certainly depends upon some fixed principles. The modern method of considering individual and national morality as the subjects of the same science, seems to me as convenient and reasonable an arrangement as can be adopted. The same rules of morality which hold together men in families, and which form families into commonwealths, also link together these commonwealths as members of the great society of mankind. Commonwealths, as well as private men, are liable to injury, and capable of benefit, from each other; it is, therefore, their interest as well as their duty to

ingly entitled his work, "De Jure Feciali, sive de Jure inter Gentes." The Chancellor D'Aguesseau, probably without knowing the work of Zouch, suggested that this law should be called, "Droit entre les Gens," (Œuvres, tom. ii. p. 337.) in which he has been followed by a late ingenious writer, Mr. Bentham, Princ. of Morals and Pol. p. 324. Perhaps these learned writers do employ a phrase which expresses the subject of this law with more accuracy than our common language; but I doubt whether innovations in the terms of science always repay us by their superior precision for the uncertainty and confusion which the change occasions.

reverence, to practise, and to enforce those rules of justice which control and restrain injury, which regulate and augment benefit, which, even in their present imperfect observance, preserve civilised states in a tolerable condition of security from wrong, and which, if they could be generally obeyed, would establish, and permanently maintain, the well-being of the universal commonwealth of the human race. It is therefore with justice that one part of this science has been called "the natural law of individuals," and the other "the natural law of states ;" and it is too obvious to require observation, that the application of both these laws, of the former as much as of the latter, is modified and varied by customs, conventions, character, and situation. With a view to these principles, the writers on general jurisprudence have considered states as moral persons; a mode of expression which has been called a

*This remark is suggested by an objection of Vattel, which is more specious than solid. See his Prelim. § 6.

fiction of law, but which may be regarded with more propriety as a bold metaphor, used to convey the important truth, that nations, though they acknowledge no common superior, and neither can nor ought to be subjected to human punishment, are yet under the same obligations mutually to practise honesty and humanity, which would have bound individuals, even if they could be conceived ever to have subsisted without the protecting restraints of government; if they were not compelled to the discharge of their duty by the just authority of magistrates, and by the wholesome terrors of the laws. With the same views this law has been styled, and (notwithstanding the objections of some writers to the vagueness of the language) appears to have been styled with great propriety," the law of nature." It may with sufficient correctness, or at least by an easy metaphor, be called a 66 law," inasmuch as it is a supreme, invariable, and uncontrollable rule of conduct to all men, of which the violation is avenged by natural punishments, which necessarily flow from the constitution of things, and

are as fixed and inevitable as the order of nature. It is "the law of nature," because its general precepts are essentially adapted to promote the happiness of man, as long as he remains a being of the same nature with which he is at present endowed, or, in other words, as long as he continues to be man, in all the variety of times, places, and circumstances, in which he has been known, or can be imagined to exist; because it is discoverable by natural reason, and suitable to our natural constitution; because its fitness and wisdom are founded on the general nature of human beings, and not on any of those temporary and accidental situations in which they may be placed. It is with still more propriety, and indeed with the highest strictness, and the most perfect accuracy, considered as a law, when, according to those just and magnificent views which philosophy and religion open to us of the government of the world, it is received and reverenced as the sacred code, promulgated by the great Legislator of the Universe for the guidance of his creatures to happiness, guarded and enforced, as our own

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experience may inform us, by the penal sanctions of shame, of remorse, of infamy, and of misery; and still farther enforced by the reasonable expectation of yet more awful penalties in a future and more permanent state of existence. It is the contemplation of the law of nature under this full, mature, and perfect idea of its high origin and transcendent dignity, that called forth the enthusiasm of the greatest men, and the greatest writers of ancient and modern times, in those sublime descriptions, where they have exhausted all the powers of language, and surpassed all the other exertions, even of their own eloquence, in the display of the beauty and majesty of this sovereign and immutable law. It is of this law that Cicero has spoken in so many parts of his writings, not only with all the splendour and copiousness of eloquence, but with the sensibility of a man of virtue; and with the gravity and comprehension of a philosopher.* It is of this law that Hooker

*Est quidem vera lex, recta ratio, naturæ congruens, diffusa in omnes, constans, sempiterna, quæ