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316 ON THE RISE, PROGRESS, ETC.The treatise " De Jure Belli et Pacis" may, on the whole,be considered as a fair earnest of what the spreading intelligence of the day might eventually produce.The religiousdisturbances and wars of the Hugonots inFrance took placeat the same time as the establishment of therepublic of the Netherlands, and appear to have been muchmore calculated to excite a spirit of political speculation.It was questionhere not only of preserving what was old,but of forming what was new. The Hugonot party, if itnever actually established a republic, was yet much moreinclined to republicanism than the insurgents of the Netherlands. But then the times of civil war are not the times ofquiet contemplation, and of theory and as;the tumult became more wild, the pursuits of literature gave way whollyto violence and bloodshed, or, if theystill attracted attention, it was only for purposes of theological debate.Still, amidst these disturbances, one writer made his appearance, who attracted too much notice to be lightly passed1over. This was John Bodin, the author of a work " DeRepublica;" he was not only a man of learning, but took ashare in the transactions of the time, and spoke in favour ofthe Hugonots, whose religion he had from the first embraced,at the diet of Blois. This did not, however, prevent himGrotius, and that answer might be given in the words of Grotius himself.He was not of such a stupid and servile cast of mind, as to quote the opinionsof poets or orators, of historians and philosophers, as those of judges fromwhose decision there was no appeal. He quotes them, as he tells us himself,as witnesses, whose conspiring testimony, mightily strengthened by their discordance on almost every other subject, is a conclusive proof of the unanimityof the whole human race on the^ great rules of duty, and the fundamentalprinciples of morals. On such matters poets and orators are the most unexceptionable of all witnesses; for they address themselves to the general feeling and sympathies of mankind; they are neither warped by system, norperverted by sophistry ; they can attain none of their objects ; they can neither please nor persuade if they dwell on moral sentiments not in unison withthose of their reader : no system of moral philosophy can surely disregard thegeneral feelings of human nature, and the according judgments of all agesand nations, But where are those feelings and that judgment recorded andobserved ? In those very writings which Grotius is gravely blamed for havinoquoted.The usages and laws of nations, the events of history, the opinionsof philosophers, the sentiments of orators and poets, as well as the observation of common life, are, in truth, the materials out of which the science ofmorality is formed 3 and those who neglect them are justly chargeable with avain attempt to philosophize, without regard to fact and experience, the solefoundations of all true philosophy."^ Discourse on the Study of the Law ofMature m^d Nations, etc., p. 17. TR.]\JOHANN-IS BODIXI, Da Rep. lib. vi., first published in French, 1576, butreused, enlarged, and translated into Latin by himself, 1584. Bodin wasmm 1529, and died 1596.