ORAL ARGUMENT OF JAMES C. CARTER, ESQ. 81 



I must fortify what I say in tliis particular by a reference to some of 

 tlie highest authorities on the subject. I shall read a quotation from 

 the celebrated disquisition of Sir James Macintosh on the Law of 

 Kature and Nations. He says: 



The science which teaches the riji^hts and duties of men and of states has in modern 

 times been styled "the Law of Nature and Nations." Under this comprehensive 

 title are included the rules of morality, as they prescribe the conduct of private men 

 towards each other in all the various relations of Iniman life; as tbey regulate both 

 the obedience of citizens to the laws, and the authority of the magistrate in farming 

 laws and administering governments: aud as they modify the iutcrcoui-se of inde- 

 pendent commonwealths in peace and prescribe limits to their liostility in war. 

 This important science comprehends only that part of private ethics which is capable 

 of being reduced to fixed and general rules. 



He thus points out the law of nature as the source of all human 

 jurisprudence, whether municipal or international; and Lord Bacon 

 had before expressed the same truth; he says: 



. For there are in nature certain fountains of justice, whence all civil laws are 

 derived but as streams, and like as waters do take tinctures and tastes from the soils 

 through which they run, so do civil laws vary according to the regions and govern- 

 ments where they are planted, though they proceed from the same fountain. 



This law of nature, as it is styled, is sometimes designated by differ- 

 ent terms. Sometimes as natural law; sometimes as natural justice: 

 sometimes as the dictates of right reason; bnt by whatever name it is 

 described, the same thing is always intended; and it means, in short, 

 those rules and princijdes of right and wrong, implanted in every 

 human breast and whi(;h men recognize in their intercourse with each 

 otlier, because they are men, having a moral nature and are brought 

 into relations with each other which compel the application of moral 

 rules. I may cite a great authority which all English lawyers are 

 compelled to study at the very beginning of their instruction. That is 

 Blackstone. He says : 



This law of nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is, 

 of course, superior in obligatiou to any other. It is binding over the globe, in all 

 countries, and at all Times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this, 

 and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority, mediately 

 or immediately, from this original. (Comm. Book I, p. 41.) 



And the dependency of all law upon the law of nature is very hap- 

 pily and clearly illustrated by those three great maxims which consti- 

 tute the basis of the jurisprudence of the Roman law, sometimes called 

 the Ulpianic precepts. They amount simply to a reduction to their 

 simjilest form of the dictates of natural justice, or of natural law, — 

 and they are thus familiar to every lawyer: ^'- Juris prcccepta suntluve: 

 honeste vivere, alterum non Icedere, suum ctiique trilmere:'' 



Some writers have been sometimes inclined to dispute the authority 

 of this law of nature, on the ground that there is no supreme power 

 capable of enforcing its precepts; they say that nations are themselves 

 supreme; and being supreme and sovereign there is no power over 

 them; and no power, therefore, to enforce the dictates of this law, as 

 there is to enforce the rules of municipal law upon the individual mem- 

 bers of a municij^al state. But that notion, I think, is a mistake, and 

 has generally been agreed to be a mistake. It does not follow be<;ause 

 there is no supreme authority to enforce the dictates of this law that it 

 is any the less binding. There are plenty of considerations which do 

 enforce it. It is enforced, in the first instance, by the sense of right and 

 wrong which dwells in the breasts of nations, as it does in the breasts 

 of individuals. The very sense of obligation is of itself a means of 

 pjiforcing the law. It is enforced, in the next x>lace, by the public 



IB S, PT XII 6 



