any rate you will, I hope, forgive it, as well as the length into which I have suffered this letter to grow. A pardon under your own hand would certainly be the most satisfactory.

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Lady M. and I both beg you to receive our most warm and respectful good wishes; and I have the honour to be,

"DEAR SIR,

"Your most obliged, faithful servant,

"JAMES MACKINTOSH.

"P. S. Dr. Lawrence once offered to give a place in his publication to any remarks which I might send. I own I am very desirous of adding something, but not till I have seen the correspondence and life. I could not retard him six months; and, if he thought my supplement unfit for his purpose, he might at last leave me to separate publication."

The present year was distinguished in Sir James's judicial career by the receipt of a commission as Judge of a Court of Vice-Admiralty, then for the first time instituted at Bombay, for the trial and adjudication of all prize and maritime cases. This court had been opened on the 21st of July. It was a situation, for which his previous studies on the Law of Nations peculiarly qualified him. In one only of the numerous cases which he decided did his judgment give rise to any doubt.

It was that of the " Minerva," an American ship, taken in a voyage from Providence, in the course of which she had touched at the Isle of France, from which place she sailed to Tegall and Manilla, and on her

voyage back from this last place to Batavia, she was detained as trading between enemies' ports, in violation of his Majesty's Instructions' of June, 1803. Restitution was insisted on by the claimants, on the ground that neither Manilla nor Batavia, nor the Isle of France, were enemies' colonies in such a sense, as to render the trading thereto by a neutral, in time of war, illegal; inasmuch as the trade to these places was open to foreigners in time of peace. For the purpose of ascertaining this last point, commissions had been sent to Calcutta and Madras; and the judge, finding that the trade had been, as alleged, open to foreigners, pronounced for restitution, but without costs.

In pronouncing judgment he observed, "that the sole point in the case was, whether Manilla and Batavia were colonies, according to the true meaning of his Majesty's 'Instructions' of 1803; or, in other words, whether they were settlements administered, in time of peace, on principles of colonial monopoly. The word 'Colony' was here not a geographical, but a political term. • His Majesty's Instructions' must be construed so as not to be at variance with the principle of Public Law, maintained by Great Britain, called the Rule of 1756. No settlement could be called a colony under that rule, which was open to foreigners in time of peace. As, from the return to the commissions, it appeared that Batavia and Manilla were not such colonies, he did not therefore conceive that trading to them was illegal under the Law of Nations, as relaxed by his Majesty's Instructions' of 1803.

"Something had been said of the obedience due to the letter of these 'Instructions.' Undoubtedly the letter of the 'Instructions' was a sufficient warrant for his Majesty's officers for detaining ships, which appeared to offend

against it ;—but, as to the doctrine that courts of prize were bound by illegal instructions, he had already, in a former case (that of the Erin'), treated it as a groundless charge by an American writer against English courts. In this case (which had hitherto been, and, he trusted, ever would continue, imaginary), of such illegal instructions, he was convinced that English Courts of Admiralty would as much assert their independence of arbitrary mandates, as English Courts of Common Law. That happily no judge had ever been called upon to determine, and no writer had distinctly put the case of, such a repugnance. He had, therefore, no direct and positive authority; but he never could hesitate in asserting, that, in such an imaginary case, it would be the duty of a judge to disregard the 'Instructions,' and to consult only that universal law, to which all civilised princes and states acknowledge themselves to be subject, and over which, none of them can claim any authority."

Though this doctrine is apparently the only one upon which Prize Courts can be considered as courts of the Law of Nations, yet, (perhaps in consequence of some imperfect reports of the case, published at the time,) it excited great murmurs among several naval officers of rank, serving in the Indian Seas, who had been accustomed to consider the letter of "His Majesty's Instructions" as the only rule of adjudication in all cases and a good deal was written on the subject in the Indian and English newspapers. The truth is, that the judgment was in no degree at variance with the "Instructions," and that the concluding observations were evidently introduced by the judge, merely in his zeal to repel an attack made by the American jurists on the English Prize Courts, and to justify to neutrals the independ

ence of these courts of international law. It does not appear that the doctrine was ever denied by any competent judge. The decision itself was acquiesced in by all parties; there being no appeal, which seldom happens in prize causes, where there is the least shadow of doubt.

CHAPTER VII.

JOURNAL -DEATH AND CHARACTER OF MR. FOX LETTERS TO DR. PARR -TO MR. MOORE, TO MR. SHARP,-TO MR. MALCOLM LAING-NOTICE OF PRIESTLEY-OF MIRABEAU-VISIT TO GOA AND MADRAS.

JOURNAL.

"JANUARY 1st.-The distribution of time into years, naturally disposes one to fancy that a new year, or a new combination of ciphers, denotes some new reality in nature. The conclusion of a year seems a sort of pause in the progress of time, which disposes the mind to retrospect. The year 1806 is almost a blank in this diary; so it almost was in fact. It was very barren in enjoyment and improvement. I begin the year 1807 with a firm resolution (I hope it may prove unshaken) to be more indus

trious.

66

My last readings were Jacobi on the Doctrine of Spinoza,' and his letter to Fichte on German Philosophy, and 'Good's Translation of Lucretius.'

"Jacobi is a singular example of the union of metaphysical acuteness with mysticism. Like Hecla, burning in Iceland, his moral and devotional enthusiasm resists the freezing power of abstraction. His book on Spinoza is most ingenious; and when I read him, I think I understand his results; but when I lay down the book, they escape the grasp of my mind.

"It seems to me that, according to Spinoza, extension and thought are the two ultimate facts of the universe, absolutely independent of each other; nothing is common to them but substance; which, divested of all attributes, must be the same in all things; which Spinoza, probably