Page:First Voyage Round the World.djvu/19

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LIFE OF MAGELLAN
vii

speakable wickedness; yet you will not be able by any such document to avoid offending the Deity, nor the stain of an everlasting opprobrium."

Against this view of Osorio may be set the following passage from Vattel, which has all the more weight, in that it is simply an enunciation of law and right, and is not written to support or to denounce any particular person.

"Many distinctions will be necessary, in order to give a complete solution to the celebrated question, whether a man may quit his country, or the society of which he is a member. The children are bound by natural ties to the society in which they were born; they are under an obligation to show themselves grateful for the protection it has afforded to their fathers, and are in a great measure indebted to it for their birth and education. They ought, therefore, to love it, as we have already shown, to express a just gratitude to it, and requite its services as far as possible by serving it in turn. We have observed above, that they have a right to enter into the society of which their fathers were members. But every man is born free; and the son of a citizen, when come to the years of discretion, may examine whether it be convenient for him to join the society for which he was destined by his birth. If he does not find it advantageous to remain in it, he is at liberty to quit it, on making it a compensation for what it has done in his favour, and preserving, as far as his new engagements will allow him, the sentiments of love and gratitude he owes it,"—Chitty's translation of Vattel, book i, cap. xix, § 220.

There are also some remarkable passages in a pamphlet by Condorcet, dated October 25th, 1791, named Opinion sur les Emigrants. This opinion deserves attention, both on account of its author and the time in which it was written, when popular passions and