of the subject of the Right of War requires us to displace the two great Dominican Monks, Franciscus à Victoria and Dominicus Soto from the foremost rank, which they have hitherto occupied as the leaders of a new school of thought upon the subject. Franciscus à Victoria began to teach at Valladolid in 1525, and was subsequently promoted to a Professor's Chair in the University of Salamanca. The character of his teaching may be gathered from a series of thirteen dissertations published for the first time at Lyons in 1557, six years before the publication of the work of Bellinus, and entitled, "Relectiones Theologica," a book of remarkable scarcity, although it has passed through four editions. The sixth dissertation is on the Right of War, and touches upon most of the questions subsequently discussed by Gentilis and by Grotius, whilst it breathes an intrepid spirit of justice and humanity, the characteristics of the Spanish theologians. The mantle of Franciscus à Victoria was transmitted to Dominicus Soto, his pupil and successor, who deserves equally with his master to live in the recollection of posterity, for to Soto belongs the signal honour of being the first to condemn the African slave trade. Soto was the confessor of the Emperor Charles V., and he was the chief authority consulted by that monarch on the occasion of the conference held before him at Valladolid in 1542, between Sepulveda, the advocate of the Spanish colonists, who maintained that the conquest of the Indies from the natives was perfectly lawful, and Bartolomeo las Casas, the Bishop of Chiapa, who contended that such conquest was unlawful, tyrannical, and unjust. The opinion of Soto may be gathered from the excellent principle laid down in his treatise on Justice and Law, which he dedicated to the unfortunate Don Carlos, namely that there is no difference in respect of their right to their country between Christians and Pagans, for the Law of Nations is equal to all Nations. Neque discrepantia (ut reor) est inter Christianos et Infideles, quoniam jus gentium cunctis gentibus æquale est."

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It was to be expected, however, that a systematic reduction of the practice of nations in the conduct of war to juridical rules should emanate from the camp rather than from the cloister, and from this point of view we are of accord with Professor Mancini in assigning to Pierino Bello, otherwise Bellinus, of Alba, a place amongst the earliest writers who have treated systematically of the Right of War. Professor Pierantoni, of the University of Naples, in his recently published History of International Law, has not failed to notice the work of Bellinus. "The . author," he says, quoting from Mancini, avows his intention not to occupy himself with the art of war or with military architecture, but he proposes to show, according to the Principles of Right, the reasons why a war is just, the modes of action which ought to be adopted in alliances, in treaties, in sieges and in truces, and the rules which should be observed by the commanders of armies, by the soldiers and by the country-people, whether with regard to the Prince whom they serve, or with regard to one another, or with regard to the enemies whom they have to combat." Bellinus appeals in support of his argument to examples derived from ancient and modern history, and to remarkable cases, which he had himself been called upon to decide in the discharge of his office. Some of the grave and delicate questions, which he propounds in the course of his work, are solved by him with a conscientiousness and a courageous freedom, which is surprising in one who held so high an official position. This feature of his character may account for the respect which was paid to his decision at a later period, when he was called upon to arbitrate between the Duke of Ferrara and the citizens of Florence, Modena, and Lucca, on a question of territorial boundary, which they had agreed to refer to the arbitration of the Duke of Savoy, who delegated to Bellinus the duty of drawing up and of pronouncing his arbitral decision.

We hesitate, however, to give our adhesion to the view.

of Professor Pierantoni, that Bellinus has the merit of having first drawn a line of separation between International Law and Theology, and that his work in that respect is distinguishable from the writings of his contemporaries Giovanni di Legnano and Martino Garato, of Lodi, otherwise known as Martinus Laudensis. The treatises of these latter writers, which are preserved by the side of that of Bellinus, in Vol. XVI. of the Tractatus Universi Juris, already mentioned, were known to Grotius, and he justly classes their authors with the theologians. Bellinus will also be found not to have shaken off his strict allegiance to the Canon Law. Amongst other propositions laid down by him are the following: that a soldier may not bequeath his property to a heretic, and that a soldier who is a heretic cannot make a privileged will. Such propositions seem to justify us in regarding him as lingering in the ranks of the theologians, more especially as in solving the question whether a priest may ever be given up as a hostage, he appeals to the Canon Law as the supreme authority on such a subject, and as deciding that a priest may be so given up to the enemy, provided always that a dispensation from the Pope has been previously obtained. We have no wish to detract from the remarkable merits of the great Piedmontese Jurist, but he could not well with due regard to his own usefulness, and to the interests of a science which was still in an embryo state, have given utterance to views, which would have perplexed his readers, but which, forty years later, when propounded by Gentilis, were both intelligible to the age, and very welcome to the people amongst whom they were disseminated.

To return then to Gentilis: a powerful impulse has of late been given by a variety of circumstances to an inquiry on behalf of United Italy, as to the debt of gratitude due from her to her earliest teachers of the Law of Nations, and more especially to Albericus Gentilis. The lectures of Professor Mancini at the

Athenæum of Turin had already designated Gentilis as the jurist par excellence, who was entitled at the hands of the Italian nation to a special recognition of his merits as having achieved for the Science of International Law a similar service to that, which Machiavelli had accomplished for the Science of Politics, by emancipating it from the trammels of theological casuistry. Emerico Amari had also in his "Critica di una Scienza delle Legislazioni Comparative" claimed for his Italian fellow-countryman the merit of having founded the Science of International Law, and had pronounced Albericus Gentilis to be the true father of the Science of the Right of War, in virtue of his treatise "de Jure Belli," and equally so of the Science of the Right of Peace, in virtue of his treatise "de Legationibus," and his treatise "de Armis Romanis." Amari had concluded his critical enquiry by appealing to Italy to do justice to her great citizen so long unworthily neglected by her, and strange to say, a voice had been raised in the northernmost province of the native country of Grotius, advocating the claims of Gentilis to be regarded as the Pioneer, who cleared the way for Grotius, but whose labours would probably have been consigned to oblivion, if Grotius had not expounded the subject of them with greater felicity, and not merely captivated, but convinced his readers. We happened to be ourselves at Groningen at the time when the able treatise of Dr. W. A. Reiger was published in that city, as an Appendix to the Programme of the Studies of the Civic Gymnasium of Groningen for 1867-68, and we were struck with the fullness and the impartiality, with which the learned author has discussed the nature of the assistance, which the writings of the Oxford Professor were calculated to afford to the Philosopher of Delft. That the writings of Gentilis were of assistance to Grotius we know from his own statement in the "prolegomena" to his great work, "De Jure Belli et Pacis," where he says that he had availed himself of

the labours of Albericus Gentilis as well as of those of Balthazar Ayala, and that he was sure they might be serviceable to others, as he knew that they had been useful to himself: "Cujus diligentia, sicut alios adjuvari posse scio, et me adjutum profiteor." Strange fatality that both Gentilis and Grotius should have been exiles from their native land at the time when they completed their respective works, and that the posterity of those who drove them forth into exile should, after the lapse of more than two centuries, be now seeking how best to do honour to their memory. Such, however, is the fact, and it is to the sympathy of the Faculty of Law, so to say, in the University of Oxford, where Albericus Gentilis found both a home and a career, and to its desire to contribute its quota to perpetuate the memory of one of the most illustrious of her Professors of Civil Law, that we have to attribute the movement in that University, which has led to the recent re-publication, at the Clarendon Press, of the treatise of Albericus Gentilis on the Right of War. We must not, however, omit to notice the very important aid, which was given to the solution of the question, how best to do becoming honour to the memory of Gentilis, by the circumstance that Dr. Thomas Erskine Holland, the Chichele Professor of International Law at Oxford, had happily selected the career of Gentilis as the subject of his inaugural lecture, delivered at All Souls' College on November 7th, 1874. We had ourselves been in correspondence, in 1873, with Professor Mancini on the subject of the contents of the Dorville MSS. in the Bodleian Library, which contain various papers in the handwriting of Albericus Gentilis, amongst many others in the handwriting of his younger brother Scipio; but to Professor Holland is due the merit of bringing the sympathies of the native country of Gentilis into immediate contact with those of England, his adopted country. It was on the reception of the lecture of Professor Holland by Professor Sbarbaro, of the University of Macerata, the chief town of