"The 'Law of Nations' is an obligation which binds the consciences of nations to respect the eternal principle of justice in their relations with each other. 'International law' is the system of rules, precedents, and maxims accumulated in recognition of the eternal law. But as men may build a theatre or a gambling-house upon the foundations constructed for a religious edifice, and upon a stone consecrated for an altar, so has it been possible for diplomacy to substitute a system of chicanery for the simple laws which were intended to facilitate the intercourse of nations, and with such effect as in a great number of cases to place international law in contradiction with the law of nations--as, for instance, when in a certain case the law of nations says that it is wrong to invade a neighbour's territory, international law is made to say that it is lawful to invade in such a case, because such-and-such monarchs in past history have done so. "Practically the effect of the substitution is, that the sentiment of justice disappears, that wars which formerly were called unjust, are now called inevitable, so that good men, disheartened at the conflicting evidence of precedents, yield their sense of right and wrong, and defer to the adjudication of diplomatists. This is particularly satisfactory to the modern spirit which will admit nothing to be law which is superior to, and distinct from, that which the human intellect has determined to be law. "But the sense of right and wrong in good men is that which gives its whole efficacy to the law of nations. There is nothing else in the last resort, to restrain the ambition and passion of princes, but the reprobation of mankind--nothing but the fear of invading that "moral territory"[9] which even bad men find it necessary to conquer, '_dans l'ame des peuples ses voisins_.' On the other hand, the whole mass of precedents to which diplomatists appeal, which are rarely carefully collated with those which legists have accumulated and digested, is nothing but a veil which thinly covers the supremacy of might and the right of force. "In fact, the conventional deference which is paid to them, is at best only the hypocritical homage which force is constrained to pay to justice before it strikes its blow.