“In an able despatch by the French. Government to the Cabinet of Washington, M. Thouvenel declared that the seizure of the Commissioners in a neutral ship, trading from a neutral port to a neutral port, was not only contrary to the law of nations, but a direct contravention of the principles which the United States had up to that time invariably avowed and acted upon. Russia, Austria, and Prussia officially intimated their concurrence in that opinion.
“To argue the matter on the legal points in opposition to the disinterested and well-reasoned despatch of the French Minister was a hopeless task. In an elaborate state-paper, Mr Seward, the American Secretary of State, professed to rest the surrender of the Commissioners upon a mere technicality—that there had been no formal condemnation of the Trent by a prize-court; but, apart from this point of form, the seizure was indefensible on the merits as a flagrant violation of the law of nations; and if the principle was not so frankly acknowledged by Mr Seward as it ought to have been, some allowance must be made for a statesman who was trammelled by the report of his colleague, Mr Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, approving of Captain Wilkes’s conduct, and still more by the necessity of adopting a policy directly contrary to the whole current of popular opinion in the Northern States.”
The law of marriage and of divorce is very fully treated by Lord Mackenzie, and the peculiarities of the different European systems are well pointed out. The subject, however, is too extensive and important to admit of being incidentally noticed; and we shall confine our extracts here to a single passage describing a Roman form of cohabitation less honourable than matrimony, and such as we trust is never likely, to be legalised among ourselves:—
“Under Augustus, concubinage—the permanent cohabitation of an unmarried man with an unmarried woman—was authorised by law. The man who had a lawful wife could not take a concubine; neither was any man permitted to take as a concubine the wife of another man, or to have more than one concubine at the same time. A breach of these regulations was always condemned, and fell under the head of stuprum. In later times the concubine was called amica. Between persons of unequal rank concubinage was not uncommon; and sometimes it was resorted to by widowers who had already lawful children and did not wish to contract another legal marriage, as in the cases of Vespasian, Antoninus Pius, and M. Aurelius.
“As regards the father, the children born in concubinage were not under his power, and were not entitled to succeed as children by a legal marriage; but they had an acknowledged father, and could demand support from him, besides exercising other rights. As regards the mother, their rights of succession were as extensive as those of her lawful children.
“Under the Christian emperors concubinage was not favoured; but it subsisted as a legal institution in the time of Justinian. At last Leo the Philosopher, Emperor of the East, in a.d. 887, abrogated the laws which permitted concubinage, as being contrary to religion and public decency. ‘Why,’ said he, ‘should you prefer a muddy pool, when you can drink at a purer fountain?’ The existence of this custom, however, was long prolonged in the West among the Franks, Lombards, and Germans; and it is notorious that the clergy for some time gave themselves up to it without restraint.”
The practice of adoption prevailing in ancient Rome is well known, but an account of it as it is retained in the French law may be thought curious:—
“In France the usage of adoption was lost after the first race of kings: it disappeared, not only in the customary provinces, but also in the provinces governed by the written law. Re-established in 1792, adoption is now sanctioned by the Civil Code. Adoption, however, is only permitted to persons of either sex above the age of fifty, having neither children nor other lawful descendants, and being at least fifteen years older than the individual adopted. No married person can adopt without the consent of the other spouse. The privilege can only be exercised in favour of one who has been an object of the adopter’s care for at least six years during minority, or of one who has saved the life of the adopter in battle, from fire, or from drowning. In the latter case the only restriction respecting the age of the parties is, that the adopter shall be older than the adopted, and shall have attained his majority. In no case can adoption take place before the majority of the person proposed to be adopted.
“The form of adoption consists of a declaration of consent by the parties before a justice of the peace for the place where the adopter resides, after which the transaction requires to be approved of by the tribunal of first instance. After adoption, the adopted person retains all his rights as a member of his natural family. He acquires no right of succession to the property of any relation of the adopter; but in regard to the property of the adopter himself, he has precisely the same rights as a child born in marriage, even although there should be other children born in marriage after his adoption. The adopted takes the name of the adopter in addition to his own. No marriage can take place between the adopter and the adopted, or his descendants, and in certain other cases specified.
“The practice of adoption, which is better suited to some states of society than to others, still prevails among Eastern nations. It has never been recognised as a legal institution in England or Scotland.”