But the ancient law of nations seems still in force against any rude or barbarous people, who, without any declaration or cause of war, consider all mankind as enemies. A decision has lately been made in the principal chamber of the parliament of Paris, declaring all effects belonging to the subjects of France, and taken by the Algerines, a people always engaged in predatory and maritime warfare with all other countries, if retaken, to belong to the captors.--At the same time it was decided, that, in the present day, ships are not reckoned among things recoverable by the right of postliminium. CHAPTER XI.[66] THE RIGHT OF KILLING ENEMIES, IN JUST WAR, TO BE TEMPERED WITH MODERATION AND HUMANITY. In what cases strict justice allows the destruction of an enemy--Distinction between misfortune and guilt--Between principals and accessories in war--Distinction between unwarrantable and excusable grounds of promoting war--Sometimes right and laudable to forbear punishing an inveterate enemy--Every possible precaution requisite to spare the innocent--Especially children, women, and the aged, except they have committed atrocious acts--Clergymen, men of letters, husbandmen, merchants, prisoners--Conditional surrender not to be rejected--Unconditional surrender--Exceptions to the above rules, some of them considered, and refuted--Delinquents when numerous to be spared--Hostages to be spared--Unnecessary effusion of blood to be avoided. I. and II. Cicero, in the first book of his offices, has finely observed, that "some duties are to be observed even towards those, from whom you have received an injury. For even vengeance and punishment have their due bounds." And at the same time he extols those ancient periods in the Roman government, when the events of war were mild, and marked with no unnecessary cruelty. The explanations given in the first chapter of this book will point out the cases, where the destruction of an enemy is one of the rights of lawful war, according to the principles of strict and internal justice, and where it is not so. For the death of an enemy may proceed either from an accidental calamity, or from the fixed purpose of his destruction. No one can be justly killed by design, except by way of legal punishment, or to defend our lives, and preserve our property, when it cannot be effected without his destruction. For although in sacrificing the life of man to the preservation of perishable possessions, there may be nothing repugnant to strict justice, it is by no means consonant to the law of charity. But to justify a punishment of that kind, the person put to death must have committed a crime, and such a crime too, as every equitable judge would deem worthy of death. Points, which it is unnecessary to discuss any further, as they have been so fully explained in the chapter on punishments.