All these, and many other most important and complicated subjects, with all the variety of moral reasoning, and historical examples, which is necessary to illustrate them, must be fully examined in this part of the lectures, in which I shall endeavour to put together a tolerably complete practical system of the law of nations, as it has for the last two centuries been recognised in Europe. "_Le droit des gens_ est naturellement fonde sur ce principe, que les diverses nations doivent se faire, dans la paix, le plus de bien, et dans la guerre le moins de mal, qu'il est possible, sans nuire a leurs veritables interets." "L'objet de la guerre c'est la victoire; celui de la victoire la conquete; celui de la conquete la conservation. De ce principe et du precedent, doivent deriver toutes les loix qui forment _le droit des gens_." "Toutes les nations ont un droit des gens; les _Iroquois_ meme qui mangent leurs prisonniers en ont un. Ils envoient et recoivent des embassades; ils connoissent les droits de la guerre et de la paix: le mal est que ce droit des gens n'est pas fonde sur les vrais principes." _De l'Esprit des Loix_, liv. i. c. 3. VI. As an important supplement to the practical system of our modern law of nations, or rather as a necessary part of it, I shall conclude with a survey of the _diplomatic and conventional law of Europe_; of the treaties which have materially affected the distribution of power and territory among the European states; the circumstances which gave rise to them, the changes which they effected, and the principles which they introduced into the public code of the Christian commonwealth. In ancient times the knowledge of this conventional law was thought one of the greatest praises that could be bestowed on a name loaded with all the honours that eminence in the arts of peace and of war can confer: "Equidem existimo, judices, cum in omni genere ac varietate artium, etiam illarum, quae sine summo otio non facile discuntur, Cn. Pompeius excellat, singularem quandam laudem ejus et praestabilem esse scientiam, _in faederibus, pactionibus, conditionibus, populorum, regum, exterarum nationum_: in universo denique bellijure ac pacis."--_Cic. Orat. pro L. Corn. Balbo_, c. 6.