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• Introduction
• A Note On the Texts
• English Editions of the Law of Nations
• Three Essays By Vattel
• Acknowledgments
• The Law of Nations
• Advertisement
• Preface
• Preliminaries Idea and General Principles of the Law of Nations.
• Book I: Of Nations Considered In Themselves
• Chapter I: Of Nations Or Sovereign States.
• Chapter II: General Principles of the Duties of a Nation Towards Itself.
• Chapter III: Of the Constitution of a State, and the Duties and Rights of the Nation In This Respect.
• Chapter IV: Of the Sovereign, His Obligations, and His Rights.
• Chapter V: Of States Elective, Successive Or Hereditary, and of Those Called Patrimonial.
• Chapter VI: Principal Objects of a Good Government; and First to Provide For the Necessities of the Nation.
• Chapter VII: Of the Cultivation of the Soil.
• Chapter VIII: Of Commerce.
• Chapter IX: Of the Care of the Public Ways of Communication, and the Right of Toll.
• Chapter X: Of Money and Exchange.
• Chapter XI: Second Object of a Good Government,—to Procure the True Happiness of the Nation.
• Chapter XII: Of Piety and Religion.
• Chapter XIII: Of Justice and Polity.
• Chapter XIV: The Third Object of a Good Government,—to Fortify Itself Against External Attacks.
• Chapter XV: Of the Glory of a Nation.
• Chapter XVI: Of the Protection Sought By a Nation, and Its Voluntary Submission to a Foreign Power.
• Chapter XVII: How a Nation May Separate Itself From the State of Which It Is a Member, Or Renounce Its Allegiance to Its Sovereign When It Is Not Protected.
• Chapter XVIII: Of the Establishment of a Nation In a Country.
• Chapter XIX: Of Our Native Country, and Several Things That Relate to It.
• Chapter XX: Of Public, Common, and Private Property.
• Chapter XXI: Of the Alienation of the Public Property, Or the Domain, and That of a Part of the State.
• Chapter XXII: Of Rivers, Streams, and Lakes.
• Chapter XXIII: Of the Sea.
• Book II: Of a Nation Considered In Its Relations to Others
• Chapter I: Of the Common Duties of a Nation Towards Others, Or of the Offices of Humanity Between Nations.
• Chapter II: Of the Mutual Commerce Between Nations.
• Chapter III: Of the Dignity and Equality of Nations,—of Titles,—and Other Marks of Honour.
• Chapter IV: Of the Right to Security, and the Effects of the Sovereignty and Independence of Nations.
• Chapter V: Of the Observance of Justice Between Nations.
• Chapter VI: Of the Concern a Nation May Have In the Actions of Her Citizens.
• Chapter VII: Effects of the Domain, Between Nations.
• Chapter VIII: Rules With Respect to Foreigners.
• Chapter IX: Of the Rights Retained By All Nations After the Introduction of Domain and Property.
• Chapter X: How a Nation Is to Use Her Right of Domain, In Order to Discharge Her Duties Towards Other Nations, With Respect to the Innocent Use of Things.
• Chapter XI: Of Usucaption and Prescription Among Nations.
• Chapter XII: Of Treaties of Alliance, and Other Public Treaties.
• Chapter XIII: Of the Dissolution and Renewal of Treaties.
• Chapter XIV: Of Other Public Conventions,—of Those That Are Made By Subordinate Powers,—particularly of the Agreement Called In Latin Sponsio,—and of Conventions of Sovereigns With Private Persons.
• Chapter XV: Of the Faith of Treaties.
• Chapter XVI: Of Securities Given For the Observance of Treaties.
• Chapter XVII: Of the Interpretation of Treaties.
• Chapter XVIII: Of the Mode of Terminating Disputes Between Nations.
• Book III: Of War
• Chapter I: Of War,—its Different Kinds,— and the Right of Making War.
• Chapter II: Of the Instruments of War,—the Raising of Troops, &c.—their Commanders, Or the Subordinate Powers In War.
• Chapter III: Of the Just Causes of War.
• Chapter IV: Of the Declaration of War,— and of War In Due Form.
• Chapter V: Of the Enemy, and of Things Belonging to the Enemy.
• Chapter VI: Of the Enemy’s Allies—of Warlike Associations— of Auxiliaries and Subsidies.
• Chapter VII: Of Neutrality—and the Passage of Troops Through a Neutral Country.
• Chapter VIII: Of the Rights of Nations In War,—and First, of What We Have a Right to Do, and What We Are Allowed to Do, to the Enemy’s Person In a Just War.
• Chapter IX: Of the Right of War, With Regard to Things Belonging to the Enemy.
• Chapter X: Of Faith Between Enemies,—of Stratagems, Artifices In War, Spies, and Some Other Practices.
• Chapter XI: Of the Sovereign Who Wages an Unjust War.
• Chapter XII: Of the Voluntary Law of Nations, As It Regards the Effects of Regular Warfare, Independently of the Justice of the Cause.
• Chapter XIII: Of Acquisitions By War, and Particularly of Conquests.
• Chapter XIV: Of the Right of Postliminium.
• Chapter XV: Of the Right of Private Persons In War.
• Chapter XVI: Of Various Conventions Made During the Course of the War.
• Chapter XVII: Of Safe-conducts and Passports,—with Questions On the Ransom of Prisoners of War.
• Chapter XVIII: Of Civil War.
• Book IV: Of the Restoration of Peace; and of Embassies
• Chapter I: Of Peace, and the Obligation to Cultivate It.
• Chapter II: Treaties of Peace.
• Chapter III: Of the Execution of the Treaty of Peace.
• Chapter IV: Of the Observance and Breach of the Treaty of Peace.
• Chapter V: Of the Right of Embassy, Or the Right of Sending and Receiving Public Ministers.
• Chapter VI: Of the Several Orders of Public Ministers,—of the Representative Character,—and of the Honours Due to Ministers.
• Chapter VII: Of the Rights, Privileges, and Immunities of Embassadors and Other Public Ministers.
• Chapter VIII: Of the Judge of Embassadors In Civil Cases.
• Chapter IX: Of the Embassador’s House and Domestics.
• Additional Essays
• Essay On the Foundation of Natural Law and On the First Principle of the Obligation Men Find Themselves Under to Observe Laws 1
• Dissertation On This Question: “can Natural Law Bring Society to Perfection Without the Assistance of Political Laws?”
• Dialogue Between the Prince of ****and His Confidant, On Certain Essential Elements of Public Administration
• Biographical Sketches of Authors Referred to By Vattel

CHAPTER XVI

Of the Protection sought by a Nation, and its voluntary Submission to a foreign Power.

§192. Protection.When a nation is not capable of preserving herself from insult and oppression, she may procure the protection of a more powerful state. If she obtains this by only engaging to perform certain articles, as, to pay a tribute in return for the safety obtained,—to furnish her protector with troops,—and to embark in all his wars as a joint concern,—but still reserving to herself the right of administering her own government at pleasure,—it is a simple treaty of protection, that does not at all derogate from her sovereignty, and differs not from the ordinary treaties of alliance otherwise than as it creates a difference in the dignity of the contracting parties.

§193. Voluntary submission of one nation to another.But this matter is sometimes carried still farther: and although a nation is under an obligation to preserve with the utmost care the liberty and independence it inherits from nature,—yet, when it has not sufficient strength of itself, and feels itself unable to resist its enemies, it may lawfully subject itself to a more powerful nation on certain conditions agreed to by both parties: and the compact or treaty of submission will thenceforward be the measure and rule of the rights of each. For since the people who enter into subjection resign a right which naturally belongs to them, and transfer it to the other nation, they are perfectly at liberty to annex what conditions they please to this transfer; and the other party, by accepting their submission on this footing, engages to observe religiously all the clauses of the treaty.

§194. Several kinds of submission.This submission may be varied to infinity, according to the will of the contracting parties: it may either leave the inferior nation a part of the sovereignty, restraining it only in certain respects,—or it may totally abolish it, so that the superior nation shall become the sovereign of the other,—or, finally, the lesser nation may be incorporated with the greater, in order thenceforward to form with it but one and the same state: and then the citizens of the former will have the same privileges as those with whom they are united. The Roman history furnishes examples of each of these three kinds of submission,—1. the allies of the Roman people, such as the inhabitants of Latium were for a long time, who, in several respects, depended on Rome, but, in all others, were governed according to their own laws, and by their own magistrates;— 2. the countries reduced to Roman provinces, as Capua, whose inhabitants submitted absolutely to the Romans;* —3. the nations to which Rome granted the freedom of the city. In after times the emperors granted that privilege to all the nations subject to the empire, and thus transformed all their subjects into citizens.

§195. Right of the citizens when the nation submits to a foreign power.In the case of a real subjection to a foreign power, the citizens who do not approve this change are not obliged to submit to it:—they ought to be allowed to sell their effects and retire elsewhere. For my having entered into a society does not oblige me to follow its fate, when it dissolves itself in order to submit to a foreign dominion. I submitted to the society as it then was, to live in that society as the member of a sovereign state, and not in another: I am bound to obey it, while it remains a political society: but when it divests itself of that quality in order to re-ceive its laws from another state, it breaks the bond of union between its members, and releases them from their obligations.

§196. These compacts annulled by the failure of protection.When a nation has placed itself under the protection of another that is more powerful, or has even entered into subjection to it with a view to receiving its protection,—if the latter does not effectually protect the other in case of need, it is manifest, that, by failing in its engagements, it loses all the rights it had acquired by the convention, and that the other, being disengaged from the obligation it had contracted, re-enters into the possession of all its rights, and recovers its independence, or its liberty. It is to be observed, that this takes place even in cases where the protector does not fail in his engagements through a want of good faith, but merely through inability. For the weaker nation having submitted only for the sake of obtaining protection,—if the other proves unable to fulfil that essential condition, the compact is dissolved;—the weaker resumes its right, and may, if it thinks proper, have recourse to a more effectual protection.* Thus the dukes of Austria, who had acquired a right of protection, and in some sort a sovereignty over the city of Lucerne, being unwilling or unable to protect it effectually, that city concluded an alliance with the three first cantons; and the dukes having carried their complaint to the emperor, the inhabitants of Lucerne replied, “that they had used the natural right common to all men, by which every one is permitted to endeavour to procure his own safety when he is abandoned by those who are obliged to grant him assistance.”†

§197. Or by the infidelity of the party protected.The law is the same with respect to both the contracting parties: if the party protected do not fulfil their engagements with fidelity, the protector is discharged from his; he may afterwards refuse his protection, and declare the treaty broken, in case the situation of his affairs renders such a step advisable.

§198. And by the encroachments of the protector.In virtue of the same principle which discharges one of the contracting parties when the other fails in his engagements, if the more powerful nation should assume a greater authority over the weaker one than the treaty of protection or submission allows, the latter may consider the treaty as broken, and provide for its safety according to its own discretion. If it were otherwise, the inferior nation would lose by a convention which it had only formed with a view to its safety; and if it were still bound by its engagements when its protector abuses them and openly violates his own, the treaty would, to the weaker party, prove a downright deception. However, as some people maintain, that, in this case, the inferior nation has only the right of resistance and of imploring foreign aid,—and particularly as the weak cannot take too many precautions against the powerful, who are skilful in colouring over their enterprises,—the safest way is to insert in this kind of treaty a clause declaring it null and void whenever the superior power shall arrogate to itself any rights not expressly granted by the treaty.

§199. How the right of the nation protected is lost by its silence.But if the nation that is protected, or that has placed itself in subjection on certain conditions, does not resist the encroachments of that power from which it has sought support,—if it makes no opposition to them,—if it preserves a profound silence, when it might and ought to speak,—its patient acquiescence becomes in length of time a tacit consent that legitimates the rights of the usurper. There would be no stability in the affairs of men, and especially in those of nations, if long possession, accompanied by the silence of the persons concerned, did not produce a degree of right. But it must be observed, that silence, in order to shew tacit consent, ought to be voluntary. If the inferior nation proves that violence and fear prevented its giving testimonies of its opposition, nothing can be concluded from its silence, which therefore gives no right to the usurper.

[* ] Itaque populum Campanum, urbemque Capuam, agros, delubra deûm, divina humanaque omnia, in vestram, patres conscripti, populique Romani ditionem dedimus. [[“Therefore we now place under your sway and jurisdiction, senators, and that of the Roman people, the people of Campania and the city of Capua, its fields, its sacred temples, all things human and divine.” LIVY, book vii. c. 31. Ab urbe condita, VII, 31.

[* ] We speak here of a nation that has rendered itself subject to another, and not of one that has incorporated itself with another state, so as to constitute a part of it. The latter stands in the same predicament with all the other citizens. Of this case we shall treat in the following chapter.

[† ] See [[Watteville The History of Switzerland the first edition is titled Les historiens de la Suisse.—The United Provinces, having been obliged to rely wholly on their own efforts in defending themselves against Spain, would no longer acknowledge any dependence on the empire, from which they had received no assistance. GROTIUS, Hist. of the Troubles in the Low Countries, B. xvi. p. 627. Note added in 1773/1797 editions.