ORAL ARGUMENT OF SIR CHARLES RUSSELL, Q. C. M. P. 267 



Wliat that coiifasiou is you will find from the context. 



TLey have confounded positive international morality, or the rules which actually 

 obtain amongst civilized nations in their mutual intercourse, with their own vague 

 conceptions of international morality as it ought to be, with that indeterminate some- 

 thing which they conceived it wonld be if it conformed to that indeterminate 

 something wiiicli (hoy called tlie law of nature. Prof. Von Martens of Gottingen who 

 died only a few years ago is actually the first of the writers on the law of nations 

 who has seized this distinction with a firm grasp, the first who has distinguished the 

 rules which ought to be leceived in the intercourse of nations or which would be 

 received if they conformed to an assumed standard of whatever kind, from those 

 which are so received, endeavoured to collect from thejiracticeof civilized communi- 

 ties what are the rules actually recognized and acted upon by them, and gave to these 

 rules the name of positive international law. 



Now.lastly, an American author, Mr. Woolsey. This is in the orifyinal 

 text. This is in fact the first edition. It is the introductory chapter, 

 page 13 of the first edition. He says. 



Thus Puffendorf commits the faults of fixiling to distinguish sufficiently between 

 natural jiistice and the law of nations, of spinning the web of a system out of his 

 own brain, as if ho were the legislator of the world, and of neglecting to inform 

 us what the world actually holds the law to be, by which nations regulate their 

 course. 



1010 But now, apart from these weighty authorities, am I not justified 

 in saying: as to the natural lawwliat I have already intimated in 

 the previous part of my argument as to the moral law, that it is only so 

 much of the rules of morals or tlie rules of the law of nature, as have 

 received the rmprimatitr of nations — evidenced by the assent of nations 

 expressed or im])lied — only so much as has been taken up by that 

 consent into the body of international law is in truth international law. 



I took occasion this morning to put to my learned friends the question 

 argumentatively, and I now repeat it; can they refer to any controversy 

 between nations which has ever been settled by a reference either to 

 iiatural law direct, or to a supposed law of morals? I think they will 

 find it diflicult to find any sucli case. 



But now I have to meet this suggestion of my learned friend, namely, 

 that although he uuiy be wrong in saying that natural and moral law 

 are the same as international law, yet that although they may not j?er se 

 be interimtional law unless and until consent of civilized nations has 

 been given, yet — and I think he put this afOrmatively in his argument — 

 yet that you are to presume that nations have assented as part of inter- 

 national law to all principles of morals, and all principles to be drawn 

 from the law of nature, until you can show that they have dissented. 



I first ask the question : Is there any authority for this statement that 

 any such thing is to be presumed? I have already pointed out that, so 

 far as the law of nature is concerned, it could give us no help whatever 

 upon the question of property: for that the true view of all law, properly 

 so called, municipal as well as interimtional, is that it has substituted 

 rules of right and equity for claims of property which originally, accord- 

 ing to natural law, rested for their ultimate sanction upon force and upon 

 force alone. 



But, let me ask again, where are we to find these laws of nature? What 

 nations have agreed upon them ? Where are they codified ? Where are 

 they to be found? "What is the book, edition and page" to which 

 reference has been made ? No satisfactorj^ answers can be given to these 

 questions. 



Again, what are the rules and laws of morality? Upon what points 

 where they touch modern society, regarded either municipally or inter- 

 nationally, do societies of men, or do nations, agree as to them? Is it 



