Book I.
Chap. 3.All countries have a law of nations, not excepting the Iroquois themselves, though they devour their prisoners: for they send and receive ambassadors, and understand the rights of war and peace. The mischief is that their law of nations is not founded on true principles.
Besides the law of nations relating to all societies, there is a politic law for each particularly considered. No society can subsist without a form of government. The conjunction of the particular forces of individuals, as Gravina well observes, constitutes what we call a political state.
The general force may be in the hands of a single person, or of many. Some think that nature having established paternal authority, the government of a single person was most conformable to nature. But the example of paternal authority proves nothing. For if the power of a father is relative to a single government, that of brothers after the death of a father, or that of cousin germans after the decease of brothers, are relative to a government of many. The political power necessarily comprehends the union of several families.
Better is it to say that the government most conformable to nature, is that whose particular disposition best agrees with the humour and disposition of the people in whole favour it is established.
The particular force of individuals cannot be united without a conjunction of all their wills. The conjunction of those wills, as Gravina again very justly observes, is what we call the civil state.
Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth, the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the
