fort should be made to put an end to the degrading vice, which is the cause of them. Again, numerous crimes are owing to ignorance. Let every effort, therefore, be made by the legislature and by private individuals to diffuse knowledge among the people. Men have long enough acted on the principle of trampling upon and destroying each other; let them reverse the maxims of their conduct, and seek to bind up the wounds of their fellow-men, and to save them. Here is a great work to be done; a work honorable as it is great ; a work, which aims at the renovation of society, not by the inefficacious methods of the block, the gallows, and the guillotine; but by the nobler methods of moral culture; by purifying the fountain of good and evil in the youthful breast; by planting the seeds of knowledge and virtue, which shall afterwards spring up and incorporate the strength of their branches and the beauty of their flower and foliage in the mature life and action of the man. CHAPTER FIRST. PROGRESS OF THE LAW OF NATIONS. THE Law of Nations, in its present extent and with its present comparative excellence, did not spring into being at once. On the contrary, it was gradual and slow in its growth, having every where expanded and purified itself, in a greater or less degree of conformity with the expansion, purification, and elevation of the human intellect. As far back as the flourishing periods of Greece and Rome, we discover the seeds, the beginnings of this law. It is right to presume, that even then its principles were in some degree recognized and put in practice, although, with the single exception of a Treatise of Aristotle on the laws of war, now lost, there seems to be no evidence of their having been embodied in the form of a science.* It is pleasing to observe, that during the Peloponessian war, a convention was formed between Athens and Sparta, by which they agreed upon a mutual surrender and exchange of prisoners; a measure honorable to its authors and far above the prevalent maxims and policy of the age. In general, the nations of antiquity, even those that were most enlightened, seem to have had but a feeble conviction, that the principles of truth, justice, and humanity, which were * Grotius, Preliminary Discourse, § 37 :-Discourse of Sir James Mackintosh on the Law of Nature and Nations, p. 16. 2d Ed. |