Chapter V (2)

If any person should prevent any other person from taking fire from his fire or a light from his torch, I should accuse him of violating the law of human society, because that is the essence of its very nature, as Ennius has said:

“_No less shines his, when he his friend’s hath lit._”[99]

Why then, when it can be done without any prejudice to his own interests, will not one person share with another things which are useful to the recipient, and no loss to the giver?[100] These are services which the ancient philosophers[101] thought ought to be rendered not only to foreigners but even to the ungrateful. But the same act which when private possessions are in question is jealousy can be nothing but cruelty when a common possession is in question. For it is most outrageous for you to appropriate a thing, which both by ordinance of nature and by common consent is as much mine as yours, so exclusively that you will not grant me a right of use in it which leaves it no less yours than it was before.

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Tum vero etiam qui alienis incumbunt, aut communia intercipiunt, certa quadam possessione se tuentur. Quia enim prima, ut diximus, occupatio res proprias fecit, idcirco imaginem quandam dominii praefert quamvis iniusta detentio. At Lusitani num sicuti terras solemus, sic mare illud impositis praediis ita undique cinxerunt, ut in ipsorum manu esset quos vellent excludere? An vero tantum hoc abest, ut ipsi etiam, cum adversus alios populos mundum dividunt, non ullis limitibus aut natura, aut manu positis, sed imaginaria quadam linea se tueantur? quod si recipitur et dimensio talis ad possidendum valet, iamdudum nobis Geometrae terras, Astronomi etiam caelum eriperent.

Vbi hic igitur est ista, sine qua nulla dominia coeperunt, corporis ad corpus adiunctio? Nimirum apparet in nulla re verius dici posse, quod Doctores nostri prodiderunt,[102a] Mare cum sit incomprehensibile, non minus quam aër, nullius populi bonis potuisse applicari.

Si vero ante alios navigasse, et viam quodammodo aperuisse, hoc vocant occupare, quid esse potest magis ridiculum? Nam cum nulla pars sit maris, in quam non aliquis primus ingressus sit, sequetur omnem navigationem ab aliquo esse occupatam. Ita undique excludimur. Quin et illi qui terrarum orbem circumvecti sunt, totum sibi Oceanum acquisivisse dicendi erunt. Sed nemo nescit

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Nevertheless, even those who lay burdens upon foreigners, or appropriate things common to all, rely upon a possession which is to some extent real. For since original occupation created private property, therefore detention of a thing, though unjust, gives an appearance of ownership. But have the Portuguese completely covered the ocean, as we are wont to do on land, by laying out estates on it in such a way that they have the right to exclude from that ocean whom they will? Not at all! On the contrary, they are so far from having done so, that when they divide up the world to the disadvantage of other nations, they cannot even defend their action by showing any boundaries either natural or artificial, but are compelled to fall back upon some imaginary line. Indeed, if that were a recognized method, and such a delimitation of boundaries were sufficient to make possession valid, our geometers long since would have got possession of the face of the earth, our astronomers of the very skies.

But where in this case is that corporal possession or physical appropriation, without which no ownerships arise? There appears to be nothing truer than what our learned jurists have enunciated, namely,[102] that since the sea is just as insusceptible of physical appropriation as the air, it cannot be attached to the possessions of any nation.

But if the Portuguese call _occupying_ the sea merely to have sailed over it before other people, and to have, as it were, opened the way, could anything in the world be more ridiculous? For, as there is no part of the sea on which some person has not already sailed, it will necessarily follow that every route of navigation is occupied by some one. Therefore we peoples of today are all absolutely excluded. Why will not those men who have circumnavigated the globe be justified in saying that they have acquired for themselves the possession of the whole ocean! But there

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navem per mare transeuntem non plus iuris, quam vestigii relinquere. Verum etiam quod sibi sumunt neminem ante ipsos eum Oceanum navigasse, id minime verum est. Magna enim pars eius de quo agitur maris, ambitu Mauritaniae, iam olim navigata est; ulterior et in orientem vergens victoriis Magni Alexandri lustrata est, usque in Arabicum sinum.[103a]

Olim autem hanc navigationem Gaditanis percognitam fuisse, multa argumento sunt. Caio Caesare Augusti filio in Arabico sinu res gerente signa navium ex Hispaniensibus naufragiis agnita. Et quod Caelius Antipater tradidit, vidisse se qui ex Hispania in Aethiopiam commercii gratia navigasset. Etiam Arabibus, si verum est, quod Cornelius Nepos testatus est, Eudoxum quendam sua aetate cum Lathyrum Regem Alexandriae fugeret, Arabico sinu egressum Gades usque pervectum. Poenos autem, qui re maritima plurimum valuerunt, eum Oceanum non ignorasse longe clarissimum est, cum Hanno Carthaginis potentia florente circumvectus a Gadibus ad finem Arabiae, praeternavigato scilicet promontorio quod nunc Bonae Spei dicitur, (vetus videtur nomen Hesperion ceras fuisse) omne id iter, situmque litoris et insularum scripto complexus sit, testatusque ad ultimum non mare sibi, sed commeatum defuisse.

Ab Arabico autem sinu ad Indiam, Indicique Oceani insulas, et auream usque Chersonesum, quam esse Iapanem credunt plerique, etiam re Romana florente navigari solitum, iter a Plinio descriptum,[104a] legationes ab Indis ad

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is not a single person in the world who does not know that a ship sailing through the sea leaves behind it no more legal right than it does a track. And as for the assumption of the Portuguese that no one has sailed that ocean before themselves, that is anything but true. For a great part of that sea near Morocco, which is in dispute, had already been navigated long before, and the sea as far east as the Arabian gulf has been made famous by the victories of Alexander the Great, as both Pliny and Mela tell us.[103]

There is also much to substantiate the belief that the inhabitants of Cadiz were well acquainted long ago with this route, because when Gaius Caesar,* the son of Augustus, held command in the Arabian gulf, pieces were found of shipwrecks recognized as Spanish. Caelius Antipater also has told us in his writings that he himself saw a Spaniard who had sailed from Spain to Ethiopia on a commercial voyage. Also the Arabians knew those seas, if the testimony of Cornelius Nepos is to be believed, because he says that in his own day a certain Eudoxus, fleeing from Lathyrus, king of Alexandria, sailed from the Arabian gulf and finally reached Cadiz. However, by far the most famous example is that of the Carthaginians. Those most famous mariners were well acquainted with that sea, because Hanno, when Carthage was at the height of her power, sailing from Cadiz to the farthest confines of Arabia, and doubling the promontory now known as the Cape of Good Hope (the ancient name seems to have been Hesperion Ceras), described in a book the entire route he had taken, the appearance of the coasts, and the location of the islands, declaring that at the farthest point he reached the sea had not yet given out but his provisions had.

* [Strictly speaking, Gaius was the grandson of Augustus, but was adopted as his son.]

Pliny’s description of the route to the East,[104] the embassies

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Augustum, ad Claudium etiam ex Taprobane insula, deinde gesta Traiani et tabulae Ptolemaei satis ostendunt. Iam suo tempore Strabo[105a] Alexandrinorum mercatorum classem ex Arabico sinu, ut Aethiopiae ultima, ita et Indiae, petiisse testatur, cum olim paucis navibus id auderetur. Inde magna populo Romano vectigalia; addit Plinius[106a] impositis sagittariorum cohortibus piratarum metu navigatum; solamque Indiam quingenties sestertium, si Arabiam addas et Seres, millies annis omnibus Romano Imperio ademisse; et merces centuplicato venditas.

Et haec quidem vetera satis arguunt primos non fuisse Lusitanos. In singulis autem sui partibus Oceanus ille et tunc cum eum Lusitani ingressi sunt, et numquam non cognitus fuit. Mauri enim, Aethiopes, Arabes, Persae, Indi, eam maris partem cuius ipsi accolae sunt, nescire neutiquam potuerunt.

Mentiuntur ergo qui se mare illud invenisse iactant.

Quid igitur, dicet aliquis, parumne videtur, quod Lusitani intermissam multis forte saeculis navigationem primi repararunt, et, quod negari non potest, Europaeis gentibus ignotam ostenderunt, magno suo labore, sumptu, periculo?

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from the Indies to Augustus, and those from Ceylon to the emperor Claudius, and finally the accounts of the deeds of Trajan, and the writings of Ptolemaeus, all make it quite clear that in the days of Rome’s greatest splendor voyages were made regularly from the Arabian gulf to India, to the islands of the Indian ocean, and even so far as to the golden Chersonesus, which many people think was Japan. Strabo says[105] that in his own time a fleet of Alexandrian merchantmen set sail from the Arabian gulf for the distant lands of Ethiopia and India, although few ships had ever before attempted that voyage. The Roman people had a large revenue from the East. Pliny says[106] that cohorts of archers were carried on the boats engaged in trade as protection against pirates; he states also that every year 500,000 sesterces* were taken out of the Roman empire by India alone, or 1,000,000 sesterces if you add Arabia and China; further, that merchandise brought from the East sold for one hundred times its original cost.

* [A Roman sestertius was about four cents.]

These examples cited from ancient times are sufficient proof that the Portuguese were not the first in that part of the world. Long before they ever came, every single part of that ocean had been long since explored. For how possibly could the Moors, the Ethiopians, the Arabians, the Persians, the peoples of India, have remained in ignorance of that part of the sea adjacent to their coasts!

Therefore they lie, who today boast that they discovered that sea.

Well then, some one will say, does it seem to be a matter of little moment that the Portuguese were the first to restore a navigation interrupted perhaps for many centuries, and unknown--as cannot be denied--at least to the nations of Europe, at great labor and cost and danger to themselves?

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Immo vero si in hoc incubuerunt ut quod soli reperissent id omnibus monstrarent, quis adeo est amens, qui non plurimum se illis debere profiteatur? Eandem enim gratiam, laudemque et gloriam immortalem illi promeruerint, qua omnes contenti fuerunt rerum magnarum inventores, quotquot scilicet non sibi, sed humano generi prodesse studuerunt. Sin Lusitanis suus ante oculos quaestus fuit, lucrum quod semper maximum est in praevertendis negotiationibus, illis sufficere debuit. Et scimus itinera prima proventus interdum quater decuplos, aut etiam uberiores dedisse, quibus factum ut inops diu populus ad repentinas divitias subito prorumperet, tanto luxus apparatu, quantus vix beatissimis gentibus in supremo progressae diu fortunae fastigio fuit.

Si vero eidem in hoc praeiverunt, ne quisquam sequeretur, gratiam non merentur, cum lucrum suum respexerint; lucrum autem suum dicere non possunt, cum eripiant alienum. Neque enim illud certum est nisi ivissent eo Lusitani, iturum fuisse neminem. Adventabant enim tempora, quibus ut artes paene omnes, ita et terrarum et marium situs clarius in dies noscebantur. Excitassent vetera, quae modo retulimus, exempla, et si non uno impetu omnia patuissent, at paulatim promota velis fuissent litora alio semper aliud monstrante. Factum denique fuisset,

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On the contrary, if they had laid weight upon the fact that they were pointing out to all what they alone had rediscovered, there is no one so lacking in sense that he would not acknowledge the greatest obligation to them. For the Portuguese will have earned the same thanks, praise, and immortal glory with which all discoverers of great things have been content, whenever they have striven to benefit not themselves but the whole human race. But if the Portuguese had before their eyes only their own financial gain, surely their profit, which is always the largest for those first in a new field of enterprise, ought to have satisfied them. For we know that their first voyages returned a profit sometimes of forty times the original investment, and sometimes even more. And by this overseas trade it has come about that a people, previously for a long time poor, have leaped suddenly into the possession of great riches, and have surrounded themselves with such outward signs of luxurious magnificence as scarcely the most prosperous nations have been able to display at the height of their fortunes.

But if these Portuguese have led the way in this matter in order that no one may follow them, then they do not deserve any thanks, inasmuch as they have considered only their own profit. Nor can they call it their profit, because they are taking the profit of some one else. For it is not at all demonstrable that, if the Portuguese had not gone to the East Indies, no one else would have gone. For the times were coming on apace in which along with other sciences the geographical locations of seas and lands were being better known every day. The reports of the expeditions of the ancients mentioned above had aroused people, and even if all foreign shores had not been laid open at a single stroke as it were, yet they would have been brought to light gradually by sailing voyages, each new discovery pointing the way to the next. And so there would finally

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quod fieri potuisse Lusitani docuerunt, cum multi essent populi non minus flagrantes mercaturae et rerum externarum studio. Venetis qui multa iam Indiae didicerant, cetera inquirere promptum fuit. Gallorum Brittonum indefessa sedulitas, Anglorum audacia coepto non defuisset. Ipsi Batavi multo magis desperata aggressi sunt.

Nulla igitur aequitatis ratio, ne probabilis quidem ulla sententia a Lusitanis stat. Omnes enim qui mare volunt imperio alicuius subici posse, id ei attribuunt qui proximos portus et circumiacentia litora in dicione habet.[107a] At Lusitani in illo immenso litorum tractu paucis exceptis praesidiis nihil habent quod suum possint dicere.

Deinde vero etiam qui Mari imperaret, nihil tamen posset ex usu communi deminuere, sicut Populus Romanus arcere neminem potuit, quo minus in litore imperi Romani cuncta faceret, quae iure gentium permittebantur.[108a] Et si quicquam eorum prohibere posset, puta piscaturam qua dici quodammodo potest pisces exhauriri, at navigationem non posset, per quam mari nihil perit.

Cui rei argumentum est longe certissimum, quod ex Doctorum sententia ante retulimus, etiam in terra, quae cum populis, tum hominibus singulis in proprietatem attributa est, iter tamen, certe inerme et innoxium, nullius gentis

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have been accomplished what the Portuguese showed could be done, because there were many nations with no less ardor than theirs to engage in commerce and to learn of foreign things. The Venetians, who already knew much about India, were ready to push their knowledge farther; the indefatigable zeal of the French of Brittany, and the boldness of the English would not have failed to make such an attempt; indeed the Dutch themselves have embarked upon much more desperate enterprises.

Therefore the Portuguese have neither just reason nor respectable authority to support their position, for all those persons who assume that the sea can be subjected to the sovereignty of any one assign it to him who holds in his power the nearest ports and the circumjacent shores.[107] But in all that great extent of coast line reaching to the East Indies the Portuguese have nothing which they can call their own except a few fortified posts.

And then even if a man were to have dominion over the sea, still he could not take away anything from its common use, just as the Roman people could not prevent any one from doing on the shores of their dominions all those things which were permitted by the law of nations.[108] And if it were possible to prohibit any of those things, say for example, fishing, for in a way it can be maintained that fish are exhaustible, still it would not be possible to prohibit navigation, for the sea is not exhausted by that use.

The most conclusive argument on this question by far however is the one that we have already brought forward based on the opinions of eminent jurists, namely, that even over land which had been converted into private property either by states or individuals, unarmed and innocent passage is not justly to be denied to persons of any country, exactly as the right to drink from a river is not to be

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hominibus iuste negari; sicut et potum ex flumine. Ratio apparet, quia cum unius rei naturaliter usus essent diversi, eum dumtaxat gentes divisisse inter se videntur, qui sine proprietate commode haberi non potest, contra autem eum recepisse, per quem domini condicio deterior non esset futura.

Omnes igitur vident eum qui alterum navigare prohibeat nullo iure defendi, cum eundem etiam iniuriarum teneri Vlpianus dixerit;[109a] alii autem etiam interdictum utile prohibito competere existimaverint.[110a]

Et sic Batavorum intentio communi iure nititur, cum fateantur omnes, permissum cuilibet in mari navigare etiam a nullo Principe impetrata licentia; quod Legibus Hispanicis diserte expressum est.[111a]

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denied. The reason is clear, because, inasmuch as one and the same thing is susceptible by nature to different uses, the nations seem on the one hand to have apportioned among themselves that use which cannot be maintained conveniently apart from private ownership; but on the other hand to have reserved that use through the exercise of which the condition of the owner would not be impaired.

It is clear therefore to every one that he who prevents another from navigating the sea has no support in law. Ulpian has said[109] that he was even bound to pay damages, and other jurists have thought that the injunction _utile prohibito_ could also be brought against him.[110]

Finally, the relief prayed for by the Dutch rests upon a common right, since it is universally admitted that navigation on the sea is open to any one, even if permission is not obtained from any ruler. And this is specifically expressed in the Spanish laws.[111]

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CAPVT VI

_Mare aut ius navigandi proprium non esse Lusitanorum titulo donationis Pontificiae_

Donatio Pontificis Alexandri, quae a Lusitanis mare aut ius navigandi solis sibi vindicantibus, cum inventionis deficiat titulus, secundo loco adduci potest, satis ex iis quae ante dicta sunt vanitatis convincitur. Donatio enim nullum habet momentum in rebus extra commercium positis. Quare cum mare aut ius in eo navigandi proprium nulli hominum esse possit, sequitur neque dari a Pontifice neque a Lusitanis accipi potuisse. Praeterea cum supra relatum sit ex omnium sani iudicii hominum sententia Papam non esse dominum temporalem totius orbis, ne Maris quidem esse satis intelligitur; quamquam etsi id concederetur, tamen ius annexum Pontificatui in Regem aliquem aut populum pro parte nulla transferri debuisset. Sicut nec Imperator posset Imperi provincias in suos usus convertere, aut pro suo arbitrio alienare.[112a]

Illud saltem nemo negaturus est, cui aliquid sit frontis, cum ius disponendi in temporalibus Pontifici nemo concedat, nisi forte quantum eius rerum spiritualium necessitas requirit, ista autem de quibus nunc agimus, mare scilicet et ius navigandi, lucrum et quaestum merum, non pietatis negotium

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