Tradition : Principally with Reference to Mythology and the

i o THE LA W OF NA TIONS.
It is necessary, more especially now that the utilitarian
theory is dominant, to enter a protest according
to the turn the argument may take, but in the end
nothing more can be said than was said by Cicero in
the century before our Lord:
" Est enim unum jus, quo devincta est hominum societas, et quod
-fc. mperandi atque proliibeiidi :
i ignorat is est in
nusquain. Quod si justitia est obtemperatio scriptis legibua insti
tisque populorum, et si, lit iidem dicunt utilitate omnia metier
Bunt, negliget leges, easque perrumpit, si poterit, is, qui sibi earn rem
fructuosam putabit fore. Ita fit, ut nulla sit omnino justitia ; si neque
natur^ est, eaque propter utilitatem constituitur, utilitate a
convellitur /'-De Leaibus* i. 15.
It is only upon this construction that the Law of
Nations can be said to exist, as u there is no superordinate
authority to enforce it." It is accordingly
asserted that the law of nations is not really law. But
is not this only when it is regarded from the point of
view of " organised constraint? "8 If it is regarded as
a divine ordinance, or even as under the divine sanction,
then it is law in a much higher degree than simple
internal or municipal law, for it more immediately
and directly depends upon this sanction; and hence
nations may more confidently appeal to heaven for the
redress of wrong here below than individuals-seeing
that, as Bossuet somewhere says, God rewards and
chastises nations in this world, since it is not according
to His divine dispensation to reward them corporately
in the next.
8 "Utiles esse autem opiniones has quis neget, qunin intelligat quam
multa firmentur jure jurando, quantsB salutis sint fcederum religiones?
quam multos divini suppliciimetus a scelere revocaverit? quainque sancta
sit societas civium inter ipsos diis immortalibus interpositis turn judicibus
turn testibus?"-Cicero, De Legilus, ii. 7.