§ 224. Peaceful ways of preventing or ending strife between nations. § 225. Plans for standing public arbitration. § 226. Projects for perpetual peace, as those of Henry IV., St. Pierre, Kant, Bentham. Ladd's essay. Petition of a peace society to the House of § 227. Compromissory arbitration. § 228. Sanctions of international law. § 230. Its prospects for the future. § 231. Importance of the study of this science. b INTERNATIONAL LAW. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. DEFINITION, GROWTH, JURAL AND MORAL GROUNDS, SOURCES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW. § 1. In order to protect the individual members of human society from one another, and to make just society possible, the Creator of man has implanted in his nature certain conceptions which we call rights, to which in every case obligations correspond. These are the foundation of the system of justice, and the ultimate standard with which laws are compared, to ascertain whether they are just or unjust. They involve, amid all the inequalities of condition, a substantial equality of the members of society before the tribunal of law and justice, because the physical, intellectual, and moral natures of all imply the same capacity and destination, and because to the capacity and destination of man his rights or powers of free action must correspond. On this basis within the state, and often without any direct coöperation of its members, a system of law grows up, which, while it may be imperfect, approaches, with the progress of the society in knowledge and moral cultivation, to the standard of perfect justice. And even the moral progress of society, the ability of its members to acknowledge their reciprocal claims and discharge their duties to each other, to fulfill their part in that moral sphere which lies in great measure quite beyond the reach of positive law, this also is dependent to a great degree upon their correct estimate of rights and obligations. 82. Nations or organized communities of men differ from the individual men of a state, in that they are self-governed, that no law is imposed on them by any external human power, while yet they retain the moral accountable nature, which must govern the members of a single society. They cannot have intercourse with one another without feeling that each party has rights and obligations. They have, as states, a common nature and destination, whence an equality of rights arises. And hence proceeds the possibility of a law between nations which is just, as expressing reciprocal rights and obligations, or just, as expressing a free waiver of the rights which are by all acknowledged; and which may also embody by mutual agreement rules, defining their more obvious claims and duties, or aiming to secure their common convenience and welfare. (Comp. § 27.) This law of intercourse between nations has been united with political law, or the doctrine concerning the constitution of the state and the relations of the government to the people, under the head of public law, as opposed to private, or to the system of laws within the state, by which the relations of its individual members are defined and protected.1 And yet there is a branch of this law which has both a private and a public character, private as relating to persons, and public as agreed upon between nations. This law, or system of relations between states, is now extensively called international law. International law § 3. International law, in a wide and abstract sense, would embrace those rules of intercourse between nations which are deduced from their rights and moral claims; or, in other words, it is the expression of the jural and moral relations of states to one another. in the widest sense. 1 Comp. Klüber, § 2, and for the next remark Hurd's Law of Freedom and Bondage, § 25. The Germans excel us in the neatness of their divisions of jural science, e. g., öffentliches Recht is divided into Staatsrecht and Völkerrecht. According to this definition, if we could once find out what are the rights and obligations, the moral claims and duties of nations as such, by mere deduction the principles of this science would be settled. But such an abstract form of the science, commanding general assent, neither has appeared nor is likely to appear. The advantage of separating international law in its theoretical form from the positive existing Code depends, not on the possibility of constructing a perfect code according to a true theory, but on the fact that right views of justice may serve as a touchstone of actual usages and regulations; for in all jural science it is most important to distinguish between the law as it is and as it ought to be. This same distinction is made by those 1 who discriminate between international law, - the positive, admitted law, and international morality. But the latter term must be objectionable to those at least who make a distinction between morals and jus. The law of nations, however, both as it is and as it ought to be, does not confine itself within the jural sphere. - § 4. Internation more limited sense. In a more limited sense international law would be the system of positive rules by which the nations of the world regulate their intercourse with one another. al law in a But in strictness of truth this definition is too broad, for there is no such law recognized as yet through all nations. Neither have the more civilized states of the East agreed with those of Europe, nor the states of antiquity with those of modern times, unless it be in a few provisions, which together would constitute an exceedingly meagre code. § 5. Coming within narrower limits, we define international law to be the aggregate of the rules which Christian Actual posi states acknowledge as obligatory in their relations tive internato each other, and to each other's subjects. The tional law, 1 Comp. an article attributed to Mr. Senior in Edinburgh Review, No. 156, for April, 1843, on Wheaton's History of the Law of Nations, in which the differences between morality as predicated of nations and of individuals are set forth. |