This violent breach of the community of Europe we must conclude to have been made (even if they had not expressly declared it over and over again) either to force mankind into an adoption of their system or to live in perpetual enmity with a community the most potent we have ever known. Can any person imagine, that, in offering to mankind this desperate alternative, there is no indication of a hostile mind, because men in possession of the ruling authority are supposed to have a right to act without coercion in their own territories? As to the right of men to act anywhere according to their pleasure, without any moral tie, no such right exists. Men are never in a state of _total_ independence of each other. It is not the condition of our nature: nor is it conceivable how any man can pursue a considerable course of action without its having some effect upon others, or, of course, without producing some degree of responsibility for his conduct. The _situations_ in which men relatively stand produce the rules and principles of that responsibility, and afford directions to prudence in exacting it. Distance of place does not extinguish the duties or the rights of men; but it often renders their exercise impracticable. The same circumstance of distance renders the noxious effects of an evil system in any community less pernicious. But there are situations where this difficulty does not occur, and in which, therefore, those duties are obligatory and these rights are to be asserted. It has ever been the method of public jurists to draw a great part of the analogies on which they form the law of nations from the principles of law which prevail in civil community. Civil laws are not all of them merely positive. Those which are rather conclusions of legal reason than matters of statutable provision belong to universal equity, and are universally applicable. Almost the whole prætorian law is such. There is a _law of neighborhood_ which does not leave a man perfect master on his own ground. When a neighbor sees a _new erection_, in the nature of a nuisance, set up at his door, he has a right to represent it to the judge, who, on his part, has a right to order the work to be stayed, or, if established, to be removed. On this head the parent law is express and clear, and has made many wise provisions, which, without destroying, regulate and restrain the right of _ownership_ by the right of _vicinage_. No _innovation_ is permitted that may redound, even secondarily, to the prejudice of a neighbor. The whole doctrine of that important head of prætorian law, "_De novi operis nunciatione_," is founded on the principle, that no _new_ use should be made of a man's private liberty of operating upon his private property, from whence a detriment may be justly apprehended by his neighbor. This law of denunciation is prospective. It is to anticipate what is called _damnum infectum_ or _damnum nondum factum_, that is, a damage justly apprehended, but not actually done.