ice and security from him.

"The lawfulness of the end does not give us any thing
further than barely the means necessary for the attainment
of that end. Whatever we do beyond that, is reprobated by
the law of nature--is faulty and condemnable at the tribunal
of conscience. Hence it is that the right to such acts
varies according to circumstance. What is just and perfectly
innocent in one situation is not always so on other
occasions. Right goes hand in hand with necessity and the
exigency of the case, but never exceeds them."

Such are some of the arguments that Vattel puts forth with all the
strength of reason and eloquence, against all unnecessary cruelty, and
all mean and perfidious warfare.

There was no limit to the career of violence and destruction,
justified by some of the earlier writers; they considered a state of
war as a dissolution of all moral ties, and a licence for every
disorder and fierceness: even such authors as Bynkershoek and Wolff,
who lived in the most learned and not the least civilized nations of
Europe, and were the contemporaries of that galaxy of talent that
adorned the commencement of the eighteenth century, held that every
thing done against an enemy was lawful. He might be destroyed, though
unarmed, harmless, defenceless; fraud, even poison, might be used
against him. A foe was a criminal and an outlaw, who had forfeited his
rights, and whose life, liberty, and property, lay at the mercy of the
victor.

But such was not the public opinion or practice of enlightened Europe
at the time they wrote. Grotius had long before, even in opposition to
his own authorities, but influenced by religion and humanity,
mentioned that many things were not fit and commendable, though they
might be strictly lawful. He held that the Law of Nations prohibited
the use of poisoned arms, the employment of assassins, violence to
women or the dead, or making slaves of prisoners. Montesquieu followed
in the same humane spirit. He writes, that the civilians said,

"That the law of nations, to prevent prisoners being put to
death, has allowed them to be made slaves.... The reasons of
the civilians are all false. It is false, that killing in
war is lawful, unless in case of absolute necessity; but
when a man has made another his slave, he cannot be said to
be under a necessity of taking away his life, since he
actually did not take