pearance of the edition immediately preceding. Important questions, particularly questions about which courts of the highest rank have pronounced opposite decisions, ought to be settled without delay; and no point of law ought to continue to be a doubtful point more than three or four years after it has been mooted in a court of justice. An addition of a very few pages to the code will stand in the place of several volumes of reports, and will be of far more value than such reports, inasmuch as the additions to the code will proceed from the legislature, and will be of unquestionable authority, whereas the reports would only give the opinions of the judges which other judges might venture to set aside."

We conclude this brief and imperfect notice of the penal code of India, by expressing our admiration of it as a literary production, as a work of art, if we may so say,-and by commending it most earnestly to the study of all, in every country, who feel an interest in the progress of the great cause of law reform.

L. S. C.

ART. VIII.-CURTIS'S ADMIRALTY DIGEST.

A Digest of Cases adjudicated in the Courts of Admiralty of the United States and in the High Court of Admiralty in England; together with some topics from the Works of Sir Leoline Jenkins, Knt., Judge of the Admiralty, in the Reign of Charles II. By GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS, of the Suffolk Bar. 8vo. Pp. 568. Little & Brown, Boston, 1839.

THE publication of admiralty reports in England is of comparatively recent date. Although the decisions of the courts of common law and of equity had been made known to the public, almost from the first introduction of printing in England, yet it was not till the year 1799, that the adjudications

of her high court of admiralty—the most important of all her tribunals, so far as related to other nations—were communicated to the world. The enemies of Great Britain— and she then had almost all the world against her-maintained, that she had designedly withheld her decisions, or the reasons of them, because she felt conscious, that they were not founded upon the solid principles of justice; and that, being then mistress of the ocean, she chose to reserve to herself, without incurring the reproach of manifestly inconsistent decisions, the power of bending her administration of the law of nations to suit the fluctuating policy of the

moment.

However well-founded those suspicions may have appeared at that period of irritation, yet, at the present day, when we can review with more calmness the masterly expositions, by her great admiralty judge, the late lord Stowell, of the most delicate and difficult questions of international law, we cannot fail to be struck with the extraordinary consistency and steadiness of view, with which that eminent jurist carried out, to their utmost practical extent, the great principles of justice, by which Great Britain herself was to be bound, as she claimed to bind other nations.

The state of the world was at that time peculiar; and the new cases, which were continually occurring, demanded the utmost caution and discrimination in the application of those general principles of international jurisprudence, which had been deduced and established upon classes of facts, or cases, materially differing in their accompanying circumstances, from those which were then taking place. The French revolution had burst out; France was assailed directly, or indirectly, by the leading powers of the continent; and the measures of her rulers, whether offensive or defensive in regard to other states, partook of that violence which was agitating the whole social order of Europe. Great Britain, for a time, was one of the neutral powers;

but this, as the balance of Europe had been then long adjusted, was an unnatural position in relation to her great rival; and some of her ablest statesmen would have had her, at an early period, take a hostile attitude, that would have allowed her to act, without restraint, as in their opinion any given exigency demanded. The zeal and exasperation of the rulers of France, however, would not permit her British adversary to take the first step towards open hostilities; but, in the midst of her conflicts with the members of the Germanic empire and the Russian autocrat, she issued a formal declaration of war against the kings (not the people) of England and Spain, and the hereditary stadtholder of Holland. The declaration against England took place on the 1st of February, 1793, and was followed by the counter declaration of the latter in the same month.

Great Britain was now embarked in the general confederacy against the new republic of France; and, in coöperation with the continental powers, among other measures, issued her well-known "Additional Instructions" to her naval commanders (of the 8th of June, 1793), by which neutral nations were prohibited from carrying to France "corn, flour, or meal;" on the ground, that by the law of nations all provisions are to be considered as contraband, and liable to confiscation, in the case when the depriving an enemy of these supplies is one of the means intended to be employed in reducing him to reasonable terms of peace; and such, it was alleged, was the situation of France. The British cruisers were accordingly directed to take into their own ports all vessels loaded with those articles, in order that the articles should be sold to the British government, or into ports of countries in amity with Great Britain; the freight, however, being paid, and the vessels released.

This measure of the British government, striking so deeply at the rights of American commerce-in a case which we maintained was not justified by the law of nations-and 8

VOL. XXI.NO. XLI.

aiming a direct blow at our "sister-republic," France, only served still more to exasperate our countrymen; who yet remembered the injuries they had suffered from Great Britain in the revolutionary war, and all whose sympathies had, from the beginning of the European controversy, been warmly enlisted on the side of the French nation; which was then believed to be in pursuit of the same liberty, that we had just obtained. Those persons, who are not old enough to recollect the feelings of that day, can have but a faint idea of the enthusiasm, which pervaded the whole American people, and stimulated them to aid, in every practicable mode, the efforts of a nation, who had just "unfurled the banner of freedom," and whose very political existence as a "republic" was threatened by a powerful combination of the monarchical states of Europe.

A recurrence to one of the leading measures of the American cabinet, at that period, will strikingly show the general state of feeling. It was decided by Washington and his counsellors, that it was the policy and duty of the United States to remain neutral during the contest of the European powers. But even this prudent measure, dictated as well by national interest as by justice, was so unpopular, in consequence of its preventing us from taking part with France, our old revolutionary ally, that it required all the circumspection and popularity of Washington, to enable the administration to issue and carry into effect a proclamation of neutrality. The public feeling on that occasion may be in some degree estimated, at the present day, by a circumstance stated in one of the letters of Mr. Jay, then chief justice of the United States, to Hamilton. Mr. Jay had prepared a draft of a proclamation; and, wishing to obtain Hamilton's opinion, he sent it to him accompanied with this remark: "It speaks of neutrality, but avoids the expression, because in this country often associated with others"! The pro

1 Life of John Jay, vol. i, p. 300.

clamation, which was in fact issued by the government also omitted the same offensive word; and, after all, was received in most parts of the country with loud and deep murmurs.

The British order of June, 1793, was succeeded by another (in the following November), authorizing their cruisers to detain all ships laden with goods, the produce of any French colony, or carrying provisions or other supplies for the use of such colony, and to bring them in for adjudication. This, like the preceding one, was deemed a flagrant violation of neutral rights, and produced a corresponding degree of irritation on the part of the American people.

The excitement produced by these measures of the British cabinet was still farther inflamed by the conduct of the French diplomatic agents residing in the United States; who naturally resorted to such means as were at hand to render more odious the indefensible acts of her British rival. Under such peculiarly trying circumstances, the eminent English judge we have mentioned-himself too, belonging to one of the belligerents-was called upon to administer the principles of the international law of Europe. That his decisions should in some cases have been then ill received by a people, whose important interests were so deeply affected by them, was natural; but that he should, with so few exceptions, have decided in a manner which we ourselves on cooler reflection are obliged to approve, cannot but excite our wonder.

Environed as he was by the inevitable difficulties of his position, between the rights of his own country as a belligerent party, and the clamorous complaints of all neutral nations, whose interests, and whose real or supposed rights were sometimes injuriously affected by his adjudications, it became necessary to make known to the world the grounds upon which he administered the public law of Europe; the reasons of his decisions were loudly called for; and the publication of them accordingly took place in the celebrated