IX. What has been said of individuals applies to nations: so that a free people, who have been subjugated, upon being delivered from the yoke of the enemy by the power of their allies, will recover their former condition. But if the whole population that constituted a state has been dispersed, the people can no longer be considered as the same: nor does the law of nations in such a case enforce the right of postliminium for the restoration of all effects formerly belonging to that people. For as the identity of a ship, or any other material object, can only be ascertained by the permanent union of its original parts: so a nation can no longer be regarded as the same, when every peculiar characteristic belonging to it is effaced. The state of Saguntum therefore was no longer judged to be the same, when it was restored to its ancient possessors, at the expiration of eight years: nor could Thebes any longer be deemed the original city, as its inhabitants had been sold by Alexander for slaves. From hence it is evident, that the Thebans could not, by the right of postliminium, recover the sum of money, which the Thessalians had owed them: and that for two reasons: because, in the first place, they were a new people; and, secondly, because Alexander at the time that he was absolute master of the city had a right, if he thought proper, to relinquish the claim to that debt, which he had actually done. Besides, a debt is not in the number of things recoverable by the right of postliminium. The rules, respecting a state, are not much unlike those laid down by the ancient Roman law, which made marriage a dissoluble tie, so that it could not be restored by the right of postliminium: but a new consent, and a new contract were necessary. X. By the Roman civil law deserters were excluded from the right of postliminium. XI. and XII. It is a point of much importance to the subject, and it was before declared in the affirmative, that nations, which have been under a foreign yoke, recover their former condition, even though their deliverance has not been effected by their former sovereign, but by some ally. It is a settled rule, where there is no express treaty to the contrary. At the same time it is but reasonable that such ally be indemnified for the expences incurred in accomplishing that deliverance. XIII. Among things within the right of postliminium, lands in particular attract our attention. For, as Pomponius observes, upon the expulsion of an enemy lands naturally revert to their former masters. And in this sense expulsion is understood to take place from the time that his free and open access to a territory is entirely cut off.