ancient proverb, that being bound for any one is the next stage to ruin; but it is a MAN'S OWN PROMISE, and NOT ANOTHER'S HAVING INCURRED A DEBT, that is the real cause of his obligation. For as a person, who has given security for a purchaser, is not, properly speaking, bound by the PURCHASE, but by his own PROMISE: so if any one has engaged to be responsible for a delinquent, it is his Own ENGAGEMENT, and not the ACT OF THAT DELINQUENT, which creates his obligation. And hence the inconvenience of that kind which any one incurs, must be measured not by the delinquency of another, but by his own power to enter into any such voluntary engagement. In consequence of which no one can give surety to suffer death for another; because no one has such power over his own life, as to take it away himself, or to be bound to forfeit it for another. Though the ancient Greeks and Romans thought otherwise, and therefore they maintained that a surety might be put to death for any one, as may be seen in the well known story of Damon and Pythias, and hostages were frequently punished in this manner.

What has been said of life may be applied to the limbs also, which no man has a right to part with, except for the preservation of the whole body. But if any one has engaged to suffer banishment, to submit to a pecuniary fine, or any other means of satisfying justice, any thing he suffers on this account will not, strictly speaking, be considered as a PERSONAL punishment, but as the performance of an agreement.

Something like this occurs in the right, which any one possesses dependent on another's will, both with respect to the right of individuals to private property, and to the more extensive right to demesnes possessed by a state. For if any one is deprived of such a thing owing to another's fault, here the executive power depriving that person, is not inflicting a punishment on HIM, but only exercising a prior right.

XII. and XIII. Having laid down these distinctions, we may observe that it is impossible that an innocent person should suffer for another's crime. This does not proceed from the reasons given by Paulus, who maintains that punishment is designed for the reformation of the offender. For it seems possible that an example may be made, extending beyond the person of the criminal himself, when it affects, in its consequences, those, who are nearly

related to him. So that it is not for the sake of example only that punishment is inflicted, but because the obligation thereto arises from the demerit of the offending party. Now every demerit must be of a personal nature, as it proceeds from a man's own will, over which he is supposed to exercise a perfect controul.

XIV. In the law given to the Hebrews, God threatens to avenge the impiety of fathers upon their children. But he has sovereign dominion over our lives and substance, as being his gift, which he may take away from any one, whenever he pleases, without assigning his reasons. Therefore if he thinks proper to take away by a premature or violent death the children of Achan, Saul, Jeroboam or Ahab, he is exercising over them the right of sovereignty, as well as that of punishment; imposing by that awful example the more severe penalty upon the parents. For if they survive their children, which was what the divine law had most in view, and therefore did not extend these threats beyond the time of great grand-children, a period to which the age of man might reach, it is certain that parents would be severely punished by such a sight, the most afflicting of any they could witness. Or if they should not survive such an event, to die under such an apprehension would be a great calamity.

But it is proper to remark that examples like those are never employed by God, except against crimes affecting his divine Majesty, as false worship, perjury or sacrilege. Indeed those threats of divine vengeance are not always enforced; especially where any extraordinary virtue shines in the characters and conduct of the children: as may be seen in the xviii. chapter of the prophesy of Ezekiel. Plutarch has discussed this topic with great eloquence in his book on the remote vengeance of God.

As the Gospel so clearly unfolds the future punishments of the wicked, all the threats contained in that new covenant terminate in the persons of the offenders themselves. But the ways of providence in these respects are not the rule which men can follow. For God, even without any reference to crime, is the sovereign lord and disposer of human life, a commission which man is only allowed to execute against the perpetrators of certain crimes. Wherefore as that same divine law forbids parents to be put to death for the offences of children, so it exempts children from the same punishment for the actions of their fathers: a lenity which is greatly com

mended by Josephus and Philo. The same commendation is bestowed by Isocrates upon the laws of Egypt; and by Dionysius of Halicarnassus upon those of Rome.

XV. But if it is unjust in human laws to punish the misconduct of parents in the persons of their children, how much more severe was the law of the Persians and Macedonians extending the penalties for crimes against the state to every branch of the offender's relatives, in the most remote degree, a law surpassing all others in rigour?

XVI. XVII. and XVIII. What has been said respecting the punishment of children for the offences of their fathers or forefathers, may be applied to the relation subsisting between sovereigns and subjects. For it is a relation springing from the contract of society, which makes the sovereign the essential head, life and soul of that body, in which his people form the members. As the civil community therefore with its sovereign or head forms but one body, there can be no separation of interests, but what affects one part must be prejudicial or serviceable to the whole.

XIX. Why should an heir, it has been sometimes asked, be bound by other debts of his ancester, and not feel the effects of his punishment for misconduct? to which answer may be given, that the heir represents the person of the deceased not in his merits or demerits, which are purely personal, but in his property; an artificial mode of preserving unbroken the chain of succession and descent.

XX. And hence it follows, that if in addition to the demerit of an offence, any new grounds of obligation should arise connected with the punishment, they must be discharged not properly as a punishment, but as a debt. Thus the heir will be liable to pay the costs awarded by a judgment after a contested suit, which is considered in the light of a contract.

CHAPTER XXII.

ON THE UNJUST CAUSES OF WAR.

Differences between real and colourable motives-War atrocious without either of these motives-Wars of plunder, under the most plausible pretexts, not justifiable - Causes apparently, but not really just-Unnecessary advantage-Desire of a better soil-Discovery of things belonging to others — Incapacity of the original owners — War not always justifiable under the pretext of asserting liberty— Or of imposing a beneficial government upon a people against their will-Emperor's pretensions to universal empire refuted - Pretensions of the Church-Imperfect obligations - Difference between wars originally unjust and those afterwards becoming so.

I. IN a former part of this work, where the justice of war was discussed, it was observed that some wars were founded upon real motives and others only upon colourable pretexts. This distinction was first noticed by Polybius, who calls the pretexts, popaasts, and the real causes, αιτιας. Thus Alexander made war upon Darius, under the pretence of avenging the former wrongs done by the Persians to the Greeks. But the real motive of that bold and enterprising hero, was the easy acquisition of wealth and dominion, which the expeditions of Xenophon and Agesilaus had opened to his view.

In the same manner, a dispute about Saguntum furnished the Carthaginians with COLOURABLE MOTIVES for the second Punic war, but, in REALITY, they could not brook the indignity of having consented to a treaty, which the Romans had extorted from them at an unfavourable moment; and more especially as their spirits were revived by their recent successes in Spain. The real causes assigned by Thucydides for the Peloponnesian war, were the jealousies entertained by the Lacedaemonians of the then growing power of the Athenians, though the quarrels of the Corcyreans, Potidaens, and other secondary states were made the ostensible reasons. II. There are some who have neither ostensible reasons, nor just causes to plead for their hostilities, in which, as Tacitus says, they engage from the pure love of enterprise and danger. A disposition to which Aristotle

gives the name of ferocity. And in the last book of his Nicomachian Ethics, he calls it a bloody cruelty to convert friends into enemies, whom you may slaughter.

III. Though most powers, when engaging in war, are desirous to colour over their real motives with justifiable pretexts, yet some, totally disregarding such methods of vindication, seem able to give no better reason for their conduct, than what is told by the Roman Lawyers of a robber, who being asked, what right he had to a thing, which he had seized, replied, it was his own, because he had taken it into his possession? Aristotle in the third book of his Rhetoric, speaking of the promoters of war, asks, if it is not unjust for a neighbouring people to be enslaved, and if those promoters have no regard to the rights of unoffending nations? Cicero, in the first book of his Offices, speaks in the same strain, and calls "the courage, which is conspicuous in danger and enterprise, if devoid of justice, absolutely undeserving of the name of valour. It should rather be considered as a brutal fierceness outraging every principle of humanity.

IV. Others make use of pretexts, which though plausible at first sight, will not bear the examination and test of moral rectitude, and, when stripped of their disguise, such pretexts will be found fraught with injustice. In such hostilities, says Livy it is not a trial of right, but some object of secret and unruly ambition, which acts as the chief spring. Most powers, it is said by Plutarch, employ the relative situations of peace and war, as a current specie, for the purchase of whatever they deem expedient.

By having before examined and established the principles of just and necessary war, we may form a better idea of what goes to constitute the injustice of the same. As the nature of things is best seen by contrast, and we judge of what is crooked by comparing it with what is straight. But for the sake of perspicuity, it will be necessary to treat upon the leading points.

It was shewn above that apprehensions from a neigh bouring power are not a sufficient ground for war. For to authorize hostilities as a defensive measure, they must arise from the necessity, which just apprehensions create; apprehensions not only of the power, but of the intentions of a formidable state, and such apprehensions as amount to a moral certainty. For which reason the opinion of those is by no means to be approved of, who lay down as a