lodgings, rather than bearing swords to fight. It was only gradually that the function of ambassadors broadened out into the conduct of relations, and the maintenance of good relations, between their own States and those to which they were accredited. From the time of the Treaty of Westphalia—the treaty basis of much of the modern history of Europe[1]—that higher and broader function could not be escaped; and it is from that Treaty that the institution of permanent diplomatic representatives became general in Europe. In all the development of diplomacy from Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy in 1494 to the close of the Thirty Years’ War, thence, for a hundred years, to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, and occasionally, at least, since that Treaty, the leading influence has been exerted by the consideration of the balance of power, with its nice avoidance of a hegemony, and its requirement of guarantees, in principle and in effective force, for the rights and security of the smaller States. The process has been a long and arduous one, tortuous and inconclusive. In shaping its
- ↑ Instructions, passim, to ambassadors for more than a century thereafter, and even down to the French Revolution, are ample evidence of its importance. Wheaton chose the Peace as ‘the epoch from which to deduce the history of the modern science of international law’. It ‘continued to form the basis of the conventional law of Europe’ until the French Revolution. It closed the age of Grotius, and coincided with the foundation of ‘the new school of public jurists, his disciples and successors in Holland and Germany. The peace completed the code of the public law of the empire, which thus became a science diligently cultivated in the German universities, and which contributed to advance the general science of European public law. It also marks the epoch of the firm establishment of permanent legations, by which the pacific relations of the European states have been since maintained; and which, together with the appropriation of the widely diffused language of France, first to diplomatic intercourse, and subsequently to the discussions of international law, contributed to give a more practical character to the new science.’ History of the Law of Nations (1845), 69, 71–2.
