We must look, then, among the accepted declarations of the law of nations for the just and incontrovertible measure of the shame of breaking national compacts, and of the wickedness of the nations that dare to do it.
We shall go back to the earliest days of the world, and find no dissent from, no qualification of the verdict of the infamy of such acts. Livy says of leagues: “Leagues are such agreements as are made by the command of the supreme power, and whereby the whole nation is made liable to the wrath of God if they infringe it.”
Grotius opens his “Admonition,” in conclusion of the third book of his famous “Rights of War and Peace,” as follows: “ ‘For it is by faith,’ saith Cicero, ‘that not commonwealths only, but that grand society of nations is maintained.’ ‘Take away this,’ saith Aristotle, ‘and all human commerce fails.’ It is, therefore, an execrable thing to break faith on which so many lives depend. ‘It is,’ saith Seneca, ‘the best ornament wherewith God hath beautified the rational soul; the strongest support of human society, which ought so much the more inviolably to be kept by sovereign princes by how much they may sin with greater license and impunity than other men. Wherefore take away faith, and men are more fierce and cruel than savage beasts, whose rage all men do horribly dread. Justice, indeed, in all other of her parts hath something that is obscure; but that whereunto we engage our faith is of itself clear and evident; yea, and to this very end do men pawn their faith, that in their negotiations one with another all doubts may be taken away, and every scruple removed. How much more, then, doth it concern kings to keep their faith inviolate, as well for conscience’ sake as in regard to their honor and reputation, wherein consists the authority of a kingdom.’ ”
Vattel says: “Treaties are no better than empty words, if nations do not consider them as respectable engagements, as
