International law; Natural law; War (International law)
These are points, which may be cleared up by examples. Thus Ulpian
maintains that those who are captured by pirates cannot be considered
as prisoners of war: but if captured by the Germans, for instance,
or any national enemy, they lose their liberty for a time. But the
Germans, as we are informed by Caesar, thought acts of plunder, if
committed in a foreign territory, no disgrace. Tacitus says that the
Cattians, a noble race of people in Germany, and the Garamantians were
addicted to the same habits of plunder, yet still retained their rank
among states.--Such is the difference between a national and political
body, and a band of men uniting together SOLELY FOR THE COMMISSION OF
CRIMES.
III. A change may occur not only in the situations of individuals, as
in those of Jephthah, Arsaces, and Viriatus, who, from being leaders
of voluntary bands, became lawful commanders; but the same has also
happened with respect to whole communities, which being originally
composed of nothing but freebooters have, by the gradual course and
changes of time, risen to the rank and dignity of states.
IV. What has been said with respect to the right of making formal and
lawful war, being vested in the sovereign power alone, includes those
who have any share in the sovereign power, as the different communities
forming the States General of many commonwealths. The same rule will
hold good of those, who are not SUBJECTS of a superior state, but
joined to it in confederacy by an unequal treaty: innumerable instances
of which are to be found in history. This was the case between the
Romans and their allies, the Volscians, the Latins, and the Spaniards:
and all whom we read of being engaged in wars, which were considered as
lawful and just.
V. But to make a war just, according to this meaning, it must not only
be carried on by the sovereign authority on both sides, but it must
also be duly and formally declared, and declared in such a manner, as
to be known to each of the belligerent powers. Cicero, in the first
book of his offices, points out "the equity of the rules prescribed
by the Roman Law for the declaration of war, from whence it may be
concluded that no war is regular or just, but such as is undertaken to
compel restitution, and to procure indemnity for injuries, and that too
accompanied with a formal declaration." Livy also in the same manner
deems an observance of these rules requisite to form the characteristic
of a just war. And describing an incursion of the Acarnanians into
Attica, and their ravaging the country, he says that "those acts of
irritation ended in a declaration of JUST and REGULAR war on both
sides."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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