The most excellent Hugo Grotius, his three books treating of the rights of war & peace in the first is handled, whether any war be just : in the second is shewed, the causes of war, both just and unjust : in the third is declared, what in war is lawful, that is, unpunishable : with the annotations digested into the body of every chapter / translated into English by William Evats ...

III. When the people that were free, cease to be so.

So also if a People fail, Isocrates first, and from him the Emperour Julian, tells us, That Cities are immortal; meaning that so they may be, because the people are a Body consisting of Members remote one from another, yet united under one name, as having but one order or form of Government, as Plutarch calls it; or one Spirit, as Paulus the Lawyer, which animates and informs all the parts of it; and is therefore (as Aristotle terms it) the life of it. But this Spirit in the people is a full and perfect consociation tending to a civil life, whereof the supreme power is the first product: This is the bond that knits all the parts together, the Vital Spirit, as Seneca terms it, Quem tot millia trahunt,* 1.1 which ani∣mates so many thousands at once; for plainly the Artificial Bodies have some resemblance with the Natural. The Natural Body though it every day wastes a little, yet whilst that which wastes, is every day repaired, and the same form or figure continued, ceaseth not to be the same body. And therefore that of Seneca, where he saith, That no man is the same being old, as he was when he was young, may very fitly be interpreted, as if understood of the matter only: As also that of Heracleus in Plato verified, That no man can descend twice into the same River; Which Seneca thus expounds, Manet idem fluminis nomen, aqua trans∣missa est; The Name only continues, but the Waters glide away.* 1.2 So Aristotle comparing a River to the people, saith, That the River is still called by the same Name, though the Waters are not the same. Neither doth it retain its name in vain, for it hath the same form, figure,* 1.3 and spirit, (as they call it) as formerly it had: So is it in Cities, though the Citizens are not the same that they were an hundred years since, Yet whilst there remains the same con∣sociation and communion, which both constitutes a People, and continues them in the same Mould, Form, and Figure, as they were so many Years or Ages since; it may justly be called the same City, though not one of the Citizens thereof may be now living. As the Ship wherein Theseus sayled with the principal young men of Athens, and safely returned,* 1.4 being by the Athenians (by repair∣ing whatsoever was decayed in her) preserved, till the time of Demetrius Phalerensis, gave oc∣casion to Philosopher, to dispute, Wbether she were the same or another. Which though much controverted by them, yet is by Lawyers prudently adjudged to be the same. For, as

Philo* 1.5 observes of the World, Not every thing whose parts do successively perish, must certainly be dissolved; but that only, all whose parts do at one and the same time perish together. Hence ariseth that custom used in Histories, as well sacred as profane, of at∣tributing unto the people which now are, those things which were done by the people of the same City many Ages past: As may be seen, Mat. 23.35. Acts 3.22. Mark 10.3. Jo. 6.32. and 7.19. So in Tacitus we read,* 1.6 That Antonius Primus serving under Vespasian, puts the Soldiers of the Tertian Legion in mind, That it was their valour that routed the Par∣thian Army under the Conduct of M. Anthony; and that it was their valour that under Cor∣buto, had put to slight the Armenians: Whereas there was not one of that Tertian Legion that sought under M. Anthony, then living when he said it, it being done an hundred years before.* 1.7 It was therefore more out of hatred than truth, that Piso in the same Au∣thor, denyes the Athenians of his time to be natural Athenians, whom the Wars (as he pre∣tends) had totally destroyed, but the very scum and outcasts of other Nations. Whereas in truth, these mixing with the Athenians, might haply detract somewhat from their ancient honour, and repute, but not make them another people: Neither was Piso ignorant of this, for in the same place, He objects against the same Athenians, those Injuries which had been done many Ages before, namely, how they had assisted Mithridates against Scylla, and M. Anthony against Augustus, and how unsuccessfully they had made war against the Macedonians, and what cruelty they had exercised over their own Subjects. Now as there may be many particu∣lar changes in a Nation, and yet the people continue the same, they were a thousand years since and more; so it cannot be denyed, but that there may happen so universal a change, as that they may utterly cease to be a people; which may be done two ways, either when the whole body of the People is destroyed, or when that order, form, or spirit, that unites them together, is totally abolished.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Lib. 1. decle∣mentia cap. 4. Ep. 58.
• * 1.2

  Pol. 13. c. 2.
• * 1.3

  Plut.
• * 1.4

  In the life of Th••seus.
• * 1.5

  Philo.
• * 1.6

  Tacitus.
• * 1.7

  A••he••ic. Gent. lib. 1. c. 23. I. 2.