A Treatise On International Law

certain communities analogous character. The marks of an independent state are, national l;tv. that the community constituting it is permanently established for a political end, that it possesses a defined territory, and that it is independent of external control. It is postulated of those independent states which are dealt with by international law that they have a moral nature identical with that of individuals, and that with respect to one ' another they are in the same relation as that in which individuals stand to each other who are subject to law. They are collective persons, and as such they have rights and are under obligations. These postulates assume the conformity of the nature of such states as are governed by law to the conditions necessarily precedent to the existence of law ; because the capacity in a corporate person to be subject to law evidently depends upon the existence of a sense of right, and of a sense of obligation to act in obedience to it, either on the part of the community at large, or at least of the man or body of men in whom the will governing the acts of the community resides. In so far moreover as states are permanently established societies their marks represent a necessary condition of subjection to law. A society, Part I for example, of which the duration is wholly uncertain cannot offer solid guarantees for the fulfilment of obligations, and cannot therefore acquire the rights which are correlative to them. I...