XI. The importance of such exemptions may be easily inferred from the innumerable instances, in which both sacred and profane history abound, of wars undertaken on account of the ill-treatment of ambassadors. The war which David made against the Ammonites, on that account, affords us a memorable instance from holy writ; and as a profane writer, Cicero may be cited, who deemed it the most justifiable ground of the Mithridatic war.
PEACE
By Gari Melchers—From a panel painting in Library of Congress.
[CHAPTER XIX.]
On the Right of Burial.
Right of burying the dead founded on the law of nations—Origin of this right—Due to enemies—Whether due to those guilty of atrocious crimes—Whether to those, who have committed suicide—Other rights also authorised by the law of nations.
I. The right of burying the dead is one of those originating in the voluntary law of nations. Next to the right of ambassadors Dion Chrysostom places that of burying the dead, and calls it a moral act, sanctioned by the unwritten law of nature: And Seneca, the elder, ranks the law, which commands us to commit the bodies of the dead to their parent earth, among the UNWRITTEN precepts, but says, they have a stronger sanction than the RECORDED laws of all ages can give. For, in the language of the Jewish writers, Philo and Josephus, they are marked with the seal of nature, and under the name of nature, we comprehend the customs, that are common to all mankind, and agreeable to natural reason.