The Rights of War and Peace

by Hugo Grotius

II. But whatever rights the law of nations may confer upon ambassadors, it is necessary in the first place to observe, that none are entitled to them, but those, who are sent by the sovereigns of independent countries to each other. For the privileges of provincial, or municipal deputies sent to the states general of any country are regulated by the particular laws of that country and not by the law of nations.[52]

Thus we find, in the first book of Livy, an ambassador styling himself a public messenger of the Roman People; and, in the sixth book of the same historian, we have a declaration of the senate, confining the rights of embassies to the intercourse between foreign powers, and excluding citizens from the same privileges in their transactions with each other. Upon this topic, the authority of Cicero may be cited, who, in order to shew the impropriety of sending ambassadors to Antony, observes, that they are not dealing with a Hannibal or a foreign enemy, but with one of their own citizens.

Now Virgil has so clearly explained WHO are to be reckoned FOREIGNERS, that we need not have recourse to lawyers, to understand what is so well expressed by the poet, who says, "I look upon every country as foreign, which owns not the sway of our sceptre." Aen. vii. 369.

A state therefore connected with another though by an unequal treaty, if it retain its independence, will have a right of sending embassies. The Princes of Germany, who were in some respects subject to the Emperor, as their head, being Sovereign Princes possessed the right of sending ambassadors to foreign states. But Kings who have been entirely subdued in just war, and stripped of their dominions, have, with all their other sovereign rights, lost that of sending ambassadors. It was for this reason, that Paulus Aemilius made prisoners of the messengers sent to him by Perseus, whom he had conquered.

In civil wars necessity sometimes gives birth to new rights in violation of former rules. When for instance, a kingdom is so equally divided between two parties, that it is a matter of doubt which of them constitutes the nation, or in a disputed succession between two claimants of the crown; the kingdom may be considered as forming two nations at the same time. Tacitus, considering each party in such cases, as entitled to the rights of the law of nations, condemns the Flavians for having, in the rage of civil dissensions, violated, in the persons of the Vitellian ambassadors, those privileges, which are respected even among FOREIGN nations. Pirates and robbers, as they form no civil community, cannot rest any claim to protection and support upon the law of nations. Tiberius, as we are informed by Tacitus, when Tacfarinas sent ambassadors to him, spurned at the idea of treating with a robber, as with a lawful enemy. Yet sometimes a pledge of public faith, and the rights of embassy are allowed to men of that description, which was done by Pompey to the fugitives from the Pyrenean forest.

III. There are two points upon which the privileges granted by the law of nations to ambassadors turn. In the first place, they have a right to be admitted into any country, and secondly to be protected from all personal violence. Respecting the former of these points, there is a passage in the eleventh book of Livy, where Hanno, a Carthaginian senator inveighs against Hannibal for not having admitted into his camp ambassadors, who came from the allies, and on their behalf; as he had thereby overturned the law of nations.

But this rule by no means compels nations to give an UNQUALIFIED admission to all ambassadors. For that is what the law of nations can never intend: it only prohibits the refusal of admission without sufficient grounds.

There are various motives which may afford a sufficient plea for such refusal. There may be an objection to the power who offers to treat, to the person sent upon the embassy, or perhaps to the object of his mission. Thus at the suggestion of Pericles, Melesippus, the Lacedaemonian ambassador, was sent out of the territories of Athens; because he came from an enemy, who had no pacific intentions. The senate of Rome said, that they could receive no embassy from Carthage, as long as the Carthaginian army remained in Italy. The Achaeans refused to admit the ambassadors of Perseus, who were secretly MEDITATING war against the Romans. Upon the same grounds Justinian rejected an embassy from Totilas, and the same was done by the Goths at Urbino to messengers from Belisarius. Polybius relates in the third book of his history, that every power drove away the ambassadors of the Cynethensians, as they were so infamous a people.

We have an instance of the second kind, where the objection is made to the PERSON sent on an embassy, in the case of Theodore, who was called the atheist, and whom Lysimachus refused to receive in the character of an ambassador sent from Ptolemy, and the same thing has frequently happened to others, against whom peculiar motives of aversion have existed.

In the third place, there may be sufficient grounds for refusing to admit an ambassador, if the object of his mission be of a suspicious kind, as was the case with that of Rhabshakeh the Assyrian, whom Hezekiah had reason to suspect of coming with a design to excite his people to rebellion. Or the refusal may be justified, where it is not consistent with the dignity or circumstances of one power to enter into any treaty, or intercourse with another. For this reason the Romans sent a declaration to the Aetolians, that they should send no embassy, but with the permission of their general, and Perseus was not allowed to send one to Rome, but to Licinius. Jugurtha's ambassadors too, as Sallust informs us, were ordered to leave Italy within the space of ten days, unless they came with offers from that prince to surrender himself, and his kingdom.