Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms

JURISPRUDENCE is that science which inquires into the general principles which ought to be the foundation of the laws of all nations. Grotius seems to have been the first who attempted to give the world anything like a regular system of natural jurisprudence, and his treatise On the Laws of War and Peace, with all its imperfections, is perhaps at this day the most complete work on this subject l. It is a sort of casuistical book for sovereigns and states, determining in what cases war may justly be made and how far it may be carried on. As states have no common sovereign and are with respect to one another in a state of nature, war is their only method of redressing injuries. He determines war to be lawful in every case where the state receives an injury which would be redressed by an equitable civil magistrate 2. This naturally led him to inquire into the constitution of states and the principles of civil laws ; into the rights of sovereigns and subjects ; into the nature of crimes, contracts, property, and whatever else was the object of law, so that the two first books of 1 Moral Sentiments, ad fin. - Lib. ii. cap. i. § 2. 2 JURISPRUDENCE his treatise, which are upon this subject, are a complete system of jurisprudence. The next writer of note after Grotius was Mr. Hobbes. He had conceived an utter abhorrence of the ecclesiastics, and the bigotry of his times gave him occasion to think that the subjection of the consciences of men to ecclesiastic authority was the cause of the dissensions and civil wars that happened in England during the times of Charles I and of Cromwell.…