For Nature gives
to mankind and to nations the right of punishing only for their defence
and safety (Sec. 169): whence it follows that he can only be punished by
those he has offended.
"But this reason shows, that, if the justice of each nation ought in
general to be confined to the punishment of crimes committed in its own
territories, we ought to except from this rule the villains who, by the
quality and habitual frequency of their crimes, violate all public
security, and declare themselves the enemies of the human race.
Poisoners, assassins, and incendiaries by profession may be exterminated
wherever they are seized; for they attack and injure all nations by
trampling under foot the foundations of their common safety. Thus
pirates are brought to the gibbet by the first into whose hands they
fall. If the sovereign of the country where crimes of that nature have
been committed reclaims the authors of them in order to bring them to
punishment, they ought to be restored to him, as to one who is
_principally_ interested in punishing them in an exemplary manner: and
it being proper to convict the guilty, and to try them according to some
form of law, this is a _second_ [not sole] reason why malefactors are
usually delivered up at the desire of the state where their crimes have
been committed.
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