Commentaries on American Law Volume 1 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: lated all rules of right, when they set up a tribunal of their own to judge the Inca of Peru according to their laws. If he had broken the law of nations in 22 respect to them, they would have had a right to punish him; but when they undertook to judge of the merits of his own interior administration, and to try and punish him for acts committed in the course of it, they were guilty of the grossest injustice. No nation had a contention within itself, but the ancient Romans, with their usual insolence, immediately interfered, and with profound duplicity pretended to take part with the oppressed for the sake of justice, though in reality for the purpose of dominion. It was by a violation of the right of national independence, that they artfully dissolved the Achaean league, and decreed that each member of the confederacy should be governed by its own laws, independent of the general authority. But so surprisingly loose and inaccurate were the theories of the ancients on the subject of national independence, that the Greeks seem never to have questioned the right of one state to interfere in the internal concerns of another.b We have several instances within time of memory, of unwarrantable and flagrant violations of the independence of the balance of power among neighbouring nations, is another case of the utmost moment and difficulty, and requires the most grave and comprehensive consideration. Such intervention has, within the last two centuries, been very frequent, and led to extensive and destructive wars. But it was necessary and just in some of the instances, and pre-eminently so with England in 1803, and with Austria in 1813, under the dangerous preponderance and inveterate aggressions of France. " No governments," said General Washington, (Sparks' Writings of Washington, ...