ON PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW, OR THE LAW OF NATIONS WHETHER, OR HOW FAR, PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW RESTS ON THE COMITAS GENTIUM, OR CONVENANCE RECIPROQUE, OR ON INQUIRIES IN INTERNATIONAL LAW. HAVING, in our previous Inquiries, marked the grand primary Division of Law, into the Internal law of States and International Law, and noticed the subordinate divisions of the former; reserving for future investigation the subdivisions and the more particular doctrines of Right and Obligation, which constitute the component parts of the internal private law of a nation, as enforced by its judicial tribunals, or Jurisprudence ; reserving also for future investigation, the not less important doctrines, general and particular, which form the Internal Public or Constitutional Law of States; we now direct our inquiries to the other branch of the grand primary division just alluded to, namely, International Law. And notwithstanding the translations into English of Grotius, Bynkershoek, and Vattel; notwithstanding, also, the excellent historical and philosophical works of Mr Robert Ward, and the practical treatise of Mr Chitty, founded chiefly on the judgments of Sir William Scott, (Lord Stowell,) a systematic and scientifically arranged treatise on International Law, compiled not only from the works of Grotius, Wolff, and A Vattel, but also from the more recent valuable treatises of Von Martens, Lampredi, Rayneval, Schmalz and Klüber, and from such international judicial determinations, as those of Lord Stowell, appears to be still a desideratum in the legal or juridical literature of Great Britain. Indeed, this is a compilation, which almost every student, of international law, in this country, who is desirous of proficiency in the science, has in a manner, to make for himself. But in the prosecution of our Inquiries, Elementary and Historical, in the Science of law, we do not aim at the compilation of any such digest. Our object, at present, is merely to trace historically, how International Law has been cultivated, as a science; to mark its proper sphere, and its different kinds or descriptions, ascertaining how far such distinctions are founded in fact; to investigate the sources, and growth, or accumulation and development of International Law; to review historically the more recent classifications of its component parts; and to suggest a less exceptionable general arrangement of these component parts. CHAPTER I. OF INTERNATIONAL LAW GENERALLY; WHEN, AND HOW, IT HAS BEEN CULTIVATED, AS A SCIENce. In our previous inquiries in the science of law, we had occasion to mark the distinction, pointed out by Dr Adam Smith, between justice and the other virtues; and endeavoured to trace the boundaries between morality, and legality, between ethics, and compulsory, or coercive law. In opposition to a few very recent authors, we saw reason to concur, in opinion, with the great majority of juri dical writers, that the rules of ethics, or morality, are applicable, not only to individual men, but to nations, to men congregated into communities, and occupying, as such, certain portions of the surface of this earth. But while we thus held, that the duties of beneficence, and the internal feelings of good-will, generosity, and gratitude, are applicable to, and may be truly predicated of, men, acting in their corporate or political capacity as a nation, as well as the more negative duties of justice, we had occasion to observe, that a good deal of obscurity, and confusion, in thought, and expression, had arisen from juridical writers not marking at the outset, the distinction between these different duties,-from their proceeding at first, as if they intended to include, under the jus naturæ et gentium, the whole doctrines of |