STAATS- MUENCHEN, CHAPTER XVIII. GENERAL PRINCIPLES WITH REGARD TO THE INTERCOURSE. §128. In Parts II and III we have successively treated the nature and extent of the individual rights and obligations of States and the modifications of these rights and obligations, the origin of which was described in Part I. We must now proceed to follow up the development of these rights and obligations in their bearings on the various conditions of mutual intercourse, which of course present different aspects in time of peace, that is in the normal state of intercourse, and in the state of war. These will be treated, respectively, in the present Part IV and in the succeeding Part V of this work, while Part VI, which concludes the work, will contain the rules with regard to the legal manifestation of a return to the normal state of peace, called the treaty of peace. principles of intercourse. The basis of all moral and legal intercourse General in the case of Nations as well as individuals, is international good faith, i.e., the respect which civilized men owe to the given word of promise. All mutual agreements, from which obligations result, must fulfil the following conditions, viz.: 1°., that the contracting parties possess the moral and legal capacity to treat; 20., that the consentment be freely and voluntarily given; 3°., that the agreement be in harmony with the Moral Law of Nature, i.e., in conformity with the Spirit of Law . XVIII 128 of the highest standard existing between the contracting parties, in other words, the agreement must be based on the standard of national morality and civilization of the party most advanced in morality and civilization, for those who have attained to the higher moral standard cannot under any consideration stoop to the lower one without polluting their moral conscience and retreating on the road to civilization (comp. §§ 11-14). These principles determine the mutual duties of States. With regard to the attitude which a civilized State ought to assume towards uncivilized Nations and the mutual confidence which ought to exist between equally civilized States, in accordance with the Moral Law of Nature, we cannot give better evidence, in support of our exposition of the general principles given in Part I of this work, than by quoting from the recent remarkable work of Professor Lorimer, the Institutes of the Law of Nations, the following passages. The moment that the power to help a retrograde race forward, towards the goal of human life, consciously exists in a civilized Nation, that civilized nation is bound to exert its power; and in the exercise of its power, it is entitled to assume an attitude of guardianship, and to put wholly aside the proximate will of the retrograde race. Its own civilization having resulted from the exercise of a will which it regards as rational, real and ultimate, at least when contrasted with the irrational, phenomenal and proximate will of the inferior race, in vindicating its own proximate will, it is entitled to assume, that it vindicates the ultimate will of the inferior race.-the will, that is to say, at which the inferior race must arrive when it reaches the stage of civilization to which the higher race has attained. But |