The Free Sea

for those who are blind to all truth, the torch of nature alone has shone. What is it right for you, Christian princes and peoples, to feel and to do? If anyone thinks it harsh to be required to fulfill duties that a profession of so holy a name demands, of which the very least is to abstain from wrongdoing, surely anyone can know what his own duty is from what he prescribes for another. There is not one among you who does not openly proclaim that every man is the moderator and arbiter of his own property; who does not command that all citizens use public rivers and places equally and indiscriminately; or who does not defend, with all his might, the freedom of travel and trade. If that small society we call a state is judged unable to exist without these things (and certainly it cannot), why would those same things not be necessary to sustain the society and harmony of the whole human race? If anyone uses force against these, you rightly feel indignation, and you establish precedents in accordance with the gravity of the crime, for no other