[306] Adam Fergusson, “Essay on Civil Society,” 130. Whatever the conduct of the Iroquois or Five Nations (sometimes counted as six) may have been towards surrounding nations, the fidelity with which they held to their compacts among themselves is fully acknowledged.
Colden (“History of the Five Indian Nations”) says, “This union has continued so long that the Christians know nothing of the original of it.... Each of these nations is an absolute republick by itself, and every castle in each nation makes an independent republick and is governed by its own ‘Sachems’ or old men.... They have certain customs which they observe in their publick transactions with other nations, and in their private affairs among themselves; which it is scandalous for any one among them not to observe, and these always draw after them either publick or private resentment whenever they are broke.”
In Plato’s Republic, “It is laid down that the Greeks are natural enemies of the barbarians, but are natural friends and allies of one another, so that all hostilities between Greek states are to be avoided—are to be conducted on principles of mildness and forbearance, and to be considered as civil discord rather than foreign war.” “The ten kings of the Atlantic island were never to make war on each other—there was a sort of Congress between them.” Critias, chap. 15. Sir G. C. Lewis, “Method,” &c., ii. 234. This, taken in connection with what we know of the Amphictyonic Council, reads more like tradition than fiction.
[307] The general assemblies of Greece were held at Delos, “Comme Métropole du Culte,” Pastoret ix. 13. “Ce qu’il y a d’assuré, c’est que le Pontife exerçoit sur plusieurs objets une véritable administration de la justice. La décision n’en appartenoit qu’ à lui. Les règles qu’il devoit suivre, le caractère et l’étendue de ses droits, étoient pareillement établis dans le recueil connu sous le nom de Jus Pontificum (Macrobe parle deux fois de ce Jus Pontificum, mais comme d’un ouvrage perdu. Saturn, vii. chap. xiii.) Un fils du pontife romain Publius Scævola est même cité dans le livre des Lois comme prétendant qu’on ne pouvoit exercer un si haut ministère sans savoir le droit civil. Quoi, tout entier? dit Cicéron, qui le refute; et qui font au pontife le droit des mers, le droit des eaux, ou d’autres droits semblables?”—Pastoret ix. 203. “Torts, then, are copiously enlarged upon in primitive jurisprudence. It must be added that Sins are known to it also. Of the Teutonic codes it is almost unnecessary to make this assertion.... But it is also true that non-Christian bodies of archaic law entail penal consequences on certain classes of acts and on certain classes of omissions, as being violations of divine prescriptions and commands. The law administered at Athens by the senate of the Areopagus was probably a special religious code; and at Rome, apparently from a very early period, the Pontifical jurisprudence punished adultery, sacrilege, and perhaps murder. There were, therefore, in the Athenian and in the Roman states laws punishing sins.”—Sir H. Maine, pp. 371, 372.
The expression unwritten laws (ἄγραφοι νόμοι) first occurs in the funeral oration of Pericles (Thuc. ii. 37), when it appears to denote those laws of the state which are corroborated by the moral sanction. It next occurs.... Xenophon, Mem. iv. 4, § 19, 25, ... the expression was doubtless adopted by Socrates from popular usage. Thus Plato speaks of τὰ καλοῦμενα ὑπο τῶν πολλων ἄγραφα νόμιμα (Leg. vii. 793). Vide Sir G. C. Lewis, “Method of Rea. in Pol.,” ii. 27. [The “laws called unwritten by the multitude” must evidently imply laws known to the multitude but in tradition.]
Cicero, “De Natura Deorum,” iii., says, “Habes, Balba, quid Cotta, quid pontifex sentiat. Fac nunc, ego intelligam, quid tu sentias: a te enim philosopho rationem accipere debes religionis; majoribus autem nostris etiam nulla ratione reddita credere.” “Lex est cui homines obtemperare convenit, cum ob alia multa, tum ab eo maxime quod lex omnis inventus quidem, ac dei munus est.” “Lex est sanctio sancta, jubens honesta, prohibens contraria.”
[308] This last sentence is only a gloss of Cicero’s from the stoical point of view, since clearly the enunciation of the oracle would compel the conclusion, that what was most ancient and nearest the gods was the best, and not that the best, as abstractly conceived, was to be held the most ancient, &c. A moment’s consideration will suffice to show that in this substitution is involved the whole extent of the difference between the principle of conservation and the principle of change.
“Demosthène qui avait en faire tant de mauvaises lois, prononçait que" toutes les lois sont l’ouvrage et le présent des dieux “et c’était à ce titre qu’il réclamit pour elles l’obéissance des hommes. Socrate professait la même doctrine.”—Ozanam, “Les Germains avant le Christianisme,” i., 159. Again, “Quand on étudie les lois indiennes on y voit tout un grand peuple enchaîné par la terreur des dieux. Le livre de la loi s’annonce comme une revelation.... Les prescriptions du droit sacré enveloppent pour ainsi dire toute la vie civile, et c’est là qu’on decouvre enfin la raison de tant de coutumes dont les Occidentaux avaient conservé la lettre, mais non l’esprit.”—Id. p. 161. “If the customs and institutions of barbarians have one characteristic more striking than another, it is their extreme uniformity” (Maine’s “Ancient Law,” p. 366). “There are in nature certain fountains of justice whence all civil laws are derived but as streams; and like as waters do take tinctures and tastes from the soils through which they run, so do civil laws vary according to the regions and governments where they are planted, though they proceed from the same fountains.” (Bacon, “Advancement of Learning,” B. ii. W. iii. 475, ap.; D. Rowland, “On the Moral Commandments,” p. 85.)
[309] “L’erreur a été de croire qu’il n’est rien de plus facile à l’homme que de suivre la nature, tandis que c’est au contraire le chef-d’œuvre de l’art que de la contenir dans les bornes que la nature lui prescrit: c’est où peuvent à peine parvenir les legislateurs les plus sages. Que de préjugés à éteindre! que d’erreurs à combattre! que d’habitudes à vaincre! toutes choses qui dans tous les temps commandent impérieusement au genre humain.”—_L’Antiquité dévoilée par ses usages_, i. 1. ii. ch. iii. par Boulanger.
[310] Εἰρηνοδικαι—“Feciales quia interpretes et arbitri sunt pacis et belli.”—Lexicon, Ben-Hederic, Ernesti.