"As individuals and as nations we live in states of society utterly different from each other. As a collection of individuals, we live under the highest and latest development of civilization, in which the individual is rigidly forbidden to defend himself, because society is always ready and able to defend him. As a collection of nations we live in an age of the merest Faustrecht, in which each one obtains his rights precisely in proportion to his ability, or that of his allies, to fight for them... Every nation depends for its safe existence, in the last resort, on its own sword or the sword of others whose interests are bound up with its own. A catalogue of conventional doctrines exists, indeed, to which the proud name of International Law is given. But it can only be called law in a sense absolutely different from that which the word bears in the internal life of States. It has been created by no legislature; no tribunal has the right and duty of interpreting it; it is enforced by no executive authority."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
Lord Salisbury, 'Ministerial Embarrassments', The Quarterly Review, No. 302, Vol. 151 (April 1881), p. 543
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/International_law
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International law
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