deducible from that origin.

Generally, every doctrine fairly deduced, by correct reasoning, from
the rights and duties of nations, and the nature of moral obligation,
may be said to exist in the Law of Nations. Those rights, duties, and
that moral obligation, are to be ascertained from the enunciation of
them in past times, unless they have been relaxed, waived, or altered
by universal modern opinion.

We may regard, then, the Law of Nations to be a system of political
ethics; not reduced to a written code, but to be sought for, (not
founded,) in the elementary writings of publicists, judicial
precedents, and general usage and practice; but _continually_ open to
change and improvement; as the views of men in general, change or
improve, with regard to the questions--What is right? What is just?

Now to apply the above to one example.

Undoubtedly up to the present time the system of granting Letters of
Marque to the adventurers of a power friendly to the enemy, has
received the sanction of the world. These buccaneering adventurers
have, under the laws of war, when taken, claimed and been allowed the
rights of prisoners of war; have exercised all the privileges of
regular privateers, and cast little or no responsibility on the
countries they issued from, who still claimed to be entitled to the
full position of neutral powers. Yet these unprincipled men differed
from pirates in one respect only--that their infamous warfare was
waged on one unhappy nation alone, instead of against the power of
mankind. Uninfluenced by national feelings, their sole object was the
plunder of the honest trader, and the means to that end--murder. Are