abstract sense, would embrace those rules of intercourse between nations which are deduced from their rights and moral claims; or, in other words, it is the expression of the jural and moral relations of States to one another.
“If international law were not made up of rules for which reasons could be given satisfactory to man’s intellectual and moral nature, if it were not built on principles of right, it would be even less of a science than is the code which governs the actions of polite society.”
It is evident, therefore, that the one fundamental right, of which the “law of nations” is at once the expression and the guardian, is the right of every nation to just treatment from other nations, the right of even the smallest republic equally with “the most powerful kingdom.” Just as the one fundamental right, of which civil law is the expression and guardian, is the right of each individual to just treatment from every other individual: a right indefeasible, inalienable, in nowise lessened by weakness or strengthened by power—as majestic in the person of “the dwarf” as in that of “the giant.”
Of justice, Vattel says: “Justice is the basis of all society, the sure bond of all commerce. * * *
“All nations are under a strict obligation to cultivate justice toward each other, to observe it scrupulously and carefully, to abstain from anything that may violate it. * * *
“The right of refusing to submit to injustice, of resisting injustice by force if necessary, is part of the law of nature, and as such recognized by the law of nations.
“In vain would Nature give us a right to refuse submitting to injustice, in vain would she oblige others to be just in their dealings with us, if we could not lawfully make use of force when they refused to discharge this duty. The just would lie at the mercy of avarice and injustice, and all their rights would soon become useless. From the foregoing right arise, as two distinct branches, first, the right of a just defence, which be-
