Note 38 — Chapter XII · On Contracts.

A treaty may be more advantageous to one of the contracting parties than to the other, and yet contain nothing unjust. "Frequently a great monarch, wishing to engage a weaker state in his interest, offers her advantageous conditions, promises her gratuitous succours, or greater than he stipulates for himself; but at the same time he claims a superiority of dignity, and requires respect from his ally. It is this last particular which renders THE ALLIANCE UNEQUAL: and to this circumstance we must attentively advert; for with alliances of this nature we are not to confound those in which the parties treat on a footing of equality, though the more powerful of the allies, for particular reasons, gives more than he receives, promises his assistance gratis, without requiring gratuitous assistance in his turn, or promises more considerable succours or even the assistance of all his forces: here the alliance is equal, but the treaty is unequal, unless indeed we may be allowed to say, that, as the party who makes the greater concessions has a greater interest in concluding the treaty, this consideration restores the equality. Thus, at a time when France found herself embarrassed in a momentous war with the house of Austria, and the cardinal de Richelieu wished to humble that formidable power, he, like an able minister, concluded a treaty with Gustavus Adolphus, in which all the advantage appeared to be on the side of Sweden. From a bare consideration of the stipulations of that treaty, it would have been pronounced an unequal one; but the advantages which France derived from it, amply compensated for that inequality."—Vattel, b. ii. ch. 12. sect. 175. p. 200, 201.