APPENDIX TO TART FIPST. 23 



and safety oblige tliem to admit in their transactions with each other. 

 The necessary law immediately proceeds from nature; and that com- 

 mon mother of mankind recommends the observance of the voluntary 

 law of nations, in consideration of the state in which nations stand with 

 respect to each other, and for the advantage of their affairs. (Preface, 

 page xiii.) 



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

 society can not have exempted them from the obligation to observe 

 those laws, since by that union they do not cease to be men, the entire 

 nation, whose common will is but the result of the united wills of the 

 citizens, remains subject to the laws of nature, and is bound to respect 

 them in all her proceedings. (Page lvi., sec. 5.) 



" We must, therefore, apply to nations the rules of the law of nature, 

 in order to discover what their obligations are, and what their rights: 

 consequently, the laic of nations is originally no other than the laic of 

 nature applied to nations." (Page lvi, sec. C.) 



[From G. F. von Martens, Law of Nations, page 2 of Introduction. (German.) 

 Translated by William Cobbet, 4th ed., 1829.] 



The second sort of obligations are those which exist between nations. 

 Each nation being considered as a moral being, living in a state of 

 nature, the obligations of one nation towards another are no more than 

 thovse of individuals, modified and applied to nations; and this is what 

 is called the natural laic of nations. It is universal and necessary, 

 because all nations are governed by it, even against their will. This 

 law, according to the distinction between perfect and imperfect, is per- 

 fect and external (the law of nations, strictly speaking), or else imper- 

 fect and internal, by which last is understood the morality of nations. 



[Sec. 2 of the Positive Law of Nations.] 



It is hardly possible that the simple law of nature should be sufficient 

 even between individuals, and still less between nations, when they 

 come to frequent and carry on commerce with each other. Their com- 

 mon interest obliges them to soften the rigor of the law of nature, to 

 render it more determinate, and to depart from that perfect equality of 

 rights, which must ever, according to the law of nature, be considered 

 as extending itself even to the weakest. These changes take place in 

 virtue of conventions (express or tacit) or of simple custom. The whole 

 of the rights and obligations, thus established between two nations, 

 form the positive law of nations between them. It is called positive, 

 particular, or arbitrary, in opposition to the natural, universal, and 

 necessary law. 



[From Jan Helenus Ferguson, Dutch, but apparently written in 

 English, "Manual of International Law" (1881), Vol. I, Part I, Oh. in, 

 sec. 21, page 60.] 



International law, being based on international morality, depends 

 upon the state of progress made in civilization. Hence arises the diffi- 

 culty of giving an all-comprehending definition to international law. 

 What ought to be permanently understood among civilized nations as 

 the main principles and the basis of their mutual intercourse, we have 

 noted already to be the moral law of nature. But we have also seen 

 that the spirit of law is the practical medium through which this general 

 law influences humanity at all the stages of progress on the road to 

 civilization. 



