Lord Stowell says
"No British Act of Parliament, nor any commission founded upon it, can affect the rights or interests of foreigners, unless they are founded upon principles, and impose regulations, that are consistent with the Law of Nations."
And in another place—
"Much stress has been laid upon the solemn declaration of the eminent persons (the ministers of the European powers), assembled in Congress (at Vienna). Great as the reverence due to such authorities may be, they cannot, I think, be admitted to have the force of over-ruling the established course of the general Law of Nations."
It is to the Maritime Courts, then, of this and other countries, that the hopes of civilization must look for improvement and advance in the canons of international intercourse during the unhappy time of war. The manner, and the feeling in which they are to pronounce those canons cannot be more finely enunciated than in the words of Lord Stowell himself.
"I consider myself as stationed here, not to deliver occasional and shifting opinions to serve present purposes of particular national interest, but to administer with indifference that justice which the Law of Nations holds out, without distinction, to independent states, some happening to be neutral, and some belligerent.
"The seat of judicial authority is indeed locally here in the belligerent country, according to the known law and practice of nations; but the law itself has no locality. It is the duty of the person who sits here to determine this question exactly as he would determine the same question, if sitting at Stockholm; to assert no pretensions on the part of Great Britain, which he would not allow to Sweden in the same circumstances; and to impose no duties on Sweden, as a neutral country, which he would not admit to belong to Great Britain, in the same character. If, therefore, I mistake the law in this matter, I mistake that which I consider, and which I mean should be considered, as UNIVERSAL LAW upon the question."
When an Admiralty Judge investigates the law in this impartial spirit, he occupies the grand position of being in some respects the director of the deeds of nations; but with equal certainty does the taint of an unjust bias poison all his authority; his judgments are powerful then only for evil; they bind no one beyond the country in which he sits, and may become the motive and origin of reprisal and attack upon his native land.
As the authority of the international judge depends on his integrity, so also does the universal law arise from, and remain supported by, the true principles of right and justice; in other words, by the fundamental distinction between right and wrong. A statute, a despotic prerogative, and an established principle of common law, rest upon different sanctions. They may be the causes of the greatest injustice, may sow the seeds of national ruin, and yet may even require revolutions for their reformation; but any one of the laws of nations preserves its vitality, only with the essential truth of its principles; a change in the feeling of mankind on the great question of real justice, destroys it, and it simply remains an historical record of departed opinion, or a point from which to date an advance or retreat in the career of the human mind.
It is for this reason that International Law has been so differently defined by writers at various periods.