The Free Sea

By these laws, the highest and the lowest are equally bound. Kings may no more act against these laws than the common people against the decrees of town councilors; councilors against the edicts of governors; or governors against the sanctions of the kings themselves. Indeed, those very rights of individual peoples and cities flow from that source and receive their sanctity and majesty from it. But just as there are things within man that he has in common with all, and others by which each is distinguished from another, so nature wished that of those things which she produced for human use, some remain common, while others should become private through the industry and labor of each individual. Laws were given for both: that all might use the common things without detriment to any, and that regarding the others, each should be content with what fell to his lot and abstain from the property of another. If no man can be ignorant of these things unless he ceases to be human, and if those nations saw them for whom...

The page ends with the catchword "adve-"