sidering deny not their communion to any Christian who desires it, and believes the apostles' creed, and is of the religion of the first four general councils; they hope well of all that live well; they receive into their bosom all true believers of what church soever; and for them that err, they instruct them, and then leave them to their liberty, to stand or fall before their own master."* 2. A doctrine not the less safe for being the more charitable. "Christ our Lord hath given us, amongst others, two infallible notes to know the church. My sheep, saith he, hear my voice:† and again, By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.‡-What! shall we stand upon conjectural arguments from that which men say? We are partial to ourselves, malignant to our opposites. Let Christ be heard who be his, who not. And for the hearing of his voice-O that it might be the issue! But I see you decline it, therefore I leave : John x. 27.-Ed. 16. xiii. 35.-Ed. 6 I am satisfied they have not hurt me at all.' Nay,' but saith yours, 'I sit alone as queen and mistress of Christ's family, he that hath not me for his mother, can not have God for his father. Mine, therefore, are these, either born or adopted; and if they will not be mine, they shall be none. So without expecting Christ's sentence she cuts with the temporal sword, hangs, burns, draws, those that she perceives inclined to leave her, or have left her already. So she kills with the spiritual sword those that are subject not to her, yea, thousands of souls that not only have no means so to do, but many which never so much as have heard whether there be a pope of Rome or no. Let our Solomon be judge between them, yea, judge you, Mr. Waddesworth! more seriously and maturely, not by guesses, but by the very mark of Christ, which wanting yourselves, you have unawares discovered in us: judge, I say, without passion and partiality, according to Christ's word, which is his flock, which is his church."* ESSAY XIII. ON THE LAW OF NATIONS. Πρὸς πόλεως εὐδαιμονίαν καὶ δικαιοσύνην πάντα ἰδιώτον ἔμπροσθεν τέτακται φύσει· τούτων δὲ τὰ μὲν ἀνθρώπινα εἰς τὰ θεῖα, τὰ δὲ θεῖα εἰς τὸν ἡγεμόνα νοῦν ξύμπαντα δεῖ βλέπειν, οὐχ ὡς πρὸς ἀρετῆς τὶ μόριον, ἀλλὰ πρὸς ἀρετὴν ἐν ἀρεταῖς ἀεὶ ὑπομενοῦσαν, ὡς πρὸς νόμον τίνα νομοθετοῦντα. PLATO. For all things that regard the well-being and justice of a state are pre-ordained and established in the nature of the individual. Of these it behooves that the merely human (the temporal and fluxional) should be referred and subordinated to the divine in man, and the divine in like manner to the Supreme Mind, so however that the state is not to regulate its actions by reference to any particular form and fragments of virtue, but must fix its eye on that virtue, which is the abiding spirit and (as it were) substratum in all the virtues, as on a law that is itself legislative. Ir were absurd to suppose, that individuals should be under a law of moral obligation, and yet that a million of the same in * Letter to a friend who had deserted the Church of England for that of Rome.-Ed. dividuals acting collectively or through representatives, should be exempt from all law for morality is no accident of human nature, but its essential characteristic. A being altogether without morality is either a beast or a fiend, accordingly as we conceive this want of conscience to be natural or self-produced; a mere negation of goodness, or the consequence of rebellion to it. Yet were it possible to conceive a man wholly immoral, it would remain impossible to conceive him without a moral obligation to be otherwise; and none, but a madman, will imagine that the essential qualities of any thing can be altered by its becoming part of an aggregate; that a grain of corn, for instance, shall cease to contain flour, as soon as it is part of a peck or bushel. It is, therefore, grounded in the nature of the thing, and not by a mere fiction of the mind, that wise men, who have written on the law of nations, contemplate the several states of the civilized world, as so many individuals, and equally with the latter under a moral obligation to exercise their free agency within such bounds, as render it compatible with the existence of free agency in others. We may represent to ourselves this original free agency, as a right of common, the formation of separate states as an inclosure of this common, the allotments awarded severally to the co-proprietors as constituting national rights, and the law of nations as the common register-office of their title-deeds. But in all morality, though the principle, which is the abiding spirit of the law, remains perpetual and unaltered, even as that Supreme Reason in whom and from whom it has its being, yet the letter of the law, that is, the application of it to particular instances, and the mode of realizing it in actual practice, must be modified by the existing circumstances. What we should desire to do, the conscience alone will inform us; but how and when we are to make the attempt, and to what extent it is in our power to accomplish it, are questions for the judgment, and require an acquaintance with facts, and their bearings on each other. Thence the improvement of our judgment, and the increase of our knowledge, on all subjects included within our sphere of action, are not merely advantages recommended by prudence, but absolute duties imposed on us by conscience. As the circumstances, then, under which men act as statesmen, are different from those under which they act as individuals, a proportionate difference must be expected in the practical rules by which their public conduct is to be determined. Let me not be misunderstood: I speak of a difference in the practical rules, not in the moral law itself, the means of administering in particular cases, and under given circumstances, which it is the sole object of these rules to point out. The spirit continues one and the same, though it may vary its form according to the element into which it is transported. This difference, with its grounds and consequences, it is the province of the philosophical publicist to discover and display and exactly in this point (I speak with unfeigned diffidence) it appears to me that the writers on the law of nations, whose works I have had the opportunity of studying, have been least successful. In what does the law of nations differ from the laws enacted by a particular state for its own subjects? The solution is evident. The law of nations, considered apart from the common principle of all morality, is not fixed or positive in itself, nor supplied with any regular means of being enforced. Like those duties in private life which, for the same reasons, moralists have entitled imperfect duties (though the most atrocious guilt may be involved in the omission or violation of them), the law of nations appeals only to the conscience and prudence of the parties concerned. Wherein then does it differ from the moral laws which the reason, considered as conscience, dictates for the conduct of individuals? This is a more difficult question; but my answer would be determined by, and grounded on, the obvious differences of the circumstances in the two cases. Remember then, that we are now reasoning, not as sophists or system-mongers, but as men anxious to discover what is right in order that we may practise it, or at least give our suffrage and the influence of our opinion in recommending its practice. We must therefore confine the question to those cases, in which honest men and real * Grotius, Bynkerschoek, Puffendorf, Wolfe, and Vattel; to whose works I must add, as comprising whatever is most valuable in the preceding authors, with many important improvements and additions, Robinson's Reports of Cases in the Admiralty Court, under Sir W. Scott: to whom international law is under no less obligation than the law of commercial proceeding was to the late Lord Mansfield. As I have never seen Sir W. Scott, nor either by myself or my connections enjoy the honor of the remotest acquaintance with him, I trust that even by those who may think my opin ion erroneous, I shall not at least be suspected of intentional flattery. He patriots can suppose any controversy to exist between real patriotism and common honesty. The objects of the patriot are, that his countrymen should, as far as circumstances permit, enjoy what the Creator designed for the enjoyment of animals endowed with reason, and of course that they should have it in their power to develop those faculties which were given them to be developed. He would do his best that every one of his countrymen should possess whatever all men may and should possess, and that a sufficient number should be enabled and encouraged to acquire those excellencies which, though not necessary or possible for all men, are yet to all men useful and honorable. knows that patriotism itself is a necessary link in the golden chain of our affections and virtues, and turns away with indignant scorn from the false philosophy or mistaken religion, which would persuade him that cosmopolitism is nobler than nationality, the human race a sublimer object of love than a people; and that Plato, Luther, Newton, and their equals, formed themselves neither in the market nor the senate, but in the world, and for all men of all ages. True! But where, and among whom are these giant exceptions produced? In the wide empires of Asia, where millions of human beings acknowledge no other bond but that of a common slavery, and are distinguished on the map but by a name which themselves perhaps never heard, or hearing abhor? No! in a circle defined by human affections, the first firm sod within which becomes sacred beneath the quickened step of the returning citizen;-here, where the powers and interests of men spread without confusion through a common sphere, like the vibrations propagated in the air by a single voice, distinct yet coherent, and all uniting to express one thought and the same feeling;-here, where even the common soldier dares force a passage for his comrades by gathering up the bayonets of the enemy into his own breast, because his country expected every man to do his duty, and this not after he has been hardened by habit, but, as probably in his first battle; not reckless or hopeless, but braving death from a keener sensibility to those blessings which make life dear, to those qualities which render himself worthy to enjoy them;-here, where the royal crown is loved and worshiped as a glory around the sainted head of freedom;-where the rustic at his plough whistles with equal enthusiasm, "God save the King," and "Britons never shall be slaves," or, perhaps |