successful exertions in procuring his escape is well known. He had been distinguished in his own country as a statesman and a philosophical lawyer; he was almost equally celebrated as an historian and a divine. Having entered warmly into the controversy between the Arminians and the Gomarists, he was involved in the misfortunes of the pensionary Barnevelt, and of the Arminian party; and the philosopher of Delft, after the execution of his political chief, was in 1619 condemned to perpetual imprisonment.
The horrors of the civil war which had desolated his country, brought home to his attention the cruelty and injustice of which, to use his own words, even barbarians might be ashamed. War was declared upon the slightest pretext, or without any pretext at all; and when arms were once taken up, all reverence for laws human or divine was laid aside, as if an edict had been published for the commission of every act of crime. Videbam per Christianum orbem vel barbaris gentibus pudendam bellandi licentiam, levibus aut nullis de causis ad arma procurri, quibus semel sumtis nullam juris divini, nullam humani juris reverentiam, plane quasi uno edicto ad omnia scelera emisso furore. (Prolegomena, § 28.)
Grotius had entered his prison with the prospect of perpetual seclusion from the active duties of a citizen, and in this respect his exile in a foreign land made no change in his condition; so that the political repose which was forced upon him by his exile, gave him an opportunity to mature his views and cultivate, in the interest of his fellow-men at large, the noblest part of jurisprudence, that which is conversant with questions touching the universal fellowship of the human race.
