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It has been customary to take Grotius's book for the starting point of one of the best marked eras in the history of jurisprudence. Any account of the development of theories of justice is likely to begin the modern history of the subject with Grotius, and to put as a classical epoch a period designated as "from Grotius to Kant." Any account of theories of law is likely to set off a period from the revived study of Roman law in the Italian universities of the twelfth century to Grotius, and another from Grotius to the breaking up of the eighteenth century law-of-nature school. In almost all accounts of the history of the science of law, Grotius stands as marking a turning point.

Canada is the Scotland of America, and a proof is before you. Scotland gave a King to England in 1603; today Canada gives a President to the American Statistical Association. James Sixth of Scotland and First of England whose vasty shoes I thus inherit is, I fear, "mixed grill" to many. He was an apriorist, and he was a pedant. Though his education was bleak and early as Stuart Mill's, he hadn't a good style. His personal appearance was against him, also his northern accent, even his table manners (he drank his cocky-leekie from the bowl). He was given to cursing and swearing. It is a chilling historicism. Yet, despite that Professor Laski still uses him austerely in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, from a boy with the Fortunes of Nigel in my school-desk I have liked its "principal personage" (as Scott called him) James. And of course he is the James of Jamestown, first permanent English settlement, first cradle of representative government, in these United States.