CONTRIBUTIONS IN THE ENEMY’S COUNTRY.

[Sidenote:  To be moderate.]

“Instead of the pillage of the country and defenceless places, a custom has been substituted more humane and more advantageous to the sovereign making war:  I mean that of contributions.  Whoever carries on a just war[41] has a right of making the enemy’s country contribute to the support of the army, and towards defraying all the charges of the war.  Thus he obtains a part of what is due to him, and the subjects of the enemy, on submitting to this imposition, are secured from pillage, and the country is preserved.  But a general who would not sully his reputation is to moderate his contributions, and proportion them to those on whom they are imposed.  An excess in this point is not without the reproach of cruelty and inhumanity:  if it shows less ferocity than ravage and destruction, it glares with avarice.”—­Book III. ch. ix.  Sec. 165.

ASYLUM.

“If an exile or banished man is driven from his country for any crime, it does not belong to the nation in which he has taken refuge to punish him for a fault committed in a foreign country.  For Nature gives to mankind and to nations the right of punishing only for their defence and safety (Sec. 169):  whence it follows that he can only be punished by those he has offended.

“But this reason shows, that, if the justice of each nation ought in general to be confined to the punishment of crimes committed in its own territories, we ought to except from this rule the villains who, by the quality and habitual frequency of their crimes, violate all public security, and declare themselves the enemies of the human race.  Poisoners, assassins, and incendiaries by profession may be exterminated wherever they are seized; for they attack and injure all nations by trampling under foot the foundations of their common safety.  Thus pirates are brought to the gibbet by the first into whose hands they fall.  If the sovereign of the country where crimes of that nature have been committed reclaims the authors of them in order to bring them to punishment, they ought to be restored to him, as to one who is principally interested in punishing them in an exemplary manner:  and it being proper to convict the guilty, and to try them according to some form of law, this is a second [not sole] reason why malefactors are usually delivered up at the desire of the state where their crimes have been committed.”—­Book I. ch. xix.  Sec.Sec. 232, 233.

“Every nation has a right of refusing to admit a stranger into the country, when he cannot enter it without putting it in evident danger, or without doing it a remarkable prejudice."[42]—­Ibid.  Sec. 230.

FOREIGN MINISTERS.