195 



and the greatest liberty wliicli justice among nations deinaiuls is that 

 every state may do anything that does not injure any other state with 

 which it is at amity. The freedom of commerce and the rights of war, 

 both undoubted as long as no injustice results from them, hecome ques- 

 tionable as soon as their exercise is grievously injurious to any independ- 

 ent state, but the great difference of the interest concerned malces 

 the trivial nature of the restriction that can justly be placed upon 

 neutrals appear inconsiderable when balanced against the magnitude 

 of the national enterprises which unrestricted neutral trade might com- 

 promise. That some interference is justifiable will be obvious on the 

 consideration that if a neutral had the power of unrestricted commerce 

 he might carry to a port blockaded and on the point of surrendering, 

 provisions which would enable it to hold out and so change the whole 

 issue of a war; and thus the vital interests of a nation might be sacri- 

 ficed to augment the riches of a siugle individual." Manning'' s Laio 

 of Nations, Bl\ 3, c. 3. 



The force of this principle is not lessened by the suggestion that it 

 relates to a time of war, to the riglits of belligerents. The right of self- 

 protection or self preservation is as complete and perfect in time of 

 peace as in time of war. The means employed when war prevails may 

 not always be used in a time of peace. The test, both in war or in 

 peace, is whether the particular means used are necessary to be employed 

 for purposes of self-protection against wrong and injury. 



Undoubtedly, the general rule that a state may employ such means for 

 its self-preservation as are necessary to that end, is subject to the quali- 

 fication stated by Mr. Chitty in his notes to the 7th American edition 

 (1849) of Vattel, namely, that a nation has the right, in time of peace or of 

 war, to diminish tlie commerce or resources of another by fair rivalry and 

 other means not in themselves unjust, precisely as one tradesman may by 

 fair competition undersell his neighbor and thereby alienate his cus- 

 tomers. P. 142. But this qualification is wholly inapplicable to the 

 present case, for the reason that the killing of these animals iu tlie 

 high seas, by seal hunters, is in itself unjust, and as I have attempted 

 to show, does not rest upon any right secured by the law of nations to 

 those who are engaged in that mode of taking them. It is equally true 

 that the commonest and simplest form in which the doctrine of self- 

 l^reservation is illustrated is in cases where a nation employs force 

 beyond its own limits, either on the high seas or within the limits of 

 another state, in order to meet a threatened attack upon its existence 

 or a threatened invasion of its territory. But 1 am aware of no author- 



