should draw attention, when the plant first becomes conspicuous. A curious fact is recorded at p.143:

Father Gaubil, in a manuscript preserved by the board of longitude, relates that, 1100 years before the Christian era, an emperor, whose memory is still venerated by the Chinese, determined, at the two solstices, the length of the meridian shadows projected by a gnomon. The measurement of these shadows, which is stated by father Gaubil, gives the latitude of the city of Loango, such as it has been determined by observation. This is not all. If we calculate, according to Laplace's formule, the obliquity of the ecliptic eleven hundred years before the Christian era, it exactly accords with that which is derived from the two solstitial observations. Now, these results cannot be the effect of chance; yet neither the Chinese nor the Jesuits were equal to the calculation of them; and the very laws which follow the diminution of the obliquity of the ecliptic were, even in Gaubil's time, not well known; it must be inferred, therefore, that the Chinese existed as a nation, and were skilled in dialling, twelve centuries before our era.'

The Seventh Dialogue turns on geography, and the use of travelling. The art of self-education, as applicable to the exploratory class of travellers, is here too rapidly hurried over.— In the Eighth Dialogue, some good observations occur on the method of treating temporary topics, so as to secure for the tractate a perpetual interest. Rousseau's letter to d'Alembert, on stage-plays, is cited as an instance of that art of mooting, on a specific case, inferences that are universally important, which constitutes the secret of conducting occasional discussion.

Dialogue IX, examines the nature, origin, and purpose of poetry. The scenery and eloquence of this dialogue are remarkable for a more glowing beauty than that which shone in the preceding conversations; and therefore, no doubt, it was reserved for the concluding fragment. The daughter of Aristus is now introduced, and gives by her attendance a new interest to the criticism. Many prejudices of the French are here attacked. The Odes of Klopstock are applauded, and specimens are produced. The great law of imitating nature, instead of the productions of the successful artists, is enforced with the zeal which its fundamental importance requires. Not to the poet only, but to the painter and the sculptor, it should be repeated, until it is duly impressed. Aristus makes an apology for Shakspeare, and hints that perhaps the forms of gothic tragedy are as natural as those of Greek tragedy. The use of the poet is placed in his evolving those sympathies which bind us to the human race, in his continually inuring us to prefer the social to the selfish passions, in his training us to think with eloquence H h 4

and

and to act with magnanimity, and in his teaching both the love of glory and the art of deserving it through virtue.

This book will be considered as displaying more information than judgment, and more acquirement than grace; it has little of that dramatic merit which constitutes the charm of dialogue, and much of that erudite knowlege which is useful in the choice of a library. It is the work of a promising young man, well and extensively read; whose views are vague, but rational; whose style is natural, but not alluring; who deserves a warmer praise than he is likely to excite; and who seems adapted to serve if not to adorn his country.

2 Vols.

ART. III. De la Liberté des Mers; i. e. On the Freedom of the Sea. By M. de Rayneval. 8vo. pp. 586. Paris. 1811. Imported by De Boffe. Price 11.

A BOVE a century and a half have passed since the extension of European commerce has made the freedom of navigation a branch of literary disquisition. The Dutch, the English, and the maritime nations of the north of Europe, being the parties principally interested in these questions, are also enabled to reckon the chief writers on them among their respective countrymen. The department of the subject relating to neutral rights takes origin from a more recent date, and first became an object of general attention in King William's war against France, when maritime hostilities were conducted on an ex.tensive scale, and the issue of the battle of La Hogue gave a decided superiority to the allied powers. The weaker belligerent is naturally disposed to claim the aid of neutrals; and, in every subsequent contest, the degree in which that aid should be permitted has formed a subject of discussion between the stronger naval power and the neutral. In these diplomatic de'bates, it is customary to appeal to the decisions of eminent writers on the law of nations, however little the rulers of countries may be disposed to fashion their proceedings by the principles of those voluminous authorities. The secret springs of public measures towards neutrals are to be sought, we believe, in a very different direction,-in the dictates of local interests, and the computations of national power; while the precept of the civilian is scarcely regarded otherwise than as a cloak. Bonaparte has always professed himself to be a zealous defender of neutral privileges, and, in the excess of his kindness, has often gone farther in the demand of redress than the suffering parties themselves. M. DE RAYNEVAL, like a dutiful subject, has enlisted under the same banners; and he claims,

by

by a process of " ratiocination," the surrender of those restraints against which his master remonstrates in the louder tone of declarations and manifestoes. M. DE R. is already known to the reading part of the community by his " Institutes on the Law of Nature and Nations." Of his present work, the fundamental rule, according to his own statement, is to steer clear as well of the particular systems of individual authors as of the temporary conventions of governments, and to £x an undivided attention on the general principles of the law of nations. No Frenchman has undertaken the discussion of mart me law on this plan; and among foreign writers the only one who is intitled, in M. DE R.'s opinion, to be exempted from the charge of narrow or partial views, is Mons. Lampredi, the author of a wellknown treatise on the commerce of neutrals.

In proceeding to an analysis of M. DE RAYNIVAL's opinions, it may be well to apprize our readers that such an investigation is to be considered rather as a duty than a pleasure, and that few topics are more devoid of attraction than an inquiry into the freedom of navigation: but that our multiplied differences with America, and with the powers of the north of Europe, have conferred on it an interest which demands a temporary suspension of literary gratification, for the sake of ascertaining the merits of a political discussion.

Freedom of the Sea. That the sea is the common property of mankind, and should be open to the use of all, is a general feeling but it is a feeling, says the author, of habit and instinet, and has scarcely ever exercised the powers of an inquisitive mind so far as to undergo a radical analysis or comprehensive explanation. Among the antients, we are unable (as already remarked in our Review, Vol. lix. p. 421.) to discover any trace of regulations for property in merchantmen in time of war: the right of search, the custom of privateering, and even the acknowlegement of neutrals, being all unknown to them. Commerce in those ages was endangered only by pirates, and all nations were agreed in waging war on those lawless desperadoes. Rhodes was one of the most commercial cities of antiquity, and her maritime regulations were chiefly directed towards security against pirates. In modern times, the Consolato del Mare is the first remarkable instrument on the subject of maritime jurisprudence. It owed its origin to a sense of mutual interest on the part of states which were frequently involved in war with each other, and is one monument, among many, of the beneficent fruits of liberty in modern Italy-but it is by no means a favourite document in M. DE RAYNEVAL'S code. He is fond of enlarging on our ignorance of its origin, on its being nowhere practically adopted as a system

system of law, and on its being chiefly quoted by powers, like England, whose authoritative treatment of neutrals receives a sanction from its enactments. It forms a part, he says, of that arbitrary and unnatural jurisprudence which it is the object of his work to attack, and which he hopes to refute by oppos ing the force of universal right to the caprice and interest of particular nations. In doing this he claims the sanction of Grotius, who in his Mare liberum has laid down the principle of freedom on the ocean, but without giving to his arguments that extension which he might have asserted had he anticipated opposition. On the other hand, his antagonist, Selden, having right much less clearly on his side, has exhausted, in his Mare clausum, all his store of erudition, and all his subtilty of argument. Not contented with maintaining the general doctrine that the ocean may be subjected to particular regulations, Selden, in dutiful acquiescence with the arbitrary views of the government of the day, asserts that England is intitled to exercise maritime sovereignty along the whole tract extending from her shore to that of North America. His book, though dedicated to Charles I., was found so suitable to the views of the Long Parliament against the Dutch, as to be translated and published by its order. The idle question of the honour of the flag was in those days considered as a point of great importance, and formed a principal article in the treaty between Cromwell and the Dutch in 1654.

Selden's work may still be said, to form, in M. DE RAYNEVAL'S opinion, one of the sources of the belligerent claims of England: he has subjected it, therefore, to a long examination; and he has devoted above one hundred pages of his second volume to an exposition of its contents, and an elaborate refutation of them. It is to us alone that he attributes the continuance of restraint on the freedom of neutral navigation; and of every other country he is disposed to exclaim, "Nil ille nee ausus nec potuit." He observes, truly enough, that the disputes between belligerents and neutrals are multiplied by the contra dictory language of public declarations and treaties; which are so often worded in conformity to temporary circumstances, as to afford equally little appearance of fundamental principle or of consistent usage. What attention to the spirit of equity, asks the author, is to be expected in treaties dictated by the strong to the weak, and maintained at the cannon's mouth? Were the case even otherwise, no accumulation of particular conventions can afford a solution for every difficulty that may occur; and still we should find ourselves obliged to seek for land-marks in the adoption of leading principles. Making the investigation of these principles the great object of his labours,

and founding his conclusions on them alone, M. DE R. lays it down as a rule to admit of little reference to the authority of other writers, and to quote scarcely any except those whom he labours to refute, especially Vattel, Bynkershoek, and Lord Liverpool. The last attracts his particular attention, as the Selden of the present day, and the advocate of the maritime system of great Britain. Of Puffendorf he speaks with very little respect, in consequence of his having mixed political considerations with discussions to which they had no reference, as well as on account of the paucity of his general views.

M. DE R. is careful to premise (p. 21.) that his claim of free navigation extends to the open sea only, the neighbourhood of the shore being the property of the power that commands it. Selden, on the other hand, contended for the establishment of jurisdiction over the ocean, on the plan of regulating the limits of each nation's domain by lines extended from headlands, promontories, islands, &c. Whatever we may think of the present writer when in competition with our late advocate, Lord Liverpool, we have no hesitation in acknowleging that he has the right side of the question in his debate with Selden. Admitting the practicability of lines of latitude and longitude defining the several jurisdictions with mathematical precision, what purpose of utility could it answer either to the world at large, or to any particular country? The parts of the sea best worth appropriating seem to be the fishing tracts; yet has any diminution ever been perceived among the whales of Greenland, or the herrings of Shetland, from the indiscriminate admission of all nations? We conclude this paragraph by copying the logical process by which M. DE R. ascertains the right of every country to the freedom of the sea: Every nation is essentially independent on her own territory; the sea, being open to all, is to each country the same as her own territory; to assail her on the one is therefore as great an aggression as to assail her on the other. The conduct of all civilized nations towards each other in time of peace affords a complete exemplification of these principles; and it is only during war that the restraints imposed on neutrals exhibit a deviation from them.' This consideration leads the author to treat, in the next place, of neutrals.

Neutrals; Contraband Stores.-Neutrality, says M. DE R., consists in abstaining from all acts of offence towards belligerents; particularly from succouring one to the prejudice of another, which would in fact be taking part in the contest. In admitting restrictions on neutrals, we should keep in mind, he remarks, that, navigation being an universal right, any modification of it is an exception to a general rule, and ought not to be extended

beyond