmering of civilization, discernible among them, dates from their conversion to Christianity. Remember, also, that the Christian religion, in contrast with most other forms of worshipping God, discountenances the shedding of blood either in sacrifice or war. That is, viewed in the light of a moral code, Christianity is a pacific system. Hence, upon the conversion of the barbarians to Christianity, that effect instantly followed, which it was natural to anticipate; a mitigation of the universality and ferocity of war, as previously waged all over Europe. Then began the custom of appealing to peace, as the means of sparing the effusion of the blood of fellow Christians. The Emperor Charlemagne cites the text of Scripture upon this point in his Capitularies. But the church did not content itself with good maxims, the inculcation of anti-belligerent doctrines merely in words. It cast about successfully for the means of innovating practically upon the existing usages of war. To this end, it began by establishing that Pax Ecclesiæ, Peace of the Church, which figures conspicuously in all the early laws of the barbarians, of whatever tribe or locality; that is, the prohibition of acts of violence in churches, monasteries, and other places consecrated to the worship or service of God. "We have all one Heavenly Father, and one Spiritual Mother, which is the Church," says the law of the Saxon Aethered, "and therefore we are all of us brethren; and the peace of the church is the great

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peace to be cultivated by a Christian." Having thus obtained an immunity from war in behalf of certain places, the church next betook itself to procuring it for certain days, being the Lord's day, and other chief holidays traditionally observed by the Roman Church. To enforce the prohibition of warfare and other worldly acts on those days, it was ordained that those who transgressed it should be deprived of Christian privileges in life and after death. A remarkable incident rendered the efforts of the church in this particular conspicuous. It was pretended that a bishop in Aquitaine received a message from God, enjoining peace under the immediate penalty of divine vengeance; wherefore ensued the Treuga Domini, or Truce of the Lord, a complete cessation of hostilities for the space of seven years; and the church availed itself of the occasion to re-enjoin the perpetual immunity of the chief holidays, including three days of each week, from the evening of Thursday to the morning of Monday, so as to include the days of the Passion and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. And associations of barons bound themselves by treaty or deed to keep the conditions of the Treuga Domini. In obedience to a similar pretended revelation, the prelates and barons of the south of France assembled and made a league, called the Brotherhood of God, for the purpose not only of observing, but of enforcing, peace.

This example illustrates the humanizing influence of the tenets of Christianity upon the international relations of Europe, especially as displayed in the authority of the pope prior to the time of the Reformation, and in that of the Ecumenical Councils.

Though, in the early ages of Christianity, it is undeniable that the bishops of Rome were but as other bishops, and invested only with diocesan authority similar to theirs, yet the political position of Rome, as the capital of the Christian world tended to impart superior dignity and importance to its bishops. Accordingly, the Council of Chalcedon ascribed to Pope Leo the title of Ecumenical, that is, universal, bishop; and the general superintendence of the church, thus conferred on the Roman See in the time of the Roman emperors, was confirmed by Charlemagne, after the conversion of the barbarians, extended by the forged code of Decretals, falsely ascribed to Saint Isidore,-and established by Hildebrand. In the plenitude of its power, the Papal See claimed to hold the keys of heaven as the successor of Saint Peter; and thus, not only to exercise a general superintendence over all ecclesiastical persons, but also to excommunicate, and thus to depose lay sovereigns, by declaring them unfit to reign, and so to give and take away kingdoms. Unwarranted by scripture or positive institution as this stupendous usurpation of the Pope may have been, its existence is not the less certain. All the inhabitants of Latin Europe concurred in recognising him as the religious head of the church. But the limits between political

duty, and moral and religious duty, are not easy to define at any time. Least of all were they clearly marked out in those times, when the clergy alone possessed whatever intelligence there was in the world. Thus it came about that Western Europe was resolved into a grand community of nations, having an elective chief, who was their infallible censor in all points of morality and faith, the mediator between earth and heaven, the great casuist for the solution of all difficulties, the judge for the redress of all the wrongs of all mankind, and the political as well as moral and religious director of the affairs of Christendom. If it were compatible with the imperfection of human nature that this extraordinary power, based upon the religious respect and confidence of the world, could have been administered in the spirit of its orgin, with unqualified purity and wisdom, it would have united all the nations of Christendom in a holy brotherhood of peace, and exemplified on earth the celestial government of the Deity. Its abuse, in the ordinary course of human affairs, by the meddlesome and all-grasping ambition of the Roman See, occasioned its overthrow; but not before it had done much to combine and cement together the sovereignties of Europe in a great Christian republic.

Innumerable instances of the beneficial exercise of this parental superintendence of Christendom by the church, occur in the history of all the chief nations of Europe. It began before the dissolution of the empire. Theodosius, having slaughtered seven thousand men at Thessalonica, without discrimination of the guilty from the innocent, approached the church at Milan to pay his accustomed devotion, unconscious, or at least unthoughtful, of his crime. St. Ambrose boldly met him at the gate, and addressed to him a severe but affecting admonition on his injustice, forbade him to enter, and sent him away, great as he was in the yet undivided control of the whole Roman empire, a penitent and humbled man. The same thing continued among the oldest of the Christianized barbarians. Thus, when Lotharius, the first king of Lotharinga, repudiated his wife to marry another with whom he had previously lived in criminal intercourse, the Pope interposed, and compelled him, after a long struggle, to return to his duty. And examples of it abound in the centuries preceding the Reformation. When Henry II. of England was tortured by the undutiful conduct of his turbulent sons, he poured out his agony into the bosom of the Pope, as the spiritual consoler and guide of Christendom. Nothing less than the authority of the Roman See would have procured the release of Richard Coeur-de-Lion from captivity. Repeatedly the church compelled great princes to give up individuals unjustly detained, as in the case of the three daughters of Tancred of Sicily thus wrested from the Emperor Henry VI., and of the infant son of the King of Aragon, held captive by Simon de Montfort. We mention these particular

examples, rather more than the familiar ones, of the interposition of the church in political questions, for the reason, that this kind of parental supervision of sovereign states and princes by the See of Rome, is a most peculiar, and yet little notorious trait of the law of nations, as observed by Christian Europe in the middle ages.

The Ecumenical Councils were, as Voltaire justly remarks, a genuine European senate. These councils, in their inception, were ecclesiastical merely; but in process of time they were extended for common convenience, so as to embrace the temporal concerns of Europe. Instances occurred of the trial and deposition of princes on these occasions; and in the settlement of all the great controverted questions of the day, the Ecumenical Councils assumed a jurisdiction quite as broad as any of the European congresses of our own time, and were constituted in the same way, of princes in person, or represented by their ambassadors, except that they usually comprised a large number of ecclesiastical dignitaries, in addition to the temporal sovereigns, and settled the religious equally with the political affairs of the commonwealth of Christendom.

There is another doctrine, introduced into the law of nations, by the Roman church, which we ought not to omit indicating as an extraordinary instance of abuse of power; and that is, the view of the relation between Christian and Infidel held in those times, and exemplified in the crusades and in the conquest of America. Without dwelling upon the fact of the crusades, look at the grant of the East and West Indies, made by Pope Alexander to Spain and Portugal. This concession proceeded on the idea, which obtained in Europe after the preaching of the crusades, that countries inhabited by a pagan people, were lawfully open to invasion and subjugation by the first Christians, for the purpose of conversion. The same principle is recognised in the first patent of Henry VII. to the Cabots.

Next to Christianity, in their influence upon the reciprocal relations of the states of Europe, deserve to be considered the Feudal System, and that singular offspring of it, the institution of chivalry. Allusion has already been made to the universal prevalence of bloodshed in the middle ages. This, it is notorious, grew out of the feudal right of private war, as it was called, exercised by men of noble or gentle blood, all over Europe, who held themselves sovereigns in everything except such duties of allegiance as they specially contracted to their respective feudal superiors, and retained the rights of peace and war amongst many other reserved attributes of sovereignty, in that spirit of personal independence which characterized the invading barbarians. Thus it happened that Europe was covered with castles, each the stronghold of an armed chieftain, who carried on military operations at will. To what excess this practice was carried, may be judged by the fact, that in England alone, at the

conclusion of peace between Henry II. and Stephen, there were 1115 baronial castles ordered to be destroyed in the process of public pacification. While Christianity did so much to check and abolish this custom, the monstrous evils it occasioned were also counteracted, in some sort by the association of Chivalry, which, amid the universal depravation of society, made it a point of honour to perform those acts of virtue and patriotism, which the law did not enjoin, or which, if it did enjoin, there was no political organization competent to enforce. And these two institutions, the Feudal System and Chivalry, had the effect of increasing the natural dependence, or rather connexion, of the different nations of Europe, by means of the mutuality of relation, which they introduced among princes and barons of separate countries. Thus, the kings of England long did homage to the kings of France, for their possessions on the continent. And there was a never-ending series of intricate interlacements of feudal or chivalrous relations among the sovereigns of the continent, especially in Germany, where the feudal system prevails to this day more than in any other part of Europe.

But, after all, the great body of law-text, appertaining to the international relations of Christendom, is the result of treaties, conventions, deeds and charters, constituting the positive institute of the public law of Europe and America. These conventions were, of necessity, founded upon the institutions, opinions and ways of thinking and acting, which prevailed in European society; they were designed to give the solemnity of stipulation or promise to contemplated acts; and they introduced changes into the existing laws and usages of Christendom. Some of them were singular incidents of the personal rights of sovereignty, acquired by European princes in modern times; especially treaties of marriage, and instruments of devise, gift, or sale, whereby the boundaries of states underwent alterations in form unknown to the ancient republics of Greece and Italy. Thus the See of Rome obtained the territory of Avignon by purchase from the Countess of Provence. Thus, also, the Americans acquired Louisiana and Florida, the one from the Emperor Napoleon, and the other from Ferdinand of Spain. The United States, however, be it remarked by the way, being a government of social compact, not of prescription, made these purchases upon very questionable grounds of constitutional right; the presidents who negotiated the treaties of purchase, and the congresses which sanctioned them, feeling justified by the great utility of the thing and the acquiescence of the people, in thus doing what there is no authority for doing set down in the constitution. It is clear, on the other side, that the United States, although they be borne out in buying the territory and population of other countries, yet cannot sell their own; still less can they give them away; or alienate them by devise, which happens to states held in hereditary sovereignty by indi