Law of nature with respect to the acquisition of things captured in war--Law of nations on the same subject--In what cases the law of nations confirms the capture of things moveable--Lands acquired by conquest--Lawful prize cannot be made of things not belonging to an enemy--Goods found on board an enemy's ships--Law of nations authorises the making prize of what an enemy has taken from others in war--Sovereigns may acquire possession and dominion through those employed by them--Acts of hostility divided into public and private--Territory may be acquired by a sovereign or people--Private and public captures explained--Discretionary power of generals in this respect--Prizes belong either to the treasury, or to those, who take them--Places sometimes given up to be plundered by the soldiery--Different methods of dividing spoils--Peculation, a portion of the spoils sometimes given to allies, who have supported the war--Sometimes given up to subjects--This illustrated by examples--Utility of the above practices--Whether things taken without the territory of either of the belligerent powers can be acquired by the rights of war--In what manner this right peculiarly applies to solemn wars. I. Besides the impunity allowed to men for certain actions, which have been mentioned before, there are other consequences and effects, peculiar to the law of nations, attending solemn and formal war. The law of nature indeed authorises our making such acquisitions in a just war, as may be deemed an equivalent for a debt, which cannot otherwise be obtained, or as may inflict a loss upon the aggressor, provided it be within the bounds of reasonable punishment. According to this right, as we find in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, Abraham devoted to God a tenth part of the spoils, which he had taken from the five kings: and the inspired writer in the seventh chapter of his Epistle to the Hebrews gives the same interpretation of this passage. In the same manner the Greeks too, the Carthaginians, and the Romans, devoted a tenth portion of the spoils of war to their deities. Jacob, in making a particular bequest to Joseph above his brethren, says, "I have given to thee one portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword, and with my bow." In this place, the expression, I TOOK, is used according to the prophetic style, where an event, that will for certain take place, is spoken of in the past time, and an action is here attributed to Jacob, which some of his descendants were to perform, supposing the progenitor and his children to be the same person. Nor is it upon conjecture alone that such a right is founded, but the divine law giver himself pronounces sentence against a city that has rejected the offers of peace, and afterwards been taken by storm, that he gives all her spoils to the conqueror.