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Title: The Rights of War and Peace: Including the Law of Nature and of Nations (Universal Classics Library, V. 1.) by Hugo Grotius, Archibald Colin Campbell ISBN: 0-88355-845-9 Publisher: Hyperion Press Incorporated of Westport, CT Pub. Date: September, 1993 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $38.00

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: A timeless classic on the moral basis of Civilization
Comment: "Those who write treatises of natural law, can only declare what their own moral sense and reason dictate in the several cases they state. Such of them as happen to have feelings and a reason coincident with those of the wise and honest part of mankind, are respected and quoted as witnesses of what is morally right or wrong in particular cases. Grotius, Puffendorf, Wolf, and Vattel are of this number." - Thomas Jefferson.

Better known under his latin name, Grotius, Hugo de Groot (1583-1645), a Dutch protestant jurist, is generally considered the "father of international law". Another great father, that of the U.S. Constitution, praised his "genius and erudition", while U.S. historian George Bancroft saw in "the admirable Grotius" "the first political writer of his age", though he was a contemporary of the more widely known Thomas Hobbes. And yet here am I, writing the first Amazon review of his masterpiece, *The Rights of War and Peace*, published in 1625.

In his introduction to this first volume of the beautiful collection, "Universal Classics" , published in 1901 by Walter Dunne, David J. Hill provides a fascinating portrait of this precocious genius : "At eight he wrote Latin verses which betrayed poetic talent ; at twelve he entered the University... and at fifteen he defended 'with he greatest applause' Latin theses in philosophy and jurisprudence... at the age of seventeen he was admitted to the bar". As for the present treatise, a document discovered in 1868 revealed that "the entire plan and even the arrangement of the *De Jure Belli ac Pacis* were in the mind of Grotius when he was only twenty-one years of age."

To summarize the main thrust of his argument, Grotius believed, in Hill's apt words, that "war is never to be undertaken except to assert rights, and when undertaken is never to be carried on except within the limits of rights." These two fundamental requirements, without which no war can be called just, organize the two major sections of this three-book work : Book II, which articulates the just causes of war, namely "the defense of person and property" ; and Book III, which describes the just prosecution of war, by identifying "what is lawful in war." (The two quotes in this sentence are the titles of the first chapters of each book.)

But to reduce this treatise to these two questions would be unfair to the scope of Grotius's intellect. For the Dutch jurist digs deep, not only philosophically, as when he discusses the foundation of property rights, the moral nature of oaths or the relationship between the law of nature, God's commandments and positive law ; but culturally, offering a magisterial survey of mankind's treasuries of knowledge and wisdom, from Scripture to Homer, Aristotle, Thucydides, Livy, Ulpian, Justinian, Cicero and Seneca, among others.

*The Rights of War and Peace* should be on the reading list of all American patriots, who cannot ignore such a landmark in the Natural Law tradition. Grotius's discussion of the right of self-defense is strong ammunition for a libertarian interpretation of the Second Amendment. And his treatment of "pirates and robbers" applies perfectly to modern terrorists, those "atrocious malefactors... [whose] calling... is to extort terms by fear." Reading this book in the week that followed the destruction of the World Trade Center, I was fascinated by its relevance to the whole situation, and how its clarity can help refute the whitewashing of bin Laden's acts by some perverted muslim intellectuals, preying on a West disarmed by moral relativism, ignorance and confusion.

Of course, Grotius is not "modern" in all his opinions. He does not seem to recognize a people's right to rebel against an unjust monarch, for instance, though a James Otis managed to quote him in support of American independence. But Russell Kirk, in a passage of his *The Roots of American Order* praising Montesquieu, went too far in reducing him to the idea "that a conqueror has the right to slaughter or perpetually enslave a whole people whose armies he has defeated." Doesn't Grotius write that "No one can be justly killed by design, except by way of legal punishment, or to defend our lives, and preserve our property, when it cannot be effected without his destruction"? Doesn't he beautifully affirm that "it is the characteristic of bravery to esteem our opponents as enemies, while contending with victory, and to treat them as men, when conquered"?

Let us not distort the thinking of this prodigious individual by dropping the context and putting an undue emphasis on the errors he shared with his time. Let us rather concur with James Madison's assessment : "Grotius is not unjustly considered, as in some respects, the father of the modern code of nations. Great, however, as his authority deservedly may be, it yields, in a variety of instances, to that of later jurists; who, to all the lights furnished by this luminary, have added those derived from their own sources, and from the improvements made in the intercourse and happiness of nations."

(Note : The editor, A. C. Campbell, made a few cuts in the original text, mostly of what he considered to be redundant or too technical or obscure paragraphs, but included a certain number of interesting footnotes drawing parallels between some of Grotius's points and the writings of Vattel and Blackstone, through whom, when not directly, Grotius influenced the Founding Fathers.)