2801
Adams Lecture on the War with China
MAY.
sably necessary to the adjustment of the question of right and wrong in the issue of fact between the British and Chinese governments:
"The first general law, which the very end of the society of nations disco- vers, is that cach nation ought to contribute all in its power to the happiness and perfection of others."-" But the duty towards ourselves having incontestibly the advantage over our duty with respect to others, a nation ought in the first place, preferably to all other considerations, to do whatever it can to promote its own happiness and perfection." Here is a fallacy. The first and vital principle of Christian morality is to love your neighbor as yourself-to do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. It does not permit you to promote your own happiness and perfection in preference to all other considerations. It makes your neighbor's happiness, so far as your action is concerned, a part of your own. It does not permit you to sacrifice his happiness to yours, any inore than yours to his. The importance of this distinction will be seen-by referring to the second and third preliminaries laid down by the same author, and by deducing the con- sequences inferable from them all.
"Nations being free and independent of cach other, in the same manner as inen are free and independent,—the second general law of their society is, that cach nation ought to be left in the peaceable enjoyment of that liberty it has derived from nature. From this liberty and independence, it follows that every nation is to judge of what its conscience demands, of what it can or cannot do, of what is proper or improper to be done; and consequently to organize and de- terinine, whether it can perform any office for another without being wanting in what it owes to itself.”
Now for the third general law. "Since men are naturally equal, and their rights and obligations are the same, as equally proceeding from nature, nations composed of men, considered as so many free persons living together in a state of nature, are naturally equai, and receive from nature the same obligations and rights." Hence, “If it [a nation] makes an ill use of its liberty, it offends; but others ought to suffer it to do so, having no right to conmand it to do otherwise. The nation that has acted wrong, has offended against its conscience, but as it may do whatever it has a right to perform it cannot be accused of violating the laws of society."
Let us separate the question of right and wrong, from that of the right of either party to compel by force the performance of right by the other, and how stand these three corner stones of Vattel's laws of nations towards cach other? If it be true that each nation ought to contribute all in its power to the happi- ness and perfection of others, how can it be true that a nation ought in the first place, and preferable to all other considerations, to do whatever in can to promote its own happiness and perfection, and to be the exclusive judge of what that is? If the vital principle of all human society be that each is bound to contribute to the happiness of all, it surely follows that cach cannot regulate his conduct by the exclusive or even by the paramount consideration of his own interest. applying his own principles to the cultivation of commerce, Vattel begins by lay. ing it down as a moral obligation. He says expressly, that nations are obliged to cultivate the home-trade-because it promotes the welfare of the community- and, “From the same reason, drawn from the welfare of the state, and to pro- ure for the citizens everything they want, a nation is obliged to promote and
In