tural justice, on the subject of national duty. It retained strong traces of ancient rudeness, from the want of the Christian system of morals, and the civilizing restraints of commerce. We find the barbarous doctrine still asserted, that prisoners of war became slaves jure gentium,[1] and even in respect to foreign nations with whom the Romans were at peace, but had no particular alliance, it is laid down in the Digest, that whoever passed from one country to the other became immediately a slave. Nam si cum gente aliqua neque amicitiam, neque hospitium, neque fœdus amicitiæ causa factum habemus: hi hostes quidem non sunt. Quod autem eo nostro ad eos peruenit, illorum fit: et liber homo noster ab eis captus, servus fit, et eorum. Idemque si ab illis ad nos aliquid perveniat.[2] It is impossible to conceive of a rule of national law more directly calculated to destroy all commercial intercourse, and to maintain eternal enmity between nations.
The irruption of the northern tribes of Scythia and Germany, overturned all that was gained by the Roman law, annihilated every restraint, and all sense of national obligation, and civil society relapsed into the violence and confusion of the barbarous ages. Mankind seemed to be doomed to live once more in constant distrust or hostility, and to regard a stranger and an enemy as almost the same. Piracy, rapine, and ferocious warfare, deformed the annals of Europe. The manners of nations were barbarous, and their maxims of war cruel. Slavery was considered as a lawful consequence of captivity. Mr. Harrington[3] has cited the laws of the Wisigoths, Saxons, Sicilians, and Bavarians, as restraining, by the severest penalties, the plunder of shipwrecked goods, and the abuse of shipwrecked seamen, and as extending the rights of hospitality to strangers. But, not-
