448 w. G. MILLEE'S PHILOSOPHY OF LAW. orthodox tenet. But I find the rejection of it possible without an appeal to Hegelian negations of negations, or schemes of Kantian and quasi- Kantian categories, or other things under- standed neither of lawyers nor of publicists. And a philosophy of international law which leads its followers to the conclusion that " pure neutrality is impossible now-a-days," and that, instead of aiming at impartial justice, "neutrals must make up their minds on which side right is, and give assistance to that side," in other words, must entitle the other side to treat them as enemies does not appear obviously fitted to promote the peace of Europe, and does appear to be founded on the standing confusion between acts of a State in its sovereign capacity and acts of individual subjects of that State. It is not true that " Great Britain sympathised with, and assisted to some extent, rebels against the Government of the United States ". These things were done by many British subjects, and the question was raised whether and how far their Government was bound by the law of nations to prevent them. But England, as a State, aimed at all events at exercising a perfectly impartial neutrality. No doubt, belli- gerents would always like to increase the burdens of neutrals ; and the Continental literature of international law, being mostly French or German, in other words produced by citizens of powerful military States whose immediate interest is to exag- gerate the claims of belligerents has lately given a show of authority to this tendency. But it would not the less be a retrograde step if the accepted law of nations came to approve such intolerable pretensions against neutrals as were set up by some American publicists during and after the war of Secession, and by some German ones during the war of 1870. Mr. Miller, to de- velop his theory fully, should be for restoring the good old times of non-belligerent subsidies of money and contingents of troops, with the difference that the judicious neutral, instead of being bound by treaties with his allies to furnish them such advantages in their quarrels, would be at liberty to offer them of his own motion to that side on which he finds the better right. As to the philosophy of law in general, it is not to be supposed that the English school (so far as there is a school) rejects Hegelian or other transcendental schemes thereof out of mere blindness. One may think it impossible that there should be any philosophy of law (which itself is a kind of philosophy) ; and this is probably the view implicitly held by most English lawyers. Or one may think such a philosophy possible, but reject the Hegelian form of it, for instance, because one thinks Hegel's philosophy wrong in itself, and therefore not likely to be profit- able when systematically applied to jurisprudence. Apart from this, again, one 1 may hold that if there is a philosophy of law properly so called, it must be something different from the philo- sophy of the State in general, and constructed on more narrowly bounded data. Jurisprudence is intimately connected with
