It will not be expected that we should make an analysis or enter into an examination of the treatise On the rights of war and peace:  that would be a subject for a large work.  We shall only observe that those who would study the law of nations cannot read this book too often:  they will find in it the most agreeable learning joined to the strongest reasoning.  The whole is not equally correct:  but what large work is not liable to the same censure?  Besides, we must consider that it has the glory of being original in its kind[150], and the first treatise that reduced into a system the most excellent and useful of all sciences.

It is divided into three books; to which is prefixed a preliminary discourse treating of the certainty of law in general, and containing a plan of the work.

The first book enquires into the origin of the rights of war and its different kinds, as also the extent of the power of Sovereigns:  he explains in the second the nature and extent of those rights, whether public or private, whose violation authorises the taking up arms:  in the third he treats of all that relates to the course of the war and the treaties of peace which put an end to it.

The celebrated translator of Grotius and Puffendorf assures us that Grotius took the hint of attempting a system of natural law from Lord Bacon’s works; and certainly, he adds, none was more proper for such an undertaking.  A clear head, an excellent judgment, profound meditation, universal learning, prodigious reading, continual application to study amidst many distractions and the duties of several considerable places, together with a sincere love to truth, are qualities which cannot be denied to that great man without wronging our own judgment and giving room to suspect us of black envy or gross ignorance.  It is said that he designed at first to give his book the title, of The law of nature and of nations; but afterwards preferred that which it now bears, Of the rights of war and peace.  Never book met with such universal approbation:  Commentaries have been written upon it by many learned men, and it has been publicly read at Universities.  Though M. Barbeyrac thinks Puffendorf’s book much more useful, he is at the same time persuaded that if Grotius had not led the way, we should not yet have had any tolerable system of natural law:  “and, he adds, if Puffendorf had been in Grotius’s place, and Grotius in Puffendorf’s, the treatise Of the rights of war and peace would in my opinion have been much more defective; and that Of the law of nature and nations much more perfect.”  Puffendorf himself owns that there remained few things to be said after Grotius.