[107] The text used in this translation is that edited by Kehrbach. [Tr.]
[108] I have seen something of M. de St. Pierre’s plan for maintaining perpetual peace in Europe. It reminds me of an inscription outside of a churchyard, which ran “Pax Perpetua. For the dead, it is true, fight no more. But the living are of another mind, and the mightiest among them have little respect for tribunals.” (Leibniz: Letter to Grimarest, quoted above, [p. 37, note 44].) [Tr.]
[109] On the honourable interpretation of treaties, see Vattel (op. cit., II. Ch. XVII., esp. §§ 263-296, 291). See also what he says of the validity of treaties and the necessity for holding them sacred (II. Ch. XII. §§ 157, 158: II. Ch. XV). [Tr.]
[110] “Even the smoothest way,” says Hume, (Of the Original Contract) “by which a nation may receive a foreign master, by marriage or a will, is not extremely honourable for the people; but supposes them to be disposed of, like a dowry or a legacy, according to the pleasure or interest of their rulers.” [Tr.]
[111] An hereditary kingdom is not a state which can be inherited by another state, but one whose sovereign power can be inherited by another physical person. The state then acquires a ruler, not the ruler as such (that is, as one already possessing another realm) the state.
[112] This has been one of the causes of the extraordinary admixture of races in the modern Austrian empire. Cf. the lines of Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (quoted in Sir W. Stirling Maxwell’s Cloister Life of Charles the Fifth, Ch. I., note):—
“Bella gerant alii, tu, felix Austria, nube!
Nam quae Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus.” [Tr.]
[113] A Bulgarian Prince thus answered the Greek Emperor who magnanimously offered to settle a quarrel with him, not by shedding the blood of his subjects, but by a duel:—“A smith who has tongs will not take the red-hot iron from the fire with his hands.”
(This note is a-wanting in the second Edition of 1796. It is repeated in Art. II., see p. 130.) [Tr.]