LETTER XCV. Usbek to the Same.

THE magistrates ought to administer justice between citizen and citizen, every nation ought to do the same between themselves and another nation. In

this second distribution of justice, no other maxims ought to be employed but those in the first. For nation and nation there is seldom need of a third to judge between them, because the subjects of their disputes are for the most part always plain and easy to be determined. The interests of the two nations are generally so separate, that nothing more is necessary but a love of justice to find it out; they can scarcely mistake the proper cause. It is not the same with the differences that happen between private persons. As they live in society, their interests are so mixed and so confounded, and there are so many different kinds of them, that it is necessary for a third person to clear up what the covetousness of the parties endeavour to obscure. There are but two kinds of just wars: one which is waged to repulse the attack of an enemy, the other to succour an ally who is attacked. It would not be justice to enter into a war upon the private quarrel of a prince; unless the case was so heinous as to merit the death of the prince or the people who committed it. Thus, a prince should not engage in a war because he hath been refused an honour which was his right, or for any unsuitable demeanor towards his ambassadors, and such similar cases; no more than a private person ought to kill him who refuses him precedency. The reason is this, as a declaration of war ought to be an act of justice, wherein the punishment should always be in proportion to the fault, it should be inquired whether the party against whom war is declared merits death. For to make war against any person, is to be willing to punish him with death. In the law of nations the severest act of justice is war, since the effect of it is the destruction of society. Reprisals are of the second degree. To proportion the punishment to the offence, is a law which no tribunals could ever avoid observing. The third act of justice, is to deprive a prince of the advantages that he might derive from us, always proportioning the punishment to the offence. The fourth act of justice which ought to be the most frequent, is the renunciation of the alliance of a people against whom we have reason to complain. This punishment answers to that of banishment, appointed by courts of justice, to cut off delinquents from the community. Thus a prince, whose alliance we renounce, is cut off from our society, and is no longer one of its members. A greater affront cannot be done to a prince than to renounce his alliance, nor a greater honour than to contract one with him. There is nothing among men, that can be more honourable, or more useful to mankind, than to be always attentive to their preservation. But that the alliance may be binding it must be just; so that an alliance concluded between two nations to oppress a third is not lawful, and may be broke without a fault. It is not suitable to the honour and dignity of a prince to ally himself to a tyrant. An Egyptian monarch once remonstrated to a king of Samos, upon his cruelty and tyranny, and called upon him to amend; as he did not, he sent him word that he renounced his friendship and alliance. Conquest of itself gives no right. When a society subsists, it is a security for peace and for reparation of injuries; and if it is destroyed, or dispersed, it is a monument of tyranny. Treaties of peace are so sacred among men, that they seem as if they were the dictates of nature, which reclaims its rights. They are always lawful, when the conditions of them are such, that both parties may preserve themselves: without which that of the two societies which would perish, deprived of its natural defence by peace, may seek it by war. For nature, which hath established different degrees of strength and weakness among men, hath yet often made weakness equal to strength, by despair. This, Rhedi, is what I call the civil law; the law of nations, or rather the law of reason.

Paris, the 4th of the moon Zilhage,
1716.