to make contracts and accounts, to engage in export and import trade, to enjoy the same rights in these matters as do the citizens of the other state, &c. For it is not required by the law of nature that I should allow another to conduct business in my country, especially if some danger threaten me therefrom, or advantage be lost thereby; and therefore such liberty of commercial intercourse must <13> be sought by a pact. The same is true of treaties of alliance and mutual aid, and that either against assailants alone, or against any one whatsoever, even the one whom we assail. Peace of this kind is broken when one party by the exercise of force attempts to inflict anything upon another which the other repels by force, or when a wrong that has been inflicted is avenged by force.
6. But, in truth, since the obligation of observing the law of nature toward another ceases when that other does not observe the same law toward me (in Book II we discuss this subject in greater detail), there arises thence, as a sort of subsidiary status for man, war, when our safety cannot be secured except by force. Although this status must necessarily be entered upon from time to time, to wit, when, because of the perversity of men who reject pacific measures, we can defend or obtain our rights only by arms, nevertheless it cannot properly be called a natural method of securing one’s rights, for the reason that nature has not directly destined man to employ this method, but has merely allowed him, in defect of a more appropriate means, to take refuge in war. Now war can be divided in the same way as peace into universal and particular. The former is the immediate consequence of the status of wild beasts, when no one exercises any right toward his fellow, but the conduct of all is governed by force alone. Such would have been the status of men had they not been bound by the law of nature to foster social relations with one another.8 Particular war is either internal or external. The former exists between those who have come together into one particular society, when they break the bond of that society and rise up in arms against one another. Such war when it burns out within the period of what might be called its first effervescence, and without elaborate preparations on both sides, is called sedition. When the subjects of a prince take up arms unjustly against him, it is rebellion. In democracies, however, and in aristocracies, when the people and the nobles separate into parties which act in hostile fashion against one another, it has become customary to call such a state of affairs properly civil war. External war is war between those who are not comprised in the same state. This is commonly wont to be divided into formal and less formal.9 The former is also called a regular war according to the law of nations (by that meaning of the word regular whereby a regular army is opposed to some irregular troop of bandits), and is war which is carried on by the authority [autoritate] of the highest power [potestatis] in the state, following a declaration. The purpose of this declaration is not that the enemy may have time to prepare himself for resistance, but to make clear that the war is not being conducted as the private venture of a few, but as a public enterprise, and that the enemy may accordingly know with whom he will have to deal. As for the rest, wars that are destitute of such requisites <14> are less formal. But when others are attacked in secret raids and by an irregular band, upon no public authority [autoritate], without declaration and without just cause, this is called freebooting.
7. The Roman jurisconsults, furthermore, formulated as the broadest and most general statuses of men (of course as men were regarded in the Roman state or a state similar to it), liberty and servitude.10 To understand the nature of these more accurately, it must be known that liberty is commonly conceived as a status in which one has the faculty of undertaking something upon one’s own free will; servitude, on the contrary, as a status in which it is necessary to do things at the desire of another. Now there are two kinds of impediments which limit the faculty of undertaking; physical impediments, as bonds, fetters, prison, guards; and moral impediments, as obligation, law, sovereignty, authority. These being assumed, it is clear that liberty is either of all kinds, or limited. The former is that which is circumscribed by neither natural nor moral impediments. Such liberty we believe that no one but God enjoys absolutely. But among men, those enjoy the highest grade of liberty who have been exempted from civil laws, or those who rejoice in the supreme authority in states. For these, although they are subject to the Divine sovereignty and the law of nature, recognize nevertheless the sovereignty of no man, nor, so long as they are such, can they be coerced through the means of punishment by any one whatsoever. Of limited liberty there are several species and grades. By a special meaning of the word, “liberty” is ascribed to those who live in an aristocracy, and particularly to those who live in a democracy. In general, however, liberty denotes the status of those who serve merely the state, and not a fellow-citizen in addition; who may of their own free will direct any actions whatsoever of their own about which there has been made no disposition by general laws. This liberty is the more restricted the more numerous are the particular obligations by which one is held. Thus, he who is his own master in the state and has not assigned to another a definite portion of his services, enjoys much more ample liberty than he who is under the authority of his father or guardians, or who has assigned his services to a fellow citizen, whether these services be more dignified, that is to say, intellectual, or more humble, that is to say, physical; under which latter class in our society come labourers and household servants. It is servitude, however, in general, when a man is bound to direct his actions about which there has been made no disposition by general laws, not merely according to the will of another, but even entirely to that other’s advantage, in such wise that there redounds to himself directly as a result of his own actions no extrinsic utility, except in so far as the other wills by an act of grace. A further characteristic is that these men are understood to have no citizenship in the <15> state and are enrolled under the head of things, and not of persons. In former times quite generally, and among some nations even to-day, prisoners are reduced to such servitude by a certain mixture of humanity and cruelty, in such wise that those who might legally have been put to death were to do lifelong service to their captors in return for the privilege of enjoying life. Some states used to leave to masters the right of life and death over these slaves, because it seemed to them not unjust that the life which had once been in their power [potestate] should remain so. The children of slaves enter upon the same status, and those who of their own accord descend to that condition. On some persons also servitude is imposed by way of punishment. The lowest grade of servitude, however, is endured by those who are restrained also by physical bonds, as those who have been cast into workhouses or prisons, condemned to service at the oar, who are loaded down with shackles, or are compelled to work behind the barrier of walls. As for what the jurisconsults say, namely, that by the law of nature all men from the first are born free,11 this must be understood ἀποϕατικω̑ς [negatively], not στερητικω̑ς [privatively], as some express it,12 that is, by the precept of the natural law no man’s liberty has been taken away absolutely and without some antecedent action of his own; but the same law has by no means prevented the possibility that an individual might be carried off into slavery for some definite cause. And by the very act the status of servitude and its conditions have been introduced of the free will of men. But as for the fact that philosophers commonly call certain men naturally slaves, to wit those who are of a somewhat sluggish intelligence and are unfit to govern themselves, this must not be understood as though men of that kind are placed by nature in a state of slavery, or are necessarily to be carried off into it, as though it would be contrary to nature if they should remain free, but that their intellects have been so formed by nature that they can bear servitude with equanimity, and neither understand the blessings of liberty nor know how to use them aright.13
8. Furthermore, those who live in states, especially Christian states, are divided commonly into three statuses, ecclesiastical, political, and economic.14 The first two are called public, because ordinarily men, by the authority [auctoritate] of a civil society, or by the authority of those men as such by whom that society is governed, are placed in them, and because these tend immediately and directly to the good of society as such. The last is called a private status, because it depends upon each individual’s own free
