17. Further, as the laws of each community regard the utility of that community, so also between different communities, all or most, laws might be established; and it appears that laws have been established which enjoined the utility, not of special communities, but of that great aggregate system of communities. And this is what is called the law of nations, or international law, when we distinguish it from natural law. And this part of law is omitted by Carneades, who divides all law into natural law and the civil laws of special peoples; while yet, inasmuch as he was about to treat of that law which obtains between one people and another (for then follows an oration concerning war and acquisitions by war), he was especially called upon to make mention of law of this kind.

18. And it is without any good reason that Carneades maintains, as we have said (5), that justice is folly. For since, by his own confession, that citizen is not foolish who, in a civil community, obeys the civil law, although, in consequence of such respect for the law, he may lose something which is useful to himself, so, too, that people is not foolish which does not so estimate its own utility as, on account of that, to neglect the common laws between people and people. The reason of the thing is the same in both cases. For, as a citizen who violates the civil law for the sake of present utility destroys that institution in which the perpetual utility of himself and his posterity is bound up, so, too, a people which violates the laws of nature and nations beats down the bulwark of its own tranquillity for future time. And, even if no utility were to arise from the observation of law, it would be a point, not of folly, but of wisdom, to which we feel ourselves drawn by nature.

19. And, therefore, neither is that other saying of Horace [1 Sat. iii.] universally true,

'Twas fear of wrong that made us make our laws,—

an opinion which one of the interlocutors in Plato's Republic explains in this way,- that laws were introduced from the fear of receiving wrong, and that men are driven to practise justice by a certain compulsion. For that applies to those institutions and laws only which were devised for the more easy maintenance of rights, as when many, individually feeble, fearing to be oppressed by those who were stronger, combined to establish judicial authorities and to uphold them by their

common strength, that those whom they could not resist singly they might, united, control. And we may accept in this sense, and in no other, what is also said in Plato,— that right is that which the stronger party likes; namely, that we are to understand that rights do not attain their external end except they have force to back them. Thus Solon did great things, as he himself boasted,—

By linking force in the same yoke with law.

20. But still rights, even unsupported by force, are not destitute of all effect; for justice, the observance of rights, brings security to the conscience, while injustice inflicts on it tortures and wounds such as Plato describes as assaulting the bosoms of tyrants. The conscience of honest men approves justice, condemns injustice. And, what is the greatest point, injustice has for its enemy, justice, has for its friend, God, who reserves his judgments for another life, yet in such a manner that he often exhibits their power in this life, of which we have many examples in history.

21. The reason why many persons, while they require justice as necessary in private citizens, commit the error of thinking it superfluous in a people or the ruler of a people, is this: in the first place, that in their regard to rights they look at nothing but the utility which arises from rights, which in the case of private citizens is evident, since they are separately too weak to protect themselves; while great States, which seem to embrace within them all that is requisite to support life in comfort, do not appear to have need of that virtue which regards extraneous parties, and is called justice.

22. But, not to repeat what I have already said, that rights are not established for the sake of utility alone, there is no State so strong that it may not, at some time, need the aid of others external to itself either in the way of commerce or in order to repel the force of many foreign nations combined against it. And hence we see that leagues of alliance are sought even by the most powerful peoples and kings, which can have no force according to the principles of those who confine rights within the boundary of the State alone. It is most true [as Cicero says] that everything loses its certainty at once if we give up the belief in rights.

23. If no society whatever can be preserved without the recognition of mutual rights, which Aristotle [rather Plato —

Barbeyrac] proves by the strong instance of a society of robbers, assuredly that society which includes the whole human race, or at any rate the greater part of nations, has need of the recognition of rights, as Cicero saw when he said that some things are so bad that they are not to be done even for the sake of saving our country (Off. i. 45). Aristotle speaks with strong condemnation of those who, while they will allow no one to hold rule among themselves except him who has the right to do so, yet in their dealings with strangers have no care of rights or the violation of rights.

24. A little while ago we quoted Pompey for his expression on the other side; yet, on the other hand, when a certain Spartan king had said, "Happy that republic which has for its boundaries the spear and the sword," Pompey corrected him and said, "Happy rather that which has justice for its boundary." And to this effect he might have used the authority of another Spartan king, who gave justice the preference over military courage on this ground,- that courage is to be regulated by justice, but, if all men were just, they would have no need of courage. Courage itself was defined by the Stoics,— virtue exercised in defence of justice. Themistius, in an oration to Valens, eloquently urges that kings, such as the rule of wisdom requires them to be, ought not to care for the single nation only which is committed to them, but for the whole human race. They should be, as he expresses it, not philoMacedonian only, or philo-Roman, but philanthropic. The name of Minos became hateful to posterity in no other way than this, that he terminated his equity at the boundaries of his own government.

25. It is so far from being proper to admit, what some choose to say, that in war all rights cease, that war is never to be undertaken except to assert rights, and, when undertaken, is never to be carried on except within the limits of rights and of good faith. Demosthenes well said that war was the mode of dealing with those who could not be kept in order by judicial proceedings. For judicial proceedings are of force against those who feel themselves to be the weaker party; but, against those who make themselves or think themselves equals, war is the proceeding, yet this, too, in order to be justifiable, to be carried on in a no less scrupulous manner than judicial proceedings are.

26. Be it so, then, that, in the conflict of arms, laws must be

silent; but let this be understood of laws civil, judicial, proper to peace, not of those laws which are perpetual and accommodated to all time. For it is excellently said by Dio Prusæensis that between enemies written laws that is, civil laws are not in force, but that unwritten laws are; namely, those which nature dictates or the consent of nations institutes. We may learn this from the old formula of the Romans, "I decide that those things may be sought by a pure and pious war." The same old Romans, as Varro remarked, undertook war tardily, and without allowing themselves any license, because they thought that no war except a pious one ought to be undertaken. Camillus said that wars were to be carried on no less justly than bravely. Africanus said that the Romans began just wars and ended them. Again in Livy we read, "War has its laws no less than peace." And Seneca admires Fabricius as a great man, and, what is most difficult, a man innocent even in war and who thought that there were wrongs even toward an enemy.

27. How great the power of the conscience of justice is the writers of histories everywhere show, often ascribing victory to this cause mainly. Hence have arisen these proverbs,- that it is the cause which makes the soldier brave or base; that he rarely comes safe back who goes out on the bad side; that hope is the ally of the good cause; and others to the same effect. Nor ought any persons to be moved by the occasional success of unjust designs; for it is enough if the equity of the cause has an efficacy, and that a great one, in action, even though this efficacy, as happens in human affairs, is often prevented from taking effect, being counteracted by other causes. And, further, in conciliating friendships, which nations, as well as individuals, need on many accounts, a great effect must be assigned to an opinion that we do not hastily or unjustly undertake war and that we carry it on religiously; for no one readily joins himself to those whom he believes to think lightly of right laws and good faith.

28. I, for the reasons which I have stated, holding it to be most certain that there is among nations a common law of rights which is of force with regard to war and in war, saw many and grave causes why I should write a work on that subject. For I saw prevailing throughout the Christian world a license in making war of which even barbarous nations would have been ashamed, recourse being had to arms for slight

reasons or no reason; and, when arms were once taken up, all reverence for divine and human law was thrown away, just as if men were thenceforth authorized to commit all crimes without restraint.

29. And the sight of these atrocities has led many men, and these, estimable persons, to declare arms forbidden to the Christian whose rule of life mainly consists in love to all men. And to this party sometimes John Ferus and our countryman Erasmus seem to approximate,— men much devoted to peace, both ecclesiastical and civil. But they take this course, as I conceive, with the purpose with which, when things have been twisted one way, we bend them the other, in order to make them straight. But this attempt to drive things too far is often so far from succeeding that it does harm, because the excess which it involves is easily detected, and then detracts from the authority of what is said, even within the limits of truth. We are to provide a remedy for both disorders, both for thinking that nothing is allowable and that everything is.

30. Moreover, having practised jurisprudence in public situations in my country with the best integrity I could give, I would now, as what remains to me, unworthily ejected from that country graced by so many of my labors, promote the same subject, jurisprudence, by the exertion of my private diligence. Many, in preceding times, have designed to invest the subject with the form of an art or science; but no one has done this. Nor can it be done except care be taken in that point which has never yet been properly attended to,separate instituted law from natural law. For natural law, as being always the same, can be easily collected into an art, but that which depends upon institution, since it is often changed and is different in different places, is out of the domain of art, as the perceptions of individual things in other cases also is.

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31. If, then, those who have devoted themselves to the study of true justice would separately undertake to treat of separate parts of natural and permanent jurisprudence, omitting all which derives its origin from the will of man alone; if one would treat of laws, another of tributes, another of the office of judges, another of the mode of determining the will of parties, another of the evidence of facts, we might, by collecting all these parts, form a complete body of such jurisprudence. 32. What course we think ought to be followed in the exe