1G ARGUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



source from wliicli these rules themselves are deduced. (Justinian, In- 

 stitutes, lib. 1, tit. 1; Phillimore, On Int. Law, Vol. I, sec. 23; Dymond, 

 Priii. of Morality, Essay 1, pt. 2, ch. 4; Manning, Law of Nations, pp. 

 57-58; Cotellc, Droit des Gens, pt. 1; Heineccius, Elenienta Juris Nat. 

 et Gent., lib. 1, cap. 1, sec. 12.) 



[Woolsey: Introduction International Law, ed. 1892, sec. 15, page 14.] 



Sec. 15. * * * But what are the rational and moral grounds of 

 international law? As we have seen, they are the same in general with 

 those on which the lights and obligations of individuals in the state 

 and of the single state towards the individuals of which it consists, 

 repose. If we define natural jus to be the science which from the 

 nature and destination of man determines his external relations in 

 society, both the question, What ought to be the rights and obligations 

 of the individual in the state 1 ? and the question, What those of a state 

 among states ought to be? fall within this branch of science. That 

 there are such rights and obligations of states will hardly be doubted 

 by those who admit that these relations of natural justice exist in any 

 case. There is the same reason why they should be applied in regulat- 

 ing the intercourse of states as in regulating that of individuals. 



There is a natural destination of states, and a divine purpose in their 

 existence, which makes it necessary that they should have certain 

 functions and powers of acting within a certain sphere, which external 

 force may not invade. It would be strange if the state, that power 

 which defines rights and makes them real, which creates moral persons 

 or associations with rights and obligations, should have no such rela- 

 tions of its own — should be a physical and not a moral entity. In fact, 

 to take the opposite ground would be to maintain that there is no right 

 and wrong in the intercourse of states, and to leave their conduct to 

 the sway of mere convenience. 



[Wolff, quoted by Vattel, preface to seventh American ed., page ix.] 



Nations do not, in their mutual relations to each other, acknowl- 

 edge any other law than that which nature herself has established. 

 Perhaps, therefore, it may appear superfluous to give a treatise on the 

 law of nations as distinct from the law of nature. But those who 

 entertain this idea have not sufficiently studied the subject. Nations,' 

 it is true, can only be considered as so many individual persons living 

 together in the state of nature; and, for that reason, we must apply 

 to them all the duties and rights which uature prescribes and attributes 

 to men in general, as being naturally born free, and bound to each 

 other by no ties but those of nature alone. The law which arises from 

 this application, and the obligations resulting from it, proceed from 

 that immutable law founded on the nature of man ; and thus the law of 

 nations certainly belongs to the law of nature; it is, therefore, on ac- 

 count of its origin, called the natural, and, by reason of its obligatory 

 force, the necessary, law of nations. That law is common to all nations; 

 and it' any one of them does not respect it in her actions, she violates 

 the common rights of all the others. 



But nations or sovereign States being moral persons and the subjects 

 of the obligations and rights resulting, in virtue of the law of nature, 

 from the act of association which has formed the political body, the 

 nature and essence of these moral persons necessarily differ, in many 

 respects, from the uature and essence of the physical individuals, or 



