William Scott, Lord Stowell, whose decisions on matters of prize, in his capacity of judge of the Court of Admiralty, must ever form an important part of a course of study on the law of nations. Never was a man better adapted to his station: and the functions of his office at that period demanded exactly such a man. In a war of unprecedented acrimony, and of a magnitude that comprehended in its influence the whole civilised world, he held the office of arbiter in cases in which the disputed rights of nations, his own included, were litigated. He united all the faculties demanded for the satisfactory fulfilment of his important duties. His knowledge of his subject was unequalled, but his learning was never cumbersome, and he always seemed to bring forward the exact portion required by the occasion before him. He was gifted with a remarkable penetration, which enabled him to see through the ingenious contrivances of pretended neutrals, and to elicit what every one felt to be the truth of the case, from a maze of fraud that seemed at first to be complete for its purpose of deception. In his reasoning he was equally successful in an exact and cautious induction from facts, and in the able application of general principles to individual cases. His mind seemed unsusceptible of bias: he was impressed with the great responsibility of his functions, which demanded constant self-watchfulness in a judge whose own country was concerned in his decisions. He seemed always to follow the inflexible rules of justice, with the feeling which he expressed, when giving judgment in the Swedish convoy, to decide in London as he would if he were sitting at Stockholm, claiming nothing for his own country which he would not allow to her if he were a judge in Sweden. In the vast number of novel cases which came to him for decision, he so applied principles already acknowledged, as to make his judgments form a consistent part of the law of nations, at the same time that he carried out that law further than it had been heretofore explored; and

the manner in which he enunciated his decisions has made his judgments of constant reference for the principles which they embody. The respect which his capacity commanded was not confined to his own nation; a judge of a country that was subject to great vexation from our restrictions upon commerce, the American Chancellor Kent, has borne this remarkable testimony to the satisfactory character of Lord Stowell's judgments: "There is scarcely a decision in the English prize-courts at Westminster, on any general question of public right, that has not received the express approbation and sanction of our national court."(1) Lord Stowell's death has made a eulogy excusable, that might have seemed fulsome had he been still alive: as it is, it is not too much to say, that he has left behind him a name, with which is associated all that we most admire, and venerate, in the judicial character.

I have reserved for a separate notice a brief account Early collecof some of the principal collections of treaties, in order tions of treaties. not to interrupt the above chronological series of the chief authorities on the law of nations. A few treaties were printed in the sixteenth century, as the concordat between the Emperor and the Pope of 1448, printed in 1513; the capitulation between France and the Porte, printed in 1570; and the treaty of 1569 between France and Savoy, printed in 1597. In our own country, Queen Elizabeth issued orders for the arrangement and publication of some of our state papers, but the first treaty published here was the treaty with Spain in 1604. This treaty was published by authority, as were several others in the reigns of Charles I. and Charles II. In the seventeenth century, the diplomatic intercourse which ensued on the wars of the Reformation, occasioned a great demand for collections of state papers, the avidity with which they were sought being

(1) Commentaries on American Law, I. 70.

shown by the fact, that three different editions of the peace of Westphalia were published before the treaties were signed. The Theatrum Europæum, and the Mercurio of Siri, contained treaties among other state papers, and there were also small collections of treaties published in France, Germany, Holland, and England. But the first great collection of treaties was that published by Leonard, who was printer to Louis XIV., and who received from that monarch a monopoly for twenty years for the publication of treaties. Leonard was assisted by the ministers of state, and by different ambassadors, and his work, published in 1693, was a valuable compilation of state papers; but his plan was confined to the publication of instruments relating to France, with very few exceptions, and the most valuable parts of his work have been embodied in later collections. (1) The first great general collection of treatises was that of Leibnitz, entitled Codex Juris Gentium Diplomaticus, which has been already mentioned, and of which the publication was commenced in 1693, the same year that the work of Leonard appeared. Also in 1693 was issued a warrant to Thomas Rymer, to search and publish the British records existing in our various archives. The work of Rymer was undertaken on the plan, and at the instigation, of the Earl of Oxford; and the first volume of the Fodera (as the work is usually called from the commencement of its long title), was published in 1704, and the fourteenth in 1713, in which year Rymer died. Sanderson, who had been assistant to Rymer, subsequently published the fifteenth and sixteenth volumes, which had been left by Rymer ready for the press, and he also issued a seventeenth, containing an excellent index, in 1717.

(1) The title of Leonard's work was "Recueil des traités de paix, de trêve, de neutralité, de confédération, d'alliance, et de commerce faits par les Rois

de France avec tous les Princes et potentats de l'Europe et autres depuis près de trois siecles," in 6 vols, 4to.

These seventeen volumes compose the first edition of the Fœdera, and contain documents from A. D. 1101 to A. D. 1654. Various editions have been since published; that used in the following work is the edition published at the Hague in 1740; and a new edition was commenced in 1816 under the auspices of the Record Commission, who propose to continue the work of Rymer to the reign of George III. In 1710 appeared the first volume of Lunig's Teutsches Reichs-Archiv, a collection of state papers relating to the German empire, which was completed in 1722, in twenty-three volumes folio. This production has not, according to De Martens, the value of the works of Leonard and Rymer, the author not having had the same advantage of free access to the public archives. Lunig afterwards published a Codex Italiæ Diplomaticus, in four volumes folio.

matique.

Thus, at the commencement of the last century, seve- Dumont's ral of the chief European states had published records Corps Diplo drawn from their public archives, and illustrating their own individual history, and that of other states so far as connected with them; but, with the exception of the Codex of Leibnitz, there was no work serving as a general book of reference to the diplomatic student. This want was supplied by the celebrated Corps Diplomatique of Jean Dumont, historiographer of the emperor. Of this admirable collection four folio volumes were published in 1726, under the superintendence of Dumont, who died in 1727. M. Rousset, who had also been an editor of a collection of public documents, conducted through the press four volumes which had been left in manuscript by Dumont, with the superscription, written on his death-bed:-" On trouvera cette seconde collection fort derangée parceque j'étais actuellement occupé à l'enrichir, lorsqu'il plut à Dieu de m'envoyer la derniere maladie dont je vais mourir." These eight volumes folio compose the part of the Corps Diplo

E

Its great value.

matique which was collected by Dumont. The work of Dumont commenced with state papers of the time of Charlemagne; and in 1739 was published another folio volume, containing ancient treaties from the Amphyctionic Council, B. c. 1496, to the time of Charlemagne, compiled with the greatest diligence and erudition by Barbeyrac. Rousset also published four volumes of supplement, and these thirteen volumes form the Corps Diplomatique. With this, however, are often sold two works, which have no connection with the Corps Diplomatique, though relating to diplomatic subjects. Of these, one is a History of Treaties of Peace, by M. de Saint-Prest, and the other is a History of the Peace of Westphalia, making together six folio volumes. And about the same time as the Corps Diplomatique, were published Lamberty's Memoires du XVIII me siècle, which obtained considerable reputation at the time, but which is now seldom referred to, the period it embraces being only from 1701 to 1731.

The Corps Diplomatique is by far the best collection of state papers that has yet appeared: it is a work of enormous labour and research, and has superseded previous collections by embodying most of the valuable instruments which they contained. Nor is it probable that the work of Dumont will be superseded by a collection of greater value embracing the same period; partly from the little demand which exists for such collections at the present day; and partly because the race seems extinct of the old plodding students, those misers. of learning, who toiled out a lifetime in burrowing among old manuscripts, and heaping together ponderous stores of knowledge, content with the pure satisfaction arising from the pursuits on which they were engaged. At the present day almost every thing is made for immediate use, and antiquarian collections of this description, if made at all, must probably be undertaken under the