The Law of Nations. Emer de Vattel
of the others, than as the interests of natural society are concerned. The general and common right of nations over the conduct of any sovereign state is only commensurate to the object of that society which exists between them.
§24. Conventional law of nations, or law of treaties.
The several engagements into which nations may enter, produce a new kind of law of nations, called conventional, or of treaties. As it is evident that a treaty binds none but the contracting parties, the conventional law of nations is not a universal but a particular law. All that can be done on this subject in a treatise on the law of nations, is to lay down those general rules which nations are bound to observe with respect to their treaties. A minute detail of the various agreements made between particular nations, and of the rights and obligations thence resulting, is matter of fact, and belongs to the province of history.
§25. Customary law of nations.
Certain maxims and customs consecrated by long use, and observed by nations in their mutual intercourse with each other as a kind of law, form the customary law of nations, or the custom of nations. This law is founded on a tacit consent, or, if you please, on a tacit convention of the nations that observe it towards each other. Whence it appears that it is not obligatory except on those nations who have adopted it, and that it is not universal, any more than the conventional law. The same remark, therefore, is equally applicable to this customary law, viz. that a minute detail of its particulars does not belong to a systematic treatise on the law of nations, but that we must content ourselves with giving a general theory of it,—that is to say, the rules which are to be observed in it, as well with a view to its effects, as to its substance: and, with respect to the latter, those rules will serve to distinguish lawful and innocent customs from those that are unjust and unlawful.
§26. General rule respecting that law.
When a custom or usage is generally established, either between all the civilised nations in the world, or only between those of a certain continent, as of Europe, for example, or between those who have a more frequent intercourse with each other,—if that custom is in its own nature in-<lxvi>different, and much more, if it be useful and reasonable, it becomes obligatory on all the nations in question, who are considered as having given their consent to it, and are bound to observe it towards each other, as long as they have not expressly declared their resolution of not observing it in future. But if that custom contains any thing unjust or unlawful, it is not obligatory: on the contrary, every nation is bound to relinquish it, since nothing can oblige or authorise her to violate the law of nature.
These three kinds of law of nations, the voluntary, the conventional, and the customary, together constitute the positive law of nations. For they all proceed from the will of nations,—the voluntary from their presumed consent, the conventional from an express consent, and the customary from tacit consent: and as there can be no other mode of deducing any law from the will of nations, there are only these three kinds of positive law of nations.
We shall be careful to distinguish them from the natural or necessary law of nations, without, however, treating of them separately. But after having, under each individual head of our subject, established what the necessary law prescribes, we shall immediately add how and why the decisions of that law must be modified by the voluntary law; or (which amounts to the same thing in other terms) we shall explain how, in consequence of the liberty of nations, and pursuant to the rules of their natural society, the external law, which they are to observe towards each other, differs in certain instances from the maxims of the internal law, which nevertheless remain always obligatory in point of conscience. As to the rights introduced by treaties or by custom, there is no room to apprehend that any one will confound them with the natural law of nations. They form that species of law of nations which authors have distinguished by the name of arbitrary.
§28. General maxim respecting the use of the necessary and the voluntary law.
To furnish the reader beforehand with a general direction respecting the distinction between the necessary and the voluntary law, let us here observe, that, as the necessary law is always obligatory on the conscience, a nation ought never to lose sight of it in deliberating on the line of conduct she is to pursue in order to fulfil her duty: but when there is question of examining what she may demand of other states, she must consult the voluntary law, whose maxims are devoted to the safety and advantage of the universal society of mankind. <1>
THE
LAW
OF
NATIONS
Of Nations considered in themselves
Of Nations or Sovereign States.
§1. Of the state, and of sovereignty.
A nation or a state is, as has been said at the beginning of this work, a body politic, or a society of men united together for the purpose of promoting their mutual safety and advantage by their combined strength.
From the very design that induces a number of men to form a society which has its common interests, and which is to act in concert, it is necessary that there should be established a public authority, to order and direct what is to be done by each in relation to the end of the association. This political authority is the sovereignty; and he or they who are invested with it are the sovereign.
§2. The authority of the body politic over the members.
It is evident, that, by the very act of the civil or political association, each citizen subjects himself to the authority of the entire body, in every thing that relates to the common welfare. The authority of all over each member, therefore, essentially belongs to the body politic, or state; but the exercise of that authority may be placed in different hands, according as the society may have ordained. <2>
§3. Of the several kinds of government.
If the body of the nation keeps in its own hands the empire or the right to command, it is a popular government, a democracy; if it entrusts it to a certain number of citizens, to a senate, it establishes an aristocratic republic; finally, if it confides the government to a single person, the state becomes a monarchy.
These three kinds of government may be variously combined and modified. We shall not here enter into the particulars; this subject belonging to the public universal law:* for the object of the present work, it is sufficient to establish the general principles necessary for the decision of those disputes that may arise between nations.