Commercium

I. In the civil law. Commerce; trafiic; the right or power of purchase and sale; power over a subject of sale. Commercium jure gentium commune esse debet, et non in monopolium et privatum paucorum qnsestum convertendnm: commerce, by the law of nations, ought to be common, and not converted into monopoly and to the private gain of a few. In international law. Commercia belli: communications or conventions of war; arrangements between hostile powers by which" intercourse is, for the time, established between them, as for the purpose of burying the dead, exchanging prisoners, atid the like; contracts or conventions between the subjects of such powers, as ransom bills, contracts made by prisoners of war for subsistence, and the lika