[Sidenote:  Tyrants.]

“As to those monsters, who, under the title of sovereigns, render themselves the scourges and horror of the human race,—­these are savage beasts, from which every brave man may justly purge the earth.  All antiquity has praised Hercules for delivering the world from an Antaeus, a Busiris, and a Diomedes.”—­Ibid. ch. iv.  Sec. 56.

After stating that nations have no right to interfere in domestic concerns, he proceeds,—­“But this rule does not preclude them from espousing the quarrel of a dethroned king, and assisting him, if he appears to have justice on his side.  They then declare themselves enemies of the nation which has acknowledged his rival; as, when two different nations are at war, they are at liberty to assist that whose quarrel they shall think has the fairest appearance.”—­Book IV. ch. ii.  Sec. 14.

CASE OF ALLIANCES.

[Sidenote:  When an alliance to preserve a king takes place.]

[Sidenote:  King does not lose his quality by the loss of his kingdom.]

“It is asked if that alliance subsists with the king and the royal family when by some revolution they are deprived of their crown.  We have lately remarked, (Sec. 194,) that a personal alliance expires with the reign of him who contracted it:  but that is to be understood of an alliance with the state, limited, as to its duration, to the reign of the contracting king.  This of which we are here speaking is of another nature.  For though it binds the state, since it is bound by all the public acts of its sovereign, it is made directly in favor of the king and his family; it would therefore be absurd for it to terminate at the moment when they have need of it, and at an event against which it was made.  Besides, the king does not lose his quality merely by the loss of his kingdom. If he is stripped of it unjustly by an usurper, or by rebels, he preserves his rights, in the number of which are his alliances.[40]

[Sidenote:  Case wherein aid may be given to a deposed king.]

“But who shall judge if the king be dethroned lawfully or by violence?  An independent nation acknowledges no judge.  If the body of the nation declares the king deprived of his rights by the abuse he has made of them, and deposes him, it may justly do it when its grievances are well founded, and no other power has a right to censure it.  The personal ally of this king ought not then to assist him against the nation that has made use of its right in deposing him:  if he attempts it, he injures that nation.  England declared war against Louis the Fourteenth, in the year 1688, for supporting the interest of James the Second, who was deposed in form by the nation.  The same country declared war against him a second time, at the beginning of the present century, because that prince acknowledged the son of the deposed James, under the name of James the