to its special applications; and therefore it must be perfectly open to any judge for himself, unfettered by authorities, to consider the next case that may come before his Court upon the general principle alone, should that course be deemed (as we contend it is not) necessary to give such principle its due effect.

ART. VII.-INTERNATIONAL LAW.

Letter from the Hon. William Beach Lawrence.

THE following letter was addressed by the Hon. William Beach Lawrence, the eminent publicist, and editor of Wheaton's International Law, to Mr. Westlake, of the Chancery Bar, and Foreign Secretary of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. The letter was intended to be read at the recent meeting of that Association in Edinburgh, but, through some accident, it did not reach Mr. Westlake's hands before the close of the meeting. We have obtained the permission of Mr. Westlake to give the letter at length to our readers. - EDITOR L. M. & R.]

OCHRE POINT, NEWPORT, R.I., Sept. 22, 1863. The circumstances under which my contributions to the last edition of the "Elements of International Law" were made, necessarily precluded any methodical arrangement. While I was writing, history was recording new incidents, and the law of nations was receiving further illustrations from diplomatic and parliamentary discussions. Some of the existing defects of the work I hope to correct in the edition in French, that I am now preparing for publication by Brochaüs, of Leipzig, in a form which will admit of a more ample development of the annotations.

I am now engaged on the jus postliminii, or rather, as that term is only strictly applicable to the time of war, on the rights of the parties in the nature of postliminy at the termination of hostilities. This branch of international law has not been extensively expounded by Wheaton. It assumes great importance with us, in consequence of the issue now being made at the North, as to what is to be the fate of the Seceded States and of their inhabitants, in the event of the complete success of the Federal arms. So long ago as April, 1862, Mr. Sumner had proposed to declare the rights of these States, as bodies politic, forfeited, and to establish territorial governments in them under the authority of Congress. On this resolution no action was taken by the Senate; but the suggestion is again before the public from semi-official sources, and in a popular appeal from the senator above named.

Though it was a complaint, constantly reiterated in the instructions of our Secretary of State to our ministers abroad, that European governments had been too prompt to recognise the belligerent rights of the South (the English proclamation of neutrality was issued 13th May, 1861), the Supreme Court of the United States, at their term in March last, decided that a public territorial war, as contradistinguished from a personal insurrection, had existed since the proclamation of the President in April, 1861, and that tribunal condemned, as prizes of war, neutral vessels for violating the blockade established by the United States.

Not only did the Court cite from the passage of Vattel (Droit des Gens, liv. 3., ch. xviii., § 290-5), which points out the distinction between insurrection and civil war, but it pronounced the existence of a public war with all the attributes of an international war, having a territorial locality. What was somewhat at variance with the views of those who had hitherto denied the right of secession, it recognised the war as made by the States in their political capacities, and, as a corollary therefrom, it declared all the inhabitants of the Seceded States, on account of their residence, and without regard to their individual locality, alien enemies. Indeed, among the first condemnations of the prize courts, were cases where the sole inquiry was the place of residence of the claimants.

The result of this decision may be conceded to be the suspension of all municipal rights during the war, the existence of which would be inconsistent with that recognition, reciprocally made as it has been by both parties, through cartels for exchange of prisoners, and other acts between the belligerents which can only rest on the basis of equality. But, overlooking the fact that belligerent rights in a civil, as well as in a foreign, war are the result of pending hostilities, and that they cease the moment the contest is terminated, an issue most portentous in its consequences is presented. It is contended as a point of public law, that full effect should be given to the proclamation of emancipation issued under the assumed war power of the President, and which extend to loyal as well as disloyal masters in the Seceded States,-that all the rights of those States, embracing as well the political franchises of sovereignty as the individual property of the inhabitants, have been forfeited by the acts of the constituted authorities; that the States may be governed as subject provinces; and, ignoring all those humane maxims of modern times, which confine even the results of foreign conquests to the transfer of the sovereignty, without affecting private property, they maintain that the estates of the proprietors may be parcelled out among the soldiers of the victorious army, as was done in the case of the conquest of England by William of Normandy, or of Ireland by Oliver Cromwell.

The judicial arraignment of all the inhabitants of the Seceded States as alien enemies has not exempted them from municipal penal legislation. Disregarding the time-honoured principle, as well of our common law, derived from our English ancestors, as of international law, that protection and allegiance are reciprocal, the statute-book already contains provisions which virtually confiscate the property of Southern residents, from whom all pretence of protection had been withdrawn, especially of those in any wise engaged, even in a judicial capacity, in the administration of the de facto Confederate Government, as well as of the governments of the several States that have joined the Southern Confederacy, which conflict with no existing authorities, while their organisation is essential to the maintenance of order and the prevention of anarchy.

I have been led into a longer discussion of matters not immediately connected with maritime law than I intended. My remarks, at least, hold this connexion with the law of capture on the ocean, that if the private property of enemies is not secure by international usage from confiscation on land, no assimilation to it of private property at sea can be of any practical avail.

Since I wrote to you, in 1861, no sensible advance would seem to have been made towards carrying out the proposed amelioration in the maritime code, while many circumstances have tended to render abortive what was attempted to be effected in the Congress of Paris, with regard to privateering.

I have looked over in the Séances et Travaux de l'Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, Institut Impérial de France, Liv. de Janvr. 1861, the report of a discussion to which my attention was called by the recent work of Cauchy, Droit Maritime International. The arguments were principally directed to the privateer question. Giraud, as well as Dupin, regarded the abolition of privateering as an English measure, intended for the interest of that country to the prejudice of France. Their views were earnestly resisted by Michel Chevalier, who defended the abolition on grounds connected with the great interests of humanity.

Passy considered the confiscation of private property at sea as the remains of the barbarism of past times, while Wolowski regarded the vexations to which neutrals were subjected to be the real difficulty involved in the question. Suppress, he says, the capture of neutrals, and there will no longer be any means of compensating privateersmen. In the Exposé de la Situation de l'Empire, présenté au Sénat et au Corps Législatif, 1861, reference is made to the propositions which the French Cabinet were prepared to discuss with different Powers, especially with England, Prussia, and the Netherlands, respecting maritime legislation. And it appears from the documents diplomatiques that the French minister at Washington was authorised to make the same arrangement as was proposed by England, in regard to the articles of the declaration of Paris.

In

As I am not aware that any advantage can accrue, even to a good cause, from a misrepresentation, I am induced to note an extraordinary translation from Grotius (lib. 3, c. xviii. § 4), by Cauchy, t. 1, p. 64. He renders " prædationem" by "piraterie légale qu'on appelle l'armement en course." this connexion it may be mentioned that Grotius, being asked whether the States of Holland and West Friesland were liable for the depredations of privateers to whom they had given commissions, advised that the States were not obliged to demand security from them, since, without granting formal commissions, they might permit all their subjects to plunder the enemy, as was formerly practised; and the permission they granted to those privateers was not the cause of the damage they did to their allies, since any private person may, without such permission, fit out vessels, and sail on a cruise (De Burigny's Life of Grotius, p. 33).

From the incidents connected with our civil war the declaration of Paris has received in many particulars a practical construction. It would seem to be conceded that the announcement of those propositions was not authoritative as an act of legislation, but, like the condemnation of the slave trade in the treaties of Paris and Vienna, a declaration of a principle, which might form the basis of special conventions. It was, it is presumed, under this view of the matter that both England and France conceived themselves authorised to depart from the indivisible clause, and proffer