From the right of war comes that of conquest; which is the consequence of that
right, and ought therefore to follow its spirit.
The right the conqueror has over a conquered people is directed by
four sorts of laws: the law of nature, which makes everything tend to
the preservation of the species; the law of natural reason, which
teaches us to do to others what we would have done to ourselves; the law
that forms political societies, whose duration nature has not limited;
and, in fine, the law derived from the nature of the thing itself.
Conquest is an acquisition, and carries with it the spirit of
preservation and use, not of destruction.
The inhabitants of a conquered country are treated by the conqueror
in one of the four following ways: Either he continues to rule them
according to their own laws, and assumes to himself only the exercise of
the political and civil government; or he gives them new political and
civil government; or he destroys and disperses the society; or, in fine,
he exterminates the people.
The first way is conformable to the law of nations now followed; the
fourth is more agreeable to the law of nations followed by the Romans:
in respect to which I leave the reader to judge how far we have improved
upon the ancients. We must give due commendations to our modern
refinements in reason, religion, philosophy, and manners.
The authors of our public law, guided by ancient histories, without
confining themselves to cases of strict necessity, have fallen into very
great errors. They have adopted tyrannical and arbitrary principles, by
supposing the conquerors to be invested with I know not what right to
kill: thence they have drawn consequences as terrible as the very
principle, and established maxims which the conquerors themselves, when
possessed of the least grain of sense, never presumed to follow. It is a
plain case that when the conquest is completed, the conqueror has no
longer a right to kill, because he has no longer the plea of natural
defence and self-preservation.
What has led them into this mistake is, that they imagined a
conqueror had a right to destroy the state; whence they inferred that he
had a right to destroy the men that compose it: a wrong consequence from
a false principle. For from the destruction of the state it does not at
all follow that the people who compose it ought to be also destroyed.
The state is the association of men, and not the men themselves; the
citizen may perish, and the man remain.
From the right of killing in the case of conquest, politicians have
drawn that of reducing to slavery — a consequence as ill-grounded as
the principle.
There is no such thing as a right of reducing people to slavery,
save when it becomes necessary for the preservation of the conquest.
Preservation, and not servitude, is the end of conquest; though
servitude may happen sometimes to be a necessary means of preservation.
Even in that case it is contrary to the nature of things that the
slavery should be perpetual. The people enslaved ought to be rendered
capable of becoming subjects. Slavery in conquests is an accidental
thing. When after the expiration of a certain space of time all the
parts of the conquering state are connected with the conquered nation,
by custom, marriages, laws, associations, and by a certain conformity of
disposition, there ought to be an end of the slavery. For the rights of
the conqueror are founded entirely on the opposition between the two
nations in those very articles, whence prejudices arise, and the want of
mutual confidence.
A conqueror, therefore, who reduces the conquered people to slavery,
ought always to reserve to himself the means (for means there are
without number) of restoring them to their liberty.
These are far from being vague and uncertain notions. Thus our
ancestors acted, those ancestors who conquered the Roman empire. The
laws they made in the heat and transport of passion and in the insolence
of victory were gradually softened; those laws were at first severe, but
were afterwards rendered impartial. The Burgundians, Goths, and Lombards
would have the Romans continue a conquered people; but the laws of
Euric, Gundebald, and Rotharis made the Romans and barbarians
fellow-citizens.
[1]
Charlemagne, to tame the Saxons, deprived them of their liberty and
property. Louis the Debonnaire made them a free people,
[2]
and this was
one of the most prudent regulations during his whole reign. Time and
servitude had softened their manners, and they ever after adhered to him
with the greatest fidelity.
