HISTORY OF [BOOK n. 



the means that appear necessary to that end are justi- 

 fiable also. This is the principle which defends those 

 extremities to which the violence of war usually pro- 

 ceeds: for since war is a contest by force between 

 parties who acknowledge no common superior, and 

 since it includes not in its idea the supposition of any 

 convention which should place limits to the operations 

 of force, it has naturally no boundary but that in 

 which force terminates; the destruction of the life 

 against which the force is directed.'' It was allowed 

 (with the same author) that gratuitous barbarities bor- 

 row no excuse from the license of war, of which 

 kind is every cruelty and every insult that serves only 

 to exasperate the sufferings, or to incense the hatred 

 of an enemy, without weakening his strength, or in 

 any manner tending to procure his submission; such 

 as the slaughter of captives, the subjecting them to 

 indignities or torture, the violation of w T omen, and in 

 general the destruction or defacing of works that con- 

 duce nothing to annoyance or defence. These enor- 

 mities are prohibited not only by the practice of civi- 

 lized nations, but by the law of nature itself; as ha- 

 ving no proper tendency to accelerate the termina- 

 tion, or accomplish the object of the war; and as con- 

 taining that which in peace and war; is equally unjus- 

 tifiable, namely, ultimate and gratuitous mischief. 

 Now all these very enormities were practised, not by 

 the Whites against the Maroons, but by the Maroons 

 themselves against the AVhites. Humanity therefore, 

 it was said, was no way concerned in the sort of ex- 

 pedient that was proposed, or any other, by which 

 such an enemy could most speedily be extirpated. 

 Thev \vere not an unarmed, innocent and defenceless 



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