The freedom of the seas Author:Hugo Grotius Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XIII The Dutch must maintain their right of trade with the East Indies by peace, by treaty, or by war Wherefore since both law and equity demand th... more »at trade with the East Indies be as free to us as to any one else, it follows that we are to maintain at all hazards that freedom which is ours by nature, either by coming to a peace agreement with the Spaniards, or by concluding a treaty, or by continuing the war. So far as peace is concerned, it is well known that there are two kinds of peace, one made on terms of equality, the other on unequal terms. The Greeks1 call the former kind a compact between equals, the latter an enjoined truce; the former is meant for high souled men, the latter for servile spirits. Demosthenes in his speech on the liberty of the Rhodians2 says that it was necessary for those who wished to be free to keep away from treaties which were imposed upon them, because such treaties were almost the same as slavery. Such conditions are all those by which one party is lessened in its own right, according to the definition of Isocrates.3 For if, as Cicero says,4 wars must be undertaken in order that people may live in peace unharmed, it follows that peace ought to mean not an agreement which entails slavery, but an undisturbed liberty, especially as peace and justice according tocomplurium 1 iudicio pax et iustitia nominibus magis quam re differant, sitque pax non qualiscumque, sed ordinata concordia, 1 Thucydides, Isocrates, Andocides. 1 Isocrates, Archidamos 51 [Grotius probably quoted here from memory]. Panegyric 176. ' De officiis I, 35. Indutiae autem si finnt satis apparet ex ipsa indutiarum natura non debere medio earum tempore condicionem cuiusquam deteriorem fieri, cum ferme interdicti uti possi- detis instar obtineant. Quod si...« less