Page:Two Introductory Lectures on the Science of International Law.djvu/16

 dedicated to Don Carlos, that there can be no difference between Christians and pagans, for the law of nations is equal to all nations. “Neque discrepantia (ut reor) est inter Christianos et Infideles, quoniam jus gentium cunctis gentibus sequale est.” To Soto belongs the signal honour of being the first who condemned the African slave trade. “It is affirmed,” says he, “that the unhappy Æthiopians are by fraud or by force carried away and sold as slaves. If this be true, neither those who have taken them, nor those who have purchased them, nor those who hold them in bondage can ever have a quiet conscience, until they have emancipated them, even if they should obtain no compensation.

It is difficult for us, in the present age, to measure the degree of courage and noble principle which impelled these excellent monks to vindicate the rights of the oppressed against the authority of the Church, the ambition of the Crown, the avarice and pride of their countrymen, and the prejudices of their own Order.

These were the early streaks of dawn, the earnest of the coming day. The maritime discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had given an extraordinary impulse to international intercourse; and the frequency of wars, though it did not create a common standard of jurisprudence by which military and maritime questions could be regulated, showed how much such a standard was required. War itself, it was perceived, even for the advantage of the belligerents, had its rules; an enemy had his rights; there were also distinct questions relating to alliance and neutrality; and a customary code had grown up by degrees to be administered with something like precision, in matters to which no state could apply its particular jurisprudence with any hope of reciprocity.