137 



olher powers, as tlicy are in tlie manngemont of their own local con- 

 cerns." States or bodies politic, lie observes, "are to be considered as 

 moral persons, having a public will, capable and free to do right and 

 wrong, inasmuch as they are collections of individuals, each of whom 

 carries with him into the service of the community the same binding 

 law of morality and religion which ought to control his conduct in private 

 life. The law of nations is a complex system, composed of various 

 ingredients. It consists of general principles of right and justice, 

 equally suitable to the government of individals in a state of natural 

 equality and to the relations and conduct of nations; of a collection 

 of usages and customs, the growth of civilization and commerce 

 and a code of conventional or positive hiw." Tlis conclusions upon 

 this subject are thus stated: "In the absence of these latter regula- 

 tions, the intercourse and conduct of nations are to be governed by 

 principles fairly to be deduced from the rights and duties of nations 

 and the nature of moral obligation; and we have the authority of the 

 lawyers of antiquity, and of some of the first masters in the modern 

 school of public law, for placing the moral obligations of nations and 

 of individuals on similar grounds, and for considering individual and 

 national morality as ])arts of one and the same science. The law of 

 nations, so far as it is founded on the principles of natural law, is 

 equally binding in every age and upon all manldnd." Kenfs Commcn- 

 iaries, Part 1, Leef. 1, pp. 2-4. These views of Chancellor Kent seem 

 to be approved by the instructed judgment of Sir Travers Twiss, the 

 eminent publicist of Great Britain, who has himself divided the Law 

 of Nations into Natural or Necessary Law, and Positive or Instituted 

 Law. The Law of JSfationSi cJ'- vi, sees. 82 and 105, ed. 1S8-J, pp. 145, 176. 



Ortolan, in his work on International Eules and Diplomacy of the 

 Sea, thus states his views: "It is apparent that nations not having' 

 any common legislator over them have fi-equently no other recourse for 

 determining their respective rights but to tliat reasonable sentiment of 

 right and wrong, to those moral truths already brought to light, and to 

 those which are still to be demonstrated. This is what is meant when 

 it is said that natural law is the first basis of international law." Vol. 

 1, hi: 1, ch. iv.,p. 71. 



Vattel, in the preface of his celebrated work, states that the moderns 

 are generally agreed in restricting the a])polhition of the law of nations 

 to that system of right and justice whicrt ouglit to prevail betwe<?n 

 nations or sovereign states. And in the body of his work he says: 

 "As men are subject to the law of nature, and as their union in civil 



