of what was almost perpetual war. This was the reality which confronted man, his inevitable doom, it seemed, as it had been pronounced to the fallen sinners of Eden. Peace was something which man had enjoyed once, but forfeited. The myth- and poetry-loving Greeks, and, later, the poets of Rome delighted to paint a state of eternal peace, not as something to whose coming they could look forward in the future, but as a golden age of purity whose records lay buried in the past, a paradise which had been, but which was no more. Voices, more scientific, were raised even in Greece in attempts, such as Aristotle's, to show that the evolution of man had been not a course of degeneration from perfection, but of continual progress upwards from barbarism to civilisation and culture. But the change in popular thinking on this matter was due less to the arguments of philosophy than to a practical experience of the causes which operate in the interests of peace. The foundation of a universal empire under Alexander the Great gave temporary rest to nations heretofore incessantly at war. Here was a proof that the Divine Will had not decreed that man was to work out his punishment under unchanging conditions of perpetual warfare. This idea of a universal empire became the Greek ideal of a perpetual peace. Such an empire was, in the language of the Stoics, a world

obtained immediate popularity and wide-spread fame. The first half of the eighteenth century was already prepared to receive and mature a plan of this kind.

Henry IV. and St. Pierre.

The Grand Dessein of Henry IV. is supposed to have been formed by that monarch and reproduced in Sully's Memoirs, written in 1634 and discovered nearly a century later by St. Pierre. The story goes that the Abbé found the book buried in an old garden. It has been shewn, however, that there is little likelihood that this project actually originated with the king, who probably corresponded fairly well to Voltaire's picture of him as war hero of the Henriade. The plan was more likely conceived by Sully, and ascribed to the popular king for the sake of the better hearing and greater influence it might in this way be likely to have, and also because, thereby, it might be less likely to create offence in political circles. St. Pierre himself may or may not have been acquainted with the facts.

The so-called Grand Dessein of Henry IV. was, shortly, as follows. * It proposed to divide Europe

* The main articles of this and other peace projects are to be found in International Tribunals, published by the Peace Society.

*

between fifteen Powers, in such a manner that the balance of power should be established and preserved. These were to form a Christian republic on the basis of the freedom and equality of its members, the armed forces of the federation being supported by fixed contribution. A general council, consisting of representatives from the fifteen states, was to make all laws necessary for cementing the union thus formed and for maintaining the order once established. It would also be the business of this senate to "deliberate on questions that might arise, to occupy themselves with discussing different interests, to settle quarrels amicably, to throw light upon and arrange all the civil, political and religious affairs of Europe, whether internal or foreign." (Mémoires, vol. VI., p. 129 seq.)

This scheme of the king or his minister was expanded with great thoroughness and clear-sightedness by the Abbé St. Pierre: none of the many later plans for a perpetual peace has been so perfect in details. He proposes that there should be a permanent and perpetual union between, if possible, all Christian sovereigns-of whom he suggests nineteen, excluding the Czar-"to preserve unbroken peace in Europe," and that a permanent Congress

* Professor Lorimer points out that Prussia, then the Duchy of Brandenburg, is not mentioned. (Institutes of the Law of Nations, II. Ch. VII., p. 219.)