Page:Commentaries on American Law vol. I.djvu/17

Lecture I.] There were, however, many feeble efforts, and some successful examples, to be met with in Grecian history in favour of national justice. The object of the Amphictyonic Council was to institute a law of nations among the Greeks, and to check violence and settle contests between Grecian states by a pacific adjustment. It was also a law of nations among them, and one which was very religiously observed, to allow to the vanquished the privilege of burying their own dead, end to grant the requisite truce for that purpose. Some of the states had public ministers resident at the courts of others, and there were some distinguished instances of great humanity shown to prisoners of war. During a cessation of arms in the course of the Peloponnesian war, Athens aud Sparta agreed to an exchange or mutual surrender of prisoners. The sound judgment and profound reflections of Aristotle, naturally raised his sense of right above the atrocious maxims and practices of his age, and he perceived the injustice of that doctrine of Grecian policy, that, by the laws of war, the vanquished became the absoute property of the victor. “Wise men,” he observed, “entertained different opinions upon that subject. Some considered superiority as a proof of virtue, because it is its natural effect, and they asserted it to be just that the victors should be masters of the vanquished; whilst others denied the force of the argument, and maintained that nothing could be truly just which was inconsistent with humanity.” He then proceeded to weaken by argument the false foundations on which the law of slavery, by means of capture in war, was established; and though he does not write on the subject very distinctly or forcibly, it seems to be quite apparent that his convictions were on that side.

The Romans exhibited much stronger proofs than the Greeks of the influence of regular law, and there was a marked difference between those nations in their intercourse