admirer of American democracy; but in all the worst features of the past political life of America I can trace the working of a principle, the reverse of democracy. Democracy has supplied the machinery of government, but that machinery has been worked by a Slave Power, and for the purposes of slavery. Democracy in America has never yet had a fair chance. No, I trace the national decline to something with which, where it exists, anything but decline is impossible-to complicity with a great sin. There may be other causes, but I believe that this is the grand and fundamental cause. Slavery, acting on an extraordinary material prosperity, has sent a rot through the whole body politic. But the crisis of the disease has arrived. Symptoms of returning health begin to show themselves. The principle of evil has, indeed, still a strong hold of its victim, but it is visibly relaxing its grasp. If you require proof, look to the progress which anti-slavery sentiment has made within the last year-look to the practical results of that progress in the benevolent mission to Port Royal to provide for fugitive negroes-look, lastly, at the feeling which the proclamation of emancipation has called forth. The friends of slavery predicted that the proclamation would shiver the North into fragments. On the contrary, it is rapidly uniting all that is best and most hopeful in the Northern people, rallying them to a common principle, and, in the fire of a noble enthusiasm, welding them into a single mass. At such a time as this, is it for England to see only the difficulties of the problem-to be nice in scrutinizing motives, and, in her anxiety lest

emancipation should be accomplished in some unorthodox fashion-lest it should be dictated by some principle less sublime than the purest philanthropy, to throw the whole weight of her splendid influence into the scale of the slaveholder? I cannot think so. I cannot believe that this unnatural infatuation for a Slave Power is destined to be a permanent attachment. It is but a transient passion, the offspring of pique and anger, from which ere long she will shake herself free. Yet a little, and she will resume her older and better character, as the England of Clarkson and Wilberforce, the emancipator of slaves, the champion of the oppressed, and the friend of freedom, in every form, and in every quarter of the globe.

III.

INTERNATIONAL LAW.*

IT is now about two and a half centuries since Grotius, in his great work, gave to the world the first clear outline of a scheme of international jurisprudence. The subject has since engaged the thoughts of many very learned and of a few very able minds. The relations and mutual pretensions of nations have, moreover, during this period, been submitted-with the growth of international trade, the collision of international interests incident to the peopling of a new continent, and a succession of wars-to the ordeal of a long and diversified experience; and the practices thus established and mutual concessions thus obtained have, under the manipulation of Prize Courts and diplomatists, been wrought into a tolerably compact and coherent system. Yet, notwithstanding the progress made in the practical art of administering international affairs, and notwithstanding the existence of many valuable treatises in the nature of digests and expositions of the actual international code, or of portions of it, of such works, for example, as those of

* Fortnightly Review, November 1865.

Ortolan, Wheaton, Kent, Manning, and others--it must, I think, be admitted that little has yet been done for the philosophy of international law. Bentham, Austin, and the two Mills have indeed given us some valuable analyses of fundamental juridical ideas; Mr. J. S. Mill, in particular, has in detached essays offered some pregnant suggestions; and more recently Mr. Maine, in his not less profound than learned. work on "Ancient Law," has incidentally thrown a clear light on some recondite points in the development of international jurisprudence. Yet a work treating international law as a whole, in a philosophical spirit, and with reference to the altered conditions in many important respects of international intercourse, is still, I think it must be said, a desideratum in philosophical literature. Upon such questions, for example, as the true nature of international law, its proper sanctions, its authoritative exponents, the grounds of its obligation, the limits of civilization within which its rules may be justifiably enforced— how utterly vague, unsatisfactory, and fluctuating are the views of even its professed cultivators! There are those, no doubt, who will tell us that all this is of little consequence. Practice, we know, precedes theory; and those people will probably add that it does not much matter if theory ever follow. But, with due respect, I must contend that it does matter; that, albeit the first essays in every path of art must needs be made somewhat blindly and on trust, for continuous and sustained progress, theory is necessary : a survey of the ground passed over, an observation of our actual position with reference at once to the

goal in view and to the state of other but kindred arts, are important conditions in order to a fresh and effective start. It seems to me that the study of international law has just reached that stage at which a resort to the chart and the compass becomes necessary; at which, without this assistance, we are in danger of returning on our course, and wandering through the mazes of exploded systems and obsolete ideas; at which, therefore, the most effective service that can be rendered to the course of international jurisprudence, even in the most strictly practical sense, will consist in a determination of its proper character, its ultimate aim, its relation to other connected departments of human speculation and action— in a word, in setting forth a true philosophy of international law. To the ability and learning requisite for such a task the present writer makes no pretension; his purpose at present does not extend beyond an attempt to discuss a few fundamental problems in the light of modern facts and of some recent contributions to ethical and juridical science, and with a view to exhibit, by way of illustration, the mode in which an improved philosophy of this branch of study may be made conducive to the work of practical reform.

It has already been intimated that the proper nature of international law is still a subject of controversy. On the part of Bentham and his followers, and, not less by a very different school, Savigny and those who accept his teaching, a distinction in character has been recognized between the rules which regulate international intercourse and the municipal code of a State. On the other hand, there