International law; Natural law; War (International law)
The fourth point, in which he blames Aristocrates, is for having
carried matters to the extremities of open and actual war, in a case,
where the law only authorized the seizure and detention of particular
persons. Of these arguments, the first, the second, and the fourth,
are by no means destitute of weight. But the third argument, unless it
be confined entirely to the circumstance of accidental death, or that
necessarily occasioned by defending one's self, may be regarded more
as an oratorical flourish than a just and solid reason. For the law of
nations extends the privileges, and character of suppliants to those
only, who have left their country on account of misfortune, and not
owing to crimes. Indeed if the law of nations made no such distinction,
the persons, among whom a crime has been committed, and who may be
suspected of having countenanced the deed, and those who barely refuse
to punish or deliver up the guilty fugitive, would be upon an equal
footing as to right. So that it was either USAGE, which GRADUALLY
introduced the above interpretation of that law, to which Demosthenes
appeals, or it was afterwards more EXPRESSLY ESTABLISHED, in order
to avoid such cavils. For no one can deny the truth of one of these
positions who has attended to the observation of Julius Pollux, that
"the seizure and detainder of persons can be enforced, whenever a power
cannot obtain the surrender of fugitive murderers, which they demand.
In this case the aggrieved power or individual may seize and detain any
three of the people belonging to the state, which refuses to make that
surrender."
It is upon the same principle that any power may detain the subjects of
another state, in order to procure the release of any subjects of her
own, unjustly seized, and imprisoned by that state.
IV. Another method of obtaining redress for any violation of persons,
or property is by having recourse to what, in modern language, are
called REPRISALS, which the Saxons and Angles denominated WITHERNAM,
and to which the French gave the name of LETTERS OF MARQUE, and those
were usually obtained from the crown.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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