Holtzendorff in Holtzendorff, I. pp. 136-152--Ullmann, § 11--Despagnet, Nos. 67-68--Bonfils, Nos. 1713-1727--Mérignhac, I. pp. 26-28--Nys, I. pp. 166-183--Rivier, I. § 2--Fiore, I. Nos. 124-127--Martens, I. § 44--Holland, Studies, pp. 78-95--Bergbohm, "Staatsverträge und Gesetze als Quellen des Völkerrechts" (1877), pp. 44-77--Bulmerincq, "Praxis, Theorie, und Codification des Völkerrechts" (1874), pp. 167-192--Roszkowski in R.I. XXI. (1889), p. 520--Proceedings of the American Society of International Law, IV. (1910), pp. 208-227.
[Sidenote: Movement in Favour of Codification.]
§ 30. The lack of precision which is natural to a large number of the rules of the Law of Nations on account of its slow and gradual growth has created a movement for its codification. The idea of a codification of the Law of Nations in its totality arose at the end of the eighteenth century. It was Bentham who first suggested such a codification. He did not, however, propose codification of the existing positive Law of Nations, but thought of a utopian International Law which could be the basis of an everlasting peace between the civilised States.[32]
[Footnote 32: See Bentham's Works, ed. Bowring, VIII. p. 537; Nys, in _The Law Quarterly Review_, XI. (1885), pp. 226-231.]
Another utopian project is due to the French Convention, which resolved in 1792 to create a Declaration of the Rights of Nations as a pendant to the Declaration of the Rights of Mankind of 1789. For this purpose the Abbé Grégoire was charged with the drafting of such a declaration. In 1795, Abbé Grégoire produced a draft of twenty-one articles, which, however, was rejected by the Convention, and the matter dropped.[33]
[Footnote 33: See Rivier, I. p. 40, where the full text of these twenty-one articles is given. They did not contain a real code, but certain principles only.]
It was not until 1861 that a real attempt was made to show the possibility of a codification. This was done by an Austrian jurist, Alfons von Domin-Petrushevecz, who published in that year at Leipzig a "Précis d'un Code de Droit International."
In 1862, the Russian Professor Katschenowsky brought an essay before the Juridical Society of London (Papers II. 1863) arguing the necessity of a codification of International Law.