DANGEROUS POWER.
All nations may join."It is still easier to prove, that, should this formidable power betray any unjust and ambitious dispositions by doing the least injustice to another, every nation may avail themselves of the occasion, and join their forces to those of the party injured, in order to reduce that ambitious power, and disable it from so easily oppressing its neighbors, or keeping them in continual awe and fear. For an injury gives a nation a right to provide for its future safety by taking away from the violator the means of oppression. It is lawful, and even praiseworthy, to assist those who are oppressed, or unjustly attacked."—Book III. ch. iii. § 45.
SYSTEM OF EUROPE.
Europe a republic to preserve order and liberty."Europe forms a political system, a body where the whole is connected by the relations and different interests of nations inhabiting this part of the world. It is not, as anciently, a confused heap of detached pieces, each of which thought itself very little concerned in the fate of others, and seldom regarded things which did not immediately relate to it. The continual attention of sovereigns to what is on the carpet, the constant residence of ministers, and the perpetual negotiations, make Europe a kind of a republic, the members of which, though independent, unite, through the ties of common interest, for the maintenance of order and liberty. Hence arose that famous scheme of the political equilibrium, or balance of power, by which is understood such a disposition of things as no power is able absolutely to predominate or to prescribe laws to others."—Book III. ch. iii. § 47.
"Confederacies would be a sure way of preserving the equilibrium, and supporting the liberty of nations, did all princes thoroughly understand their true interests, and regulate all their steps for the good of the state."—Ibid. § 49.
CONTRIBUTIONS IN THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY.
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. § 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 (§ 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. §§ 232, 233.