nulled or confirmed, as to their internal effects, at the will of the restored legitimate sovereign, guided by such motives of policy as may influence his councils, reserving the legal rights of bona fidei purchasers under such alienation to be indemnified for ameliorations.33 Where the price or equivalent of the property sold or exchanged has accrued to the actual use and profit of the state, the transfer may be confirmed, and the original proprietors indemnified out of the public treasury, as was done in respect to the lands of the emigrant French nobility, confiscated and sold during the revolution. So also the sales of the national domains situate in the German and Belgian provinces, united to France during the revolution, and again detached from the French territory by the treaties of Paris and Vienna in 1814 and 1815, or in the countries composing the Rhenish confederation, in the kingdom of Italy, and the Papal States, were, in general, confirmed by these treaties by the Germanic diet, or by the acts of the respective restored sovereigns. But a long and intricate litigation ensued before the Germanic diet in respect to the alienation of the domains in the countries composing the kingdom of Westphalia. The elector of Hesse Cassel and the duke of Brunswick refused to confirm these alienations in respect to their territory, whilst Prussia, which power had acknowledged the king of Westphalia, also acknowledged the validity of his acts in the countries annexed to the Prussian dominions by the treaties of Vienna.34 IV. As to wrongs done to the government or subjects of another state-it seems, that on strict principle, the nation continues responsible to other states for the damages incurred by such wrongs, notwithstanding an intermediate change in the form of its government, or in the persons of its rulers. This principle was applied in all its rigour by the victorious allied powers in their treaties of peace with France in 1814 and 1815. More recent examples of its practical application 33 Kluber, Droit des Gens. sec. ii. ch. 1, § 258. 34 See the German Conversations Lexikon, art. Domainenverkauf. have occurred in the negotiations between the United States and France, Holland, and Naples, relating to the spoliations committed on American commerce under the imperial government of Napoleon and his vassal kings. The responsibility of the restored government of France for these acts of its predecessors, was hardly denied by it even during the reigns of the Bourbon Kings of the elder branch, Louis XVIII. and Charles X., and was expressly admitted by the present ruler of that country in the treaty of indemnities concluded with the United States in 1831. The application of the principle to the measures of confiscation, adopted by the usurped government of Murat in furtherance of the views and policy of Napoleon, was contested by Naples-but the protracted discussions which ensued were at last terminated in the same manner by a treaty of indemnities concluded. PART SECOND. ABSOLUTE INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS OF STATES. CHAPTER I. RIGHT OF SELF-PRESERVATION. § 1. Absolute EVERY state has certain sovereign rights, to which it is entitled as an independent moral being; in other words, because internait is a state. These rights may be called the absolute inter- tional national rights of states. rights. § 2. Condition The rights to which sovereign states are entitled, under particular circumstances, in their relations with others, may al internabe termed their conditional international rights. These may tional arise from international relations existing either in peace or rights. in war. $3. Right of Of the absolute international rights of states, one of the most essential and important, and that which lies at the foun- self-preserdation of all the rest, is the right of self-preservation. It is vation. not only a right with respect to other states, but a duty with respect to its own members, and the most solemn and important which the state owes to them. This right necessarily involves all other incidental rights which are essential as means to give effect to the principal end. self-de Among these is the right of self-defence. This again in- Right of volves the right to require the military service of all its peo-fence mople, to levy troops, and maintain a naval force, to build fortifications, and to impose and collect taxes for all these purposes. dified by the equal rights of |