Page:Commentaries on American Law vol. I.djvu/18

6 with foreign powers. It was a principle of the Roman government, that none but a sworn soldier could lawfully fight the enemy; and in many instances the Romans showed that they excelled the Greeks, by the possession of a sterner and better sense of justice. The institution of a college of heralds, and the fecial law, were proofs of a people considerably advanced in the cultivation of the law of nations as a science; and yet with what little attention they were accustomed to listen to the voice of justice and humanity, appears but too plainly from their haughty triumphs, their cunning interpretation of treaties, their continual violation of justice, their cruel rules of war, and the whole series of their wonderful successes, in the steady progress of the conquest of the world. The perusal of Livy’s magnificent History of the rise and progress of the Roman power, excites our constant admiration of the vigour, the skill, the valour, and the fortitude of the Roman people; yet, not withstanding the splendour of the story, and the attractive simplicity of the writer, no reader of taste and principle can well avoid feeling a thorough detestation of the fierce spirit of conquest which it displays, and of the barbarous international law and customs of the ancients.

A purer system of public morals was cultivated, and in sensibly gained ground, in the Roman state. The cruelties of Marius in the Jugurthan war, when he put part of the inhabitants of a Numidian town to the sword, and sold the rest for slaves, were declared by Sallust to be a proceeding contra jus belli. At the zenith of the Roman power, the enlarged and philosophical mind of Cicero was struck with extreme disgust, at the excesses in which his country men indulged their military spirit. He justly discerned that mankind were not intended, by the law and constitution of their nature, as rational and social beings, to live in eternal enmity with each other; and he recommends, in one of the most beautiful and perfect ethical codes to be met with