International law; Natural law; War (International law)
From hence results the right of erecting a temporary hut, upon the
shore, although, for instance, the same shore is allowed to be the
property of the people of that place. For what Pomponius says of its
being necessary to obtain the Praetor's leave, before a building can
be raised upon the public shore, relates to structures of a permanent
kind, when the massy piles of stone, as the Poet says, encroach upon
the sea, and the affrighted fish feel their waves contracted.
XVI. Nor ought a permanent residence to be refused to foreigners, who,
driven from their own country, seek a place or refuge. But then it is
only upon condition that they submit to the established laws of the
place, and avoid every occasion of exciting tumult and sedition. A
reasonable rule, which the divine poet has observed, when he introduces
Aeneas making an offer that Latinus, who had become his father-in-law,
should retain all military and civil power. And in Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, Latinus admits the proposal of Aeneas to be just; as
he came through necessity in quest of a settlement. To drive away
refugees, says Strabo, from Eratosthenes, is acting like barbarians;
and a conduct like this in the Spartans was also condemned. St.
Ambrose passes the same sentence of condemnation upon those powers, who
refuse all admission to strangers. Yet settlers of this description
have no right to demand a share in the government. A proposal of this
kind made by the Minyae to the Lacedaemonians, who had received them,
is very properly considered by Herodotus as insolent, and unreasonable.
XVII. It is indeed but an act of common humanity in a sovereign to
allow strangers, at their request, liberty to fix their residence upon
any waste or barren lands within his dominions, still reserving to
himself all the rights of sovereignty. Seven hundred acres of barren
and uncultivated land, as Servius observes, were given by the native
Latins to the Trojans. Dion Prusaeensis, in his seventh oration, says,
that they commit no crime of trespass, who take upon them to cultivate
waste lands. The refusal of this privilege made the Ansibarians
exclaim, "the firmament over our heads is the mansion of the deity: the
earth was given to man; and what remains unoccupied, lies in common
to all." Yet that complaint did not apply exactly to their case. For
those lands could not be called unoccupied, as they served to supply
the Roman army with forage for their cattle, which certainly furnished
the Romans with a just pretext for refusing to grant their request. And
with no less propriety the Romans asked the Galli Senones if it were
right to demand lands already possessed, and to threaten to take them
by force.
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