>" National law is more a moral than a legal science. Law is a rule of action prescribed by competent authority. Moreover, all Law implies some sanction to enforce it. Now National law is that which defines and regulates the social duties of Nation to Nation. Where then is the authority that prescribes such duties, and where the sanction that enforces them?
To find these we must go back to the individual Man, and see whether such duties appertain to him; by what authority, and with what sanctions.
We assume the maxim "cuivis Natura convenienter vivere opportet."
If then we can show that the nature of Man is such as to make society one of the conditions of his existence, we may thence infer his social duties.
Now, out of Society the Human Race could not exist, for
1. The infant would presently perish if not supplied with food and warmth.
2. The human mother, unlike other animals is hardly less helpless than her new-born babe, and she too would perish without aid.
3. The husband and father gives the needed aid only because he knows himself to be so; and this knowledge he must owe to social regulation, unless we suppose him and his family disconnected entirely from all others.
4. On that supposition it would be impossible for him at once to feed and defend his wife and child. While he hunts the deer, the tiger devours them.
This infirmity of the individual man is the strength of the Race. It binds men together, and makes the strength the knowledge and resources of the whole, the strength, knowledge and resources of each.
From this social nature we infer social duties: prescribed by the author of that Nature.
The sanction is the destruction which a neglect of them would bring on the race.
The universal law which binds all things "Natura convenienter vivere," is faithfully obeyed by all things but man. Why not by him?
He has a will wayward and perverse, passions that mislead, and a reason too short-sighted to keep him always in the path of duty.
To reform this will; to regulate these passions and enlighten this reason is the business of all Education from the cradle to the death-bed.
Even while man resists the teachings of Wisdom and Virtue, he acknowledges, in general terms, the social duties arising from his social nature.
This admission is the basis Natural Law; which teaches the duties of Man to Man.
Can he lawfully refuse to perform them?
Can he, by his own act, shake off the obligation to perform them?
Can he lawfully disable himself to perform them?
They are due to all. Can he, by leaguing with a few, free himself from his duties to the rest?
To all these questions reason answers "no."
Then a community so knit together that the performance of the duties of its members to strangers is made impracticable, must assume them.
Communities are thus bound to fulfil to other communities the duties which the members of the one owe to the members of the other as natural men.
Thus the Law of Nature becomes the Law of Nations.
It is the same code whose maxims are summed up in the rule, "Whatsoever ye would that others should do unto you, the same do ye also unto them."
Its sanction is the same that denounces "tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil." What is all this but Morality. "<