The question is not whether the Union shall be restored: the Republican party contemplates and seeks this result. But the question is, shall the Union be restored by usurpation,—by a policy dictated by the Rebels, and fraught with all the evils of civil war? The seizure of the government in the manner contemplated by Johnson and his associates destroys at once the public credit, renders the public securities worthless for the time, overthrows the banking system, bankrupts the trading class, prostrates the laborers, and ends, finally, in general financial, industrial, and social disorder.
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
Elements of International Law. By Henry Wheaton, LL. D., etc. Eighth Edition. Edited, with Notes, by Richard Henry Dana, Jr., LL. D. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1866. 8vo. pp. 749.
Lord Westbury, in one of his masterly speeches on law reform, spoke with much truth, and in terms of severe censure, of the neglect with which public law has heretofore been treated in England, and the scanty contributions of English writers to it. And it is undoubtedly true, that, as the English language has no name by which to designate that branch of the law called by the civilians jus, and by the French publicists droit, so English libraries are without any great national work on this subject, although the English bar has produced innumerable treatises on municipal law, which are high models of profound learning, acute logic, and luminous exposition; and Great Britain is still chiefly dependent for her international law upon the decisions of Lord Stowell and a few other judges, and the commentaries of the Continent and America.
But from an early period in our political history, international law has been a favorite study in the United States, both with jurists and statesmen. Our war of independence and the succeeding treaties gave rise to questions for solution by it of the greatest nicety, and thus attracted immediate attention to the whole science. To these there followed in quick succession our long-pending dispute with Great Britain upon her exercise of the oppressive claims of visitation and search, our position as a neutral nation during the long wars in Europe, our own war with England, and the wars between Spain and her revolted colonies. Such a succession of events, fruitful in international controversies, created a demand for the study of the law of nations such as is always sure to be supplied. The state papers of Mr. Madison and Mr. John Quincy Adams are a permanent monument to their familiarity with this subject. Contemporaneous with them were the unrivalled decisions of the Supreme Court when presided over by Chief Justice Marshall, and later have been published the works of Kent, Wheaton, Story, and other writers. All of these together comprise a treasure of learning of which we may well be proud.
Mr. Wheaton, by general consent, occupies the first place among our commentators. Inferior as a jurist to Chancellor Kent, he is not so high an authority upon any question which the latter carefully and thoroughly examined; but long study and training, first before the Supreme Court, when he was not only the reporter of its decisions during the international era, but was of counsel in most of the important cases involving international law, and afterwards in an extended and useful diplomatic career in Europe, gave him an unequalled familiarity with the whole subject; and he treated it in a much more elaborate manner than did Kent, who only discussed it as a branch of the more general science covered by his Commentaries. No better evidence of the value of Mr. Wheaton's book is needed than the high estimation in which it is held in Europe, and particularly in England, where, as the production of a common-law lawyer, it has a greater value than the works of Continental scholars, and for reasons of which we shall speak presently. Lord Lyndhurst early bore testimony to its great merits, and during the last few years it has been universally regarded as an authority of the highest standard. No other publicist has been so frequently cited in the controversies which have grown out of our late civil war. The translation of the book into Chinese is a most interesting fact, flattering to the author, and a proof of the progress which Western thought and civilization are making in the extreme East.
It is of Mr. Dana's edition of this valuable work that we are now called upon particularly to speak. As a new edition of the book was demanded, it was of the greatest importance that it should be placed in the hands of an editor competent to discuss, in a manner worthy of the distinguished commentator, those numerous and perplexing questions which have arisen since his death. The representatives of Mr. Wheaton were singularly fortunate in obtaining the aid of so prominent and so busy a man as Mr. Dana,—one who is himself a high authority on many branches of international law; for it is not an easy matter to prevail upon a leader of the bar, and especially one immersed in the cares of official as well as of professional duties, to undertake a laborious literary work, even if it be of a legal character. Of the editor it is a delicate matter to speak; but we can say without violating good taste, that few members of his profession unite at once, and to an equal degree with him, high professional acquirements, an enviable reputation as an orator and advocate, and the accomplishments of a varied and extensive scholarship, so that the words with which the President of Harvard College, at the recent Commencement, conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws, Virum eloquentium jurisperitissimum, jurisperitorum eloquentissimum, could be applied to him with far less disregard of strict truth than university dignitaries consider allowable on such occasions. A large practice for more than twenty years in the maritime courts has given Mr. Dana an extensive and intimate acquaintance with one part of the subject he has here undertaken; and his duties as United States District Attorney for Massachusetts, throughout the late war, obliged him to examine most carefully the whole law of prize, of neutral and contraband trade, and of blockade. The results of his labors comprise nearly half of the volume before us, and deserve some higher appellation than notes. Nowhere, however, does Mr. Dana push himself before his author. He never seems to forget that his duty is to prepare a new edition of Wheaton's Commentaries, not to write a book of his own; and he is content modestly to illustrate the text, and to supply the omissions needed to bring the book down to the present day.
It is not necessary to say that, in a literary point of view, Mr. Dana has done his work well. His style is a model of terseness, vigor, and perspicuity, and yet the reader is constantly charmed by its chaste purity and grace. We can say of him what Macaulay said of Bacon, that he has a wonderful talent of packing thought close and rendering it portable. It is a long time since we have read a book in which so much matter was compressed into so small a space. The good taste and polished courtesy with which Mr. Dana treats of any controverted point cannot be too much praised; and his calmness and moderation in their discussion are judicial in their nature and extent, and give additional weight to his opinions.
We have been surprised to see notices of the work in which Mr. Dana is criticised for want of enthusiasm. If by this is meant that he lacks enthusiasm for his subject, the criticism is entirely misplaced. We doubt whether, without that, he could ever have been induced to edit this book; and on every page, and in almost every line, convincing proof can be found of the love and devotion which the editor feels for the law, and especially for this department of it, to the study and practice of which he has devoted so many years. It is this enthusiasm that renders the notes to us more interesting than the text. Things which Mr. Wheaton discusses as abstractions seem in Mr. Dana's hands to become living realities. In one the scholar's temperament predominates; in the other the lawyer's and the politician's. If, however, the criticism applies to the rigid impartiality which the editor brings to the discussion of those contemporaneous events concerning which the passions of men have been most recently and deeply aroused, we regard it as high praise. If Mr. Dana's views be wrong, it is not likely that the indulgence of a partisan enthusiasm would have corrected them; if they be right, the absence of all passion, the studied courtesy and tolerant moderation which mark every line of argument, add infinite strength to his conclusions.