ful digest of Mr. Curtis, which we have no hesitation in placing among the best of that class of works. It has been done with great labor, and is not a mere dry and meagre index to the books cited. The author says, in his well-written preface, "It did not seem to me a faithful performance of the task which I had undertaken, to state merely the dry result of each case, in a proposition, compressed into the narrowest compass of language, as digests of common law cases are usually compiled. This would not have been practicable in a branch of jurisprudence so peculiar and discursive, and so little technical; nor would it have been useful. The attempt has been, to give not merely the dry point of a decision, but the full statement of the topics, as it had been given by the court. Whenever the notes of the reporters have presented this in what seemed to be the best form, I have sometimes made a partial use of their notes; but generally the language of the court has been exclusively followed."

It is extremely difficult, in a case like the present, to give any thing like a specimen of the work. If there is any difference in the skill and labor bestowed on the different parts of the work, we should select the titles-Admiralty, Jurisdiction, National Character, Statute, and Wages, as those of particular merit. Of the first of these titles we subjoin the author's analysis:

"ADMIRALTY.

(A) Of the general extent of the Admiralty Jurisdiction. (B) Of the particular Subjects of the Admiralty Jurisdiction.

(B. I.) MARITIME CONTRACTS AND QUASI-CONTRACTS.

1. Contracts between part owners.

2. Charter parties.

3. Bottomry and hypothecation.

4. The contracts of material men.

5. Insurance.

6. Wages.

7. Salvage, civil.

8. Salvage, military.

9. Averages, contributions and jettisons.

10. Pilotage.

11. Ransom.

12. Surveys.

(B. II.) MARITIMe torts and trespasses.

1. Trespasses upon the persons.

2. Trespasses upon vessels.

3. Maritime torts which are not trespasses.

4. Spoliations.

(B. III.) Of prize and its incidents.

(B. IV.) OF THE CRIMINAL AND QUASI-CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

OF THE ADMIRALTY.

1. Crimes upon the high seas.

2. Seizures for forfeitures and penalties."

It will be found that under some of the general heads, the author has set down subdivisions of his subject, which as yet have no adjudged cases under them. This gives his analysis a more complete and regular form, as a whole, than merely indexing the existing decisions; his object appears to have been, to give an entire outline of the system; and thus, the extent to which the theoretical condition of that system has been practically filled up, and the portions which still remain to be completed, would appear on classifying the existing adjudications.

The author has also in a few instances, where principles have not yet been well settled, introduced some commentaries upon the existing decisions. One example occurs under the head of Collision (p. 145) where he has extracted some valuable remarks from the (London) Law Magazine, for May, 1837, which deserve the attention of jurists. Discussions

of this kind may, in some cases, be useful even to the courts themselves; whose adjudications, in order to make safe precedents, must rest upon the ultimate and only solid basis of

reason.

We should have been still more obliged to the author if he had shown even less reserve in this respect, and had thought it consistent with his plan to insert brief commentaries and references on some other titles; particularly, on those which are historically important, or which may hereafter become peculiarly interesting to the United States, as a neutral, or indeed as a belligerent state.

One class of cases, of vital importance to the United States as a neutral power, and demanding all the light that can be borrowed from the united labors of jurists and statesmen, comprehends the decisions upon the much vexed question of the colonial trade, as it was called; that is, the direct trade carried on by a neutral, in a continued voyage from the colony of a belligerent to the mother country, such trade not being permitted to the neutral in a time of peace.

The first decisions of lord Stowell upon this subject, which happened to be made while the war between England and France was waging fiercely, and to the great annoyance of neutral nations, agitated this country as vehemently as any one question ever did in relation to our commerce; while they caused a wide difference of opinion between the government of Great Britain and that of the United States, and led our citizens, for a long time, to look with much suspicion upon the character of the English high court of admiralty, and of the eminent judge who presided in it.

A good deal of the embarrassment and vexation accompanying these decisions arose, as on other occasions, from the warmth of feeling entertained by our countrymen for the people of France, our ancient and republican ally; a feeling, which, however natural and praiseworthy, disqualified us from judging of her, and of her enemies, as impar

tially as we now can after the lapse of forty years; while it impelled us to join with her in the outcry against the rule adopted by the English admiralty court, in regard to the colonial trade, as peculiarly an English principle. Yet so far as France was a complaining party-whatever might have been maintained as to the general principle of international law-it would have been a conclusive argumentum ad hominem, a complete estoppel, that she herself had laid down the same principle, with the rule of the war of 1756, as it was called, half a century before that war, in her ordonnances of 1704, (re-enacted with modifications in 1744), as we shall presently see. A brief history of this question may not be without use.

As soon as the navy and merchant ships of France (to say nothing of Spain and the other belligerent nations) were driven from the ocean, and Great Britain obtained the entire command of that domain, the usual exclusive trade of France with her West Indian and other colonies was annihilated, and this great resource wholly cut off at a period when it was all important to her. If, however, she could carry on the same trade indirectly through neutral countries, it was obvious, that she could derive nearly the same advantage from it as if conducted in her own ships. She, therefore, in contradiction to the old and long settled doctrine of monopoly between the mother country and the colony, threw open her colonial ports to neutrals, and allowed them, in time of war, a free trade with her colonies, from which they were excluded in time of peace, when she had the power to monopolize it herself, according to the established colonial policy of Europe.

The United States, the most important neutral power at that period, immediately availed themselves of this advantageous trade, as circumstances permitted; confining the commerce to such merchandise, as was not within the general understanding of contraband articles.

It was soon discovered, that in this way, France was really deriving all the advantages from her colonies, through the medium of neutral carriers, that she possessed in time of peace by means of her own vessels. Great Britain, as a belligerent whose efforts to reduce her enemy were thus thwarted, was at length driven to assert rigorously the principle, that by the law of nations, neutrals had not a right during a war, to participate in a commerce between the colony and the mother country, from which they were excluded by that mother country in time of peace.

The United States denied this to be a doctrine of the general law of nations; and treated it as a British doctrine, which had its origin in the war of 1756, and, from that circumstance, took its popular name of the rule of 1756; and on that rule alone, the statesmen and jurists, as well as the party writers of Great Britain, rested their justification in regard to the United States, as well as in regard to the complaints of France. On the part of our own government, too, the question was argued upon the same ground, in respect to both of the belligerents.'

At the present day it seems extraordinary, that the British writers, throughout their warm and elaborate discussions of this question, should, at least so far as respects France, have rested their justification upon the rule of 1756; which, if a legitimate deduction from established principles of international law, as acknowledged by other powers, had nevertheless been chiefly practised upon by Great Britain, and hence had obtained the name and unpopular odor of a British rule.

We say it seems extraordinary, that Great Britain, in a war with France, and while the latter was herself complaining and countenancing neutrals in their complaints against the former, for alleged violations of the public law of See the correspondence of the secretary of state, with Mr Erskine, in Wait's State Papers, vol. iii, p. 297, &c.

1808.