and even uselessly abundant, collection of materials, but which seem to have no power of making a proper application of these materials. With the erudition of a German professor, Klüber has the faults of the cloister, as well as its advantages; his reading is most profound, but his mind seems to have been formed wholly by books. His notes, which are nearly equal in length to his text, and are much more valuable than the text itself, are quite curious, as examples of a man's acquaintance with the stores of one branch of literature. All works that are common, and all that are uncommon, seem to have been ransacked by this indefatigable student, whose quotations are drawn from books of every description, from flimsy modern essays, and from ancient folios seldom taken from the "moth-world," from reverend dissertations on unalterable right, and from the pompous nothings of some "Theatre of Ceremony." But Klüber's references are almost all to books of one class, namely, those which relate immediately to the law of nations. Of history, which should form a marked portion in the reading of every student of the law of nations, Klüber seems surprisingly ignorant: there are hardly any references to works on history in his notes, and his historical facts and precedents are re-quoted from diplomatic works, where the occurrences had been already cited. Klüber's method and arrangement are essentially bad: he classes the law of nations in two divisions, in the first of which he treats of the "absolute" rights of States, or rights which they necessarily enjoy as States; and in the second division he treats of their "conditional " (hypothétiques) rights, or rights which result from certain conditions of States, as the condition of war, or of peace. This arrangement would perhaps not be very convenient under any circumstances, but the author's being encumbered with this arbitrary division would have been of secondary consequence, had he not inconvenienced the reader by treating the same subject under

the two different heads; and thus, instead of finding all that the author means to say on any subject in a single part of his work, the reader finds part of a dissertation in one place, and afterwards, when he is pursuing quite a different inquiry, he comes upon something more in continuation, or conclusion, of a previous discussion. (1) Klüber has no acquaintance with diplomacy beyond what he has gained from books; and hence, where he has overlooked a fact in his reading, he has no chance of arriving at the truth by any other method. Of this an example is afforded by the mistake he makes of dividing public ministers into three, instead of into four, classes, which every young attaché is aware is the present arrangement. Klüber quotes the act of the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and is obviously not aware of the arrangements made at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818. But a much graver objection against Klüber is made by his chapters on maritime captures. Without attempting to controvert preceding authorities, without giving reasons why he opposes what had been practised in Europe for centuries without one remonstrance, he asserts the law of nations to be diametrically the reverse of what has always been acknowledged as such. In speaking, for instance, of the right of search, he says, that as neutrals are free independent States, belligerents have no right to search their vessels, unless they have special conventions to that effect. Now be it remembered, that this is asserted by a writer who is treating of the positive law of nations as at present recognised in Europe. And yet the right of search of merchant vessels, excepting the litigated case of those

(1) Compare, for instance, § 61 and § 134; § 100 and § 219. And the classification does not seem very reasonable, as the author gives several sections in ceremonial, under the head of the

absolute rights of States, and gives sections on the rights of a State in its own territory, under the head of conditional rights. See § 100 et seq.; § 127 et seq.; § 179 et

seq.

Kent.

under convoy, has never been denied by any writer, nor contested by any State, including the United States, and was not even called in question by the lovers of maritime innovation who formed the two confederacies for an armed neutrality. Klüber is again in error, when speaking of the restrictions placed on commerce by Napoleon's "Continental system" and our own "Orders in Council:" the whole blame of those restrictions Klüber labours to throw upon the British government: he describes us as having commenced them, he accuses us of inventing "paper blockades," and he speaks of the Berlin and Milan decrees merely as "opposed to our pretensions." Now, in speaking of a debated point, like the continental system, esteem for an author is by no means lessened by the mere fact of his differing in opinion, provided his opinion be stated with candour and fairness; but all respect is lost for an author who distorts facts so as to produce an untrue impression; and it is with something of disdain that we detect the spirit of an unfair partisan, in one who aspires to the high office of a judge upon the rights of nations. Klüber is thus no safe guide for the student, whom his dicta are as likely to mislead as to instruct; but the information that he has amassed makes his work a desirable addition to every library on international law. It is perhaps not too hard upon the work to say, that, as a general rule, Klüber's materials are valuable, and his opinions are worthless.

The American Chancellor Kent, in his Commentaries on American Law, gives several of his opening lectures to the subject of the law of nations. They are fine examples of lucid and manly reasoning, and the style in which they are written is perspicuous and forcible, and marks a command of the power and resources of that great bond between our nations, our common language. From the nature of his work,

Chancellor Kent was only able to devote a small portion of his treatise to the Law of Nations: but their brevity is the only thing that is objectionable in these lectures, for all that the author does give us, is valuable.*

An interesting work, entitled Elements of Interna- Dr. Wheaton. tional Law, has lately been published by Dr. Wheaton, American minister at Berlin. It is, as its title states, elementary, but the judgment and information it exhibits make it a very useful treatise. Dr. Wheaton was before known as the author of a Digest of the Law of Maritime Captures and Prizes, published at New York in 1815, and also by his reports in one of the American courts of law. In this latter capacity he had an excellent training for many parts of the science of which he treats. Both the goodness, and what I hope I may without presumption call the deficiencies, of his work, are in a great measure referable to this course of mental discipline. In those parts of his work which treat of the decisions of prize courts, his book is very complete; but it is the reverse of complete on those questions which are not the subject of such legal decisions. The same remark is applicable to the space which Dr. Wheaton has devoted to the consideration of such subjects as the effects of the municipal law of one country on the subjects of another country; as, for instance, the effect of bankrupt laws, in cases where the bankrupt has had property in two countries, and where creditors in both countries claim shares in the same property; or as to the manner in which marriages, contracted according to

[* The edition of such of the lectures of Chancellor Kent as relate to the subject of the Law of Nations, published in a separate form by Dr. Abdy (late Regius Professor of Civil Law in the University of Cambridge, England), and enriched with much supplementary matter and valuable notes, may be confidently recommended to students. This is the edition which will be referred to in the course of this work.-ED.] M. E

His work highly interesting.

the laws of one country, affect succession to property in another country in which such marriage would not be legal. These subjects are treated in a very satisfactory and instructive manner, but they hardly belong to the law of nations, strictly so called; and they appear to occupy an undue portion of a work of which not quite thirty pages are allowed to that part of international law which affects the functions and immunities of ambassadors and consuls.

It is a delicate task for me to criticise the work of Dr. Wheaton, because our treatises may by some be considered to be in a position of rivalry, but I trust that my remarks have not been, in the most remote degree, actuated by any invidious spirit of detraction. The following treatise is written on such a different plan,

[* Since the publication of the first edition of the present work, Dr. Wheaton's Elements of International Law have been repeatedly republished, and have had the advantage of being copiously annotated by editors of the high repute of Mr. Lawrence and of Mr. Dana. The work is now, perhaps, on the whole, the most popular text-book on the subject in the English language, though the prominence it gives to the description of cases which have been adjudicated upon by American tribunals, and the somewhat inconvenient way in which the original and more expanded, the older and the newer, parts of the modern work appear side by side, without any attempt having been made to re-construct and digest the whole, renders it less useful than it might otherwise be for educational purposes. The voluminousness of the later editions of Mr. Wheaton's work belie at once the description of it in the next paragraph of the text as a "professedly elementary work," and also its current title as "elements."

The "History of the Law of Nations in Europe and America from the Earliest Times to the Treaty of Washington in 1842," is another most important contribution to the study of the subject by Dr. Wheaton. This work was originally written and printed in French, as a memoir in answer to a question proposed by the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in the Institute of France, as to the amount of progress made by the law of nations since the Peace of Westphalia. The English translation is unfortunately out of print. The most recent edition of Dr. Wheaton's Elements is one published at Leipzig in the French language, by Mr. Lawrence, and of which the 3rd volume appeared in 1873.-ED.]