The operation of dangerous and delusive first principles obliges us to
have recourse to the true ones. In the intercourse between nations,
we are apt to rely too much on the instrumental part. We lay too much
weight upon the formality of treaties and compacts. We do not act much
more wisely when we trust to the interests of men as guarantees of their
engagements. The interests frequently tear to pieces the engagements;
and the passions trample upon both. Entirely to trust to either, is to
disregard our own safety, or not to know mankind. Men are not tied
to one another by papers and seals. They are led to associate by
resemblances, by conformities, by sympathies. It is with nations as
with individuals. Nothing is so strong a tie of amity between nation and
nation as correspondence in laws, customs, manners, and habits of
life. They have more than the force of treaties in themselves. They are
obligations written in the heart. They approximate men to men, without
their knowledge, and sometimes against their intentions. The secret,
unseen, but irrefragable bond of habitual intercourse holds them
together, even when their perverse and litigious nature sets them
to equivocate, scuffle, and fight, about the terms of their written
obligations. As to war, if it be the means of wrong and violence, it is
the sole means of justice amongst nations. Nothing can banish it from
the world. They who say otherwise, intending to impose upon us, do not
impose upon themselves. But it is one of the greatest objects of human
wisdom to mitigate those evils which we are unable to remove. The
conformity and analogy of which I speak, incapable, like everything
else, of preserving perfect trust and tranquillity among men, has a
strong tendency to facilitate accommodation, and to produce a generous
oblivion of the rancour of their quarrels. With this similitude, peace
is more of peace, and war is less of war. I will go further. There have
been periods of time in which communities, apparently in peace with each
other, have been more perfectly separated than, in latter times, many
nations in Europe have been in the course of long and bloody wars. The
cause must be sought in the similitude throughout Europe of religion,
laws, and manners. At bottom, these are all the same. The writers on
public law have often called this AGGREGATE of nations a commonwealth.
They had reason. It is virtually one great state having the same basis
of general law, with some diversity of provincial customs and local
establishments. The nations of Europe have had the very same Christian
religion, agreeing in the fundamental parts, varying a little in the
ceremonies and in the subordinate doctrines. The whole of the polity
and economy of every country in Europe has been derived from the same
sources. It was drawn from the old Germanic or Gothic custumary, from
the feudal institutions which must be considered as an emanation from
that custumary; and the whole has been improved and digested into system
and discipline by the Roman law. From hence arose the several orders,
with or without a monarch (which are called states), in every European
country; the strong traces of which, where monarchy predominated, were
never wholly extinguished or merged in despotism. In the few places
where monarchy was cast off, the spirit of European monarchy was still
left. Those countries still continued countries of states; that is,
of classes, orders, and distinctions such as had before subsisted, or
nearly so. Indeed, the force and form of the institution called states
continued in greater perfection in those republican communities than
under monarchies. From all those sources arose a system of manners and
of education which was nearly similar in all this quarter of the globe;
and which softened, blended, and harmonized the colours of the whole.