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the centre of the system, their brightness is too often obscured and eclipsed by the opaque bodies of legislators, and judges, and ministers of the law, interposed. Doctrines are promulgated, armies are raised, and fleets equipped, sometimes to vindicate, but sometimes to violate, the broad, everlasting principles, on which all laws and administrations of law profess to be founded. Legislators, forgetful of the general welfare, declare for law the dictates of a sinister private interest, or a vindictive party spirit. It sometimes happens that what they put forth as oracles of wisdom, bear too much resemblance to riddles, published, like those of the Sphinx, for the destruction of such as get entangled in their interpretation. Though the promotion of the general good, and the protection of private rights, are most commonly the real objects of legislation, yet instances are not wanting in which grave legislative assemblies solemnly decree public calamities, and private wrongs and injustice. Besides the disorders infecting, in a greater or less degree, every body of laws, evils no less numerous or grievous are incident to their administration. The counsellor to whom you apply, may himself need the advice he professes to give, and conduct you to the proverbial end of the journey of the blind led by the blind; or if not ignorant, he may be dishonest, and make your distress his own opportunity. It will be little consolation to you that your judge is not corrupt, if, like a certain visiter at St Paul's cathedral, he is mazed amid the grandeur, and lost in the windings, cross avenues, and blind passages of the temple of justice in which he is a minister, until he comes to be like so many of the inhabitants of Nineveh, who did not know their right hand from their left. Or if he does not hear without being able to judge, he may judge without waiting to hear, be precipitate, opinionative, ready to decide from prejudice or favor, and instead of searching for grounds to form an opinion, may only search for arguments to defend one already formed. The judges may be appointed from party considerations, or popular or other influence foreign to their qualifications; and so the court, being little skilled in the laws, or the rights of parties, and not capable to decide according to the strength of the case, must be decided by the influence and skill of the parties and advocates, and instead of ruling the strife, be itself the prize for which the parties contend, as a weak prince, in a divided kingdom, gives the victory to the party that makes him prisoner.

If we add to all this, the mistakes and perjury of witnesses, the corruption, inattention, and ignorance of jurors, we shall not be surprised to find that the best laws are sometimes warped and perverted in their practical application, and that, under their best administration, the suitors sometimes prove the difference between a decision by lot and by law, to consist mainly in the expense.

The instances of imperfections and abuses that hover about legislation and legal administration, and strew their train with the ruins of the public prosperity and private property and rights, are too often present to our minds, and serve too much to degrade the law in our estimation; for if we revert to the great mass of rights protected under even an imperfect system of laws indifferently administered, though we may not earry our veneration to the length of voluntarily surrendering life in compliance with an unjust sentence pronounced by a capricious tribunal, still we shall find much to admire in the silent and salutary operation of the laws. At least we cannot but perceive that our possessions, and whatever is admirable and useful in a community, can subsist and last only through the vital energies of the laws; and it therefore behoves us to know something of them; and we owe our thanks for the labors that bring this knowledge more within our reach. Of this description is the work under consideration, professing to embody in a small compass the elements of the law of nations, and of the municipal laws of the United States.

Every part of the volume bears striking traces of the author's learning, and accuracy, and shows a masterly freedom in handling the subject; the first part, however, on the law of nations, is treated with greater elegance and neatness, and, from the nature of the subject, is the most easy and interesting in perusal. In comparison with any similar treatise, it has very considerable novelty, as it embodies, with the doctrines of former works on international law, an abstract of the numerous very learned and able opinions delivered within the last thirty years in the courts of the United States and Great Britain; in mentioning which a just tribute is rendered to the reputation of the present judge of the British High Court of Admiralty.

The great value of a series of judicial decisions, in prize cases, and on other questions depending on the law of nations, is, that they liquidate, and render certain and stable, the loose general principles of that law, and show their application, and how they

are understood in the country where the tribunals are sitting. They are, therefore, deservedly received with very great respect, and as presumptive, though not conclusive evidence of the law in the given case. This was the language of the Supreme Court of the United States, so late as 1815, and the decisions of the English High Court of Admiralty, especially since the year 1798, have been consulted and uniformly respected by that court, as enlightened commentaries on the law of nations, and affording a vast variety of instructive precedents for the application of the principles of that law. They have also this to recommend them; that they are preeminently distinguished for sagacity, wisdom, and learning, as well as for the chaste and classical beauties of their composition.' pp. 67, 68.

'The most popular, and the most elegant writer on the law of nations, is Vattel, whose method has been greatly admired. He has been cited, for the last half century, more freely than any one of the public jurists; but he is very deficient in philosophical precision. His topics are loosely, and often tediously and diffusively discussed, and he is not sufficiently supported by the authority of precedents, which constitute the foundation of the positive law of nations. There is no one work which combines, in just proportions, and with entire satisfaction, an accurate and comprehensive view of the necessary and of the instituted law of nations, and in which principles are sufficiently supported by argument, authority, and examples. Since the age of Grotius, the code of war has been vastly enlarged and improved, and its rights better defined, and its severities greatly mitigated. The rights of maritime capture, the principles of the law of prize, and the duties and privileges of neutrals, have grown into very important titles in the system of national law. We now appeal to more accurate, more authentic, more precise, and more commanding evidence of the rules of public law, by a reference to the decisions of those tribunals, to whom, in every country, the administration of that branch of jurisprudence is specially intrusted. We likewise appeal to the official documents and ordinances of particular states, which have professed to reduce into a systematic code for the direction of their own tribunals, and for the information of foreign powers, the law of nations, on those points which relate particularly to the rights of commerce, and the duties of neutrality.' p. 18.

While we recollect the injuries done to our neutral commerce by the European belligerents from 1802 down to our declaration of war against Great Britain in 1812, with all the complaints, animosities, and collisions, which led to that declaration, it is gratifying to find that as far as the same questions, relating to neutral rights, have come before the judicial tribunals of the two countries, the decisions generally coincide, and

are cited together page after page, in this treatise, in support of the same doctrines; a coincidence, which cannot but strengthen the confidence of each nation in the judicial tribunals of the other, while it affords a pleasing illustration of the uniformity and certainty of the practical operation of the law of nations. Chancellor Kent mentions but a single instance of diversity of decision in the two countries upon a point of any importance. This was in the case of a shipment of neutral goods on board of an armed belligerent cruiser, whereby, in the opinion of Lord Stowell, the neutral character of the goods was forfeited. (The Fanny, 1 Dodson, 443.) The Supreme Court of the United States, on the other hand, held this not to be a forfeiture of neutral character, even though the vessel should make resistance, provided the neutral shipper did not contribute to the expenses of the armament, otherwise than by paying freight. (The Nereide, 9 Cranch, 388.) The reason given by Lord Stowell in support of his opinion is, that the neutral 'showed an intention to resist visitation and search.' But cases might occur in which goods would be shipped on board of an armed belligerent vessel for want of any other. Besides, it might be said with as much reason, perhaps, that a neutral ships on board of an unarmed belligerent with the intention of escaping from search, and yet if he should so ship, with this specific purpose, no court would hold this to be a forfeiture of neutral character.

An act of Congress, of 1790, declares every offence committed at sea to be piracy, which if committed on land would be punished with death. By the act of May, 1820, 'If any citizen of the United States, being of the crew of a foreign vessel engaged in the slave trade, or any person, being one of the crew of a vessel owned or fitted out in the United States, who shall land on any foreign shore and seize any negro or mulatto, with intent to make him a slave, or shall decoy or forcibly bring him on board with like intent, such citizen or person shall be adjudged a pirate, and suffer death.' These acts enlarge the description of piracy, but they can operate, as indeed the last is intended to do, only on citizens of the United States; for no nation can alter the law of nations except so far as its own consent and practice may concur with those of other nations, and go to make a general usage. Piracy being an offence against the law of nations, its description and punishment must be regulated by that law, and the giving this

name to any other crime in a statute, is only a misapplication of the word.

A large portion of this volume is occupied with the constitutional laws and jurisprudence of the United States, in which the author has given a concise, clear, and well arranged compendium of all the questions of this sort, made subjects of judicial discussion and decision since the adoption of the constitution. He commences with a sketch of the articles of confederation, to the defects of which and the embarrassments of the government in administering the affairs of the nation under such an imperfect organization, we are indebted for a better constitution than the states would otherwise have consented to adopt. A short history is then given of the adoption of the constitution, the most striking features of which are portrayed in a masterly manner, illustrated with abstracts of all the important judicial constructions of that instrument. On the subject of the choice of the president, the author says;

'The mode of his appointment presented one of the most difficult and momentous questions that could have occupied the deliberations of the assembly which framed the constitution; and if ever the tranquillity of this nation is to be disturbed, and its peace jeopardized, by a struggle for power among themselves, it will be upon this very subject of the choice of a president. This is the question that is eventually to test the goodness, and try the strength of the constitution; and if we shall be able, for half a century hereafter, to continue to elect the chief magistrate of the union with discretion, moderation, and integrity, we shall undoubtedly stamp the highest value on our national character, and recommend our republican institutions, if not to the imitation, yet certainly to the esteem and admiration of the more enlightened part of mankind.' pp. 255, 256.

The election of the chief magistrate has agitated, and will doubtless again agitate our political system, and if it shall, at some time, be coupled with sectional questions, in which the conflicting passions and interests of the different parts of the country shall be deeply engaged, it may be the immediate occasion of the disruption of the Union. But it must be a stronger motive, and a more homefelt interest, than merely the bestowing the office upon the favorite candidate of either party. It must be the breaking out of long fomented passions, and accumulated injuries, jealousies, and irritations. Attachment to the confederation, and a feeling that the strength, security, and prosperity of the states, depend upon maintaining the

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