Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

laws are of advantage to men as a body everywhere. No State is so strong that it does not in some way need the help of others, for example, in trade.

We infer a law of nature from the first principles of things, and an international law from the universal agreement of men. The former is independent of the deliberate will of men; the latter is a product of that will. "Unjust" in the first sense means conflicting with the existence and persistence of a society of reasonable beings, and tending to undermine it. God Himself cannot alter natural law, for He would then be making things to contradict the very Nature which He has given to them.1 Natural law does not bind us to create particular institutions, but it binds us to adopt a certain course of conduct towards them when created. It does not bind us to institute the modern tenure of property, but it binds us to respect it when created. It does not bind a nation never to go to war, but it binds the nation to certain conduct in its wars. All these and other positions are proved in the pages of Grotius by reasoning, by learned authorities, and by Scripture.

To look more especially at the institution of Property, there was at first a common right of all men to unappropriated things of the material world, as in the Garden of Eden. But soon (after the Deluge and Babel), the earth was divided, not only among nations, but among families. Things were divided by a tacit or by an expressed compact, whereby it was conceded that the first occupier should not be disturbed. The sea cannot be appropriated like the land, because it cannot be so occupied and devoted to separate human uses. Division of property follows, and does not precede occupation. Now this proprietorship is not subversive of the original law of Nature. In extreme need that law reasserts itself; selfpreservation must overcome the rights of property, just as in a storm we may need to cut away the mast. But the need must be extreme to justify seizure of property,

1 De Jure B., I. 1. 4 and 5. So Hooker in his Ecclesiastical Polity (1593 seq.), makes the Law of Nature the necessary substratum of revealed religion.

2 De Jure B., I. I. x., § 7. Cf. the statements of J. S. Mill about

the "laws" of distribution.

or forcible passage through another's territory, or the doing of damage to private individuals in war.

The law of nature is in favour of a right of passage for merchandise, for it is the interest of the human race generally that trade should go on, normal trade being a mutual gain to the two parties trading, and a loss to no one. The law of nature allows any nation to occupy land which is unoccupied by another nation. The law of nature does not absolutely condemn Slavery, for a necessity so extreme as to endanger life will give men a right to prefer slavery to death. slavery to death. Bodin and Grotius agree in giving slavery a relative or historical justification. No one is born free, or born a slave, but acquires the one condition or the other from subsequent fortune.

The law of Nations, as distinguished from the law of Nature, has to do with the relations of nations as jointly forming one society among themselves, in contrast both with the relations of individual men to individual men (under the law of nature) and with the relation of a single State to its citizens (by the civil law). The law of nations may often be in conflict with the law of nature, and the civil law of the State with both. A State is "an artificial body" or organism, whose identity remains though the component particles may change, as in an animal body. Among the relations of citizens in a State to each other are the relations of contract and exchange. Grotius at this point gives a good description of value, and cognate economical notions, drawing freely as usual on classical writers. The natural measure of value is, as Aristotle says, human needs (indigentia, xpeía), but there are desires of unneeded luxuries. Grotius takes account of cost in value, and makes a distinction very like that of Ricardo between the value of articles limited in supply, and the value of articles freely produced. The various commercial phenomena of monopolies and "corners," of usury, insurance, and commercial partnerships, are described at some length; and in all of them the principle is held that a bargain deliberately made is in those matters as

1 De Jure B., II. IX. § III., "Corpora haec artificialia."
2 De Jure B., II. XII., De Contractibus.

binding and presumably as mutually beneficial as in any other contract. Like a true Dutchman, Grotius magnifies the importance of commerce, and gives historical facts in support of his contention, that commerce should be permitted, even during war.

The notion of contract plays a great part in Grotius. The first founders of a State are conceived as entering into the first of all contracts, which is the condition of all others within the State. This first contract, however, is simply declaratory of the law of nature; it is not an arbitrary act. It is when we come to conventions like the League of Cambrai, or the Hanseatic League, and other unions for special purposes, that we find an addition to the law of nature. When once the first contract is entered into, the law of nature no longer permits and forbids all that it permitted and forbade before, in the "primævus naturæ status" before that contract. references of Grotius to an original contract, and a state (as well as a law) of nature were of great influence on subsequent speculation. The good faith which respects all contracts from the first downwards is to him the necessary postulate of all union and communion of men, first on the large scale over the whole human society, then between nations, and finally between citizens within a nation. It is the breach of it that makes men unsocial,

These

and leads to war. Not only Christianity, but "humana utilitas" itself bids us seek peace and ensue it.2

It must be clear from the foregoing statement that the doctrine of Grotius is by no means a mere revival of the doctrine of Aristotle that man is a social animal. To Aristotle the doctrine meant that man was born for life in a State, and that the State was the end, and a man, as an individual, was no end in himself. "Great Nature spake and it was done." The plan of the world included States, and men must be made to fulfil the end of Nature and become citizens. As Stahl truly says, the emphasis is laid by Grotius not on "great Nature" but on human Man has certain qualities which make him

nature.

3

1 De Jure B., I. 1., § III., II. xv. § v. Compare III. III. § II.
2De Jure B., III. xxv., § IV.

3 Rechtsphil., I. 174; cf. Bluntschli, Staatslehre, p. 70.

social, and hence he founds a State, while at the same time and for the same reason he belongs to other and often wider communities as well. This of course was implied, as we have seen,' in Christianity, but it had not been stated before so clearly, in a non-religious form and by a mere political philosopher. Moreover the very notion that the State begins in a species of contract conveys to us that in the mind of Grotius the individual men, not at first jointly, but severally, are the real startingpoint. Without needing to represent original compact as a commercial bargain, we can readily understand the bearing of such a theory on economical speculation. By holding commercial bargains to be as innocent as all other contracts, Grotius was enabled to clear his mind of much of the current cant about usury and the wickedness of traders; and he did his part in making a dispassionate inquiry into economical subjects possible. But his importance in the history of the relations between Economics and Philosophy is mainly due to the influence of his Political Philosophy. From his epoch, if not from himself, we must date the increased interest in two lines of inquiry, both of which are in contact with Economics. The first is that assiduous study of the effects of foreign commerce which led to the Mercantile Theory. The other is the more abstract study of the first principles of politics and political philosophy, which we see in Hobbes, Spinoza, and Pufendorf. In our own Locke and Hume we have both studies pursued by the same individuals ; but it is not till we come to the French Physiocrats that we find the principles of political philosophy and the practical principles of economic policy brought apparently into one channel, and made parts of one and the same system.

NOTE. RICHARD HOOKER (1553-1600).

Though Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity (printed 1593 seq.) is (as the title shows) not a work on general jurisprudence, the author has really gone far along the path followed by Grotius in pursuit of the idea of a law of nature. The two men wrote independently, but with a similar motive, the one trying to vindicate Protestant Ethics, the other Protestant (or at least Anglican) Church government. The Church (says.

1 Above, p. 51.

Hooker) is founded on the Scriptures, but the Scriptures are not in the barest literal sense the only rule to direct us, for the Scriptures themselves take for granted men as they are, placed by their physical and intellectual constitution under certain laws of nature, these including not only moral rules but a certain order of civil society and the rules thereof. Scripture gives all that is necessary to salvation, but assumes a human subject capable of understanding its teachings, as a teacher of elocution assumes that his pupil has a voice and knows grammar. Perhaps we might express this by saying that Christianity does not address itself to an abstract man, nor attempt the impossible task of beginning with a "tabula rasa." Similarly Augustine, De Civitate Dei (quoted by Dante, De Monarchia, III. p. 368, Fraticelli): "Non sane omnia quæ gesta narrantur, etiam significare aliquid putanda sunt," etc. "Solo vomere terra proscinditur, sed ut hoc fieri possit etiam cætera aratri membra sunt necessaria." For Hooker's influence on Locke, see infra.

« НазадПродовжити »