ciate the merit of vulgar objections against and disagreements, both in general provithe subtilty and complexity of laws. We sions, and in some of the most important shall estimate the good sense and the grati- parts of their minute practice. In this part tude of those who reproach lawyers for em- of the course, which I mean to pursue with ploying all the powers of their mind to dis- such detail as to give a view of both codes, cover subtle distinctions for the prevention that may perhaps be sufficient for the purof justice; and we shall at once perceive poses of the general student, I hope to conthat laws ought to be neither more simple vince him that the laws of civilized nations, nor more complex than the state of society particularly those of his own, are a subject which they are to govern, but that they ought most worthy of scientific curiosity; that prin exactly to correspond to it. Of the two faults, ciple and system run through them even to however, the excess of simplicity would the minutest particular, as really, though not certainly be the greatest; for laws, more so apparently, as in other sciences, and ap complex than are necessary, would only pro- plied to purposes more important than those duce embarrassment; whereas laws more of any other science. Will it be presump simple than the affairs which they regulate | tuous to express a hope, that such an inwould occasion a defeat of Justice. More quiry may not be altogether a useless introunderstanding has perhaps been in this man-duction to that larger and more detailed ner exerted to fix the rules of life than in any study of the law of England, which is the other science; and it is certainly the most duty of those who are to profess and prac honourable occupation of the understanding, tise that law? because it is the most immediately subservi- In considering the important subject of ent to general safety and comfort. There is criminal law it will be my duty to found, on not so noble a spectacle as that which is dis- a regard to the general safety, the right of played in the progress of jurisprudence; the magistrate to inflict punishments, even where we may contemplate the cautious and the most severe, if that safety cannot be unwearied exertions of a succession of wise effectually protected by the example of infe men, through a long course of ages, with- rior punishments. It will be a more agreeadrawing every case as it arises from the ble part of my office to explain the temperadangerous power of discretion, and subject-ments which Wisdom, as well as Humanity, ing it to inflexible rules,-extending the do- prescribes in the exercise of that harsh right, minion of justice and reason, and gradually unfortunately so essential to the preservation contracting, within the narrowest possible of human society. I shall collate the penal limits, the domain of brutal force and of ar- codes of different nations, and gather toDitrary will. This subject has been treated gether the most accurate statement of the with such dignity by a writer who is ad- result of experience with respect to the effimired by all mankind for his eloquence, but cacy of lenient and severe punishments; who is, if possible, still more admired by all and I shall endeavour to ascertain the princi competent judges for his philosophy, a writ- ples on which must be founded both the proer, of whom I may justly say, that he was portion and the appropriation of penalties to "gravissimus et dicendi et intelligendi auc- crimes. As to the law of criminal proceedtor et magister,"-that I cannot refuse my-ing, my labour will be very easy; for on tha. self the gratification of quoting his words:- subject an English lawyer, if he were to de "The science of jurisprudence, the pride of lineate the model of perfection, would find the human intellect, which, with all its de- that, with few exceptions, he had transfects, redundancies, and errors, is the collect-cribed the institutions of his own country. ed reason of ages combining the principles of original justice with the infinite variety of human concerns."‡

I shall exemplify the progress of law, and illustrate those principles of Universal Justice on which it is founded, by a comparative review of the two greatest civil codes that have been hitherto formed,-those of Rome and of England,—of their agreements

"The casuistical subtilties are not perhaps greater than the subtilties of lawyers; but the lat ter are innocent, and even necessary."-Hume, Essays, vol. ii. p. 558.

Law," said Dr. Johnson, "is the science in which the greatest powers of the understanding are applied to the greatest number of facts." Nobody, who is acquainted with the variety and multiplicity of the subjects of jurisprudence, and with the prodigious powers of discrimination employed upon them, can doubt the truth of this observation.

Burke, Works, vol. iii. p. 134.

On the intimate connection of these two codes, let us hear the words of Lord Holt, whose name never can be pronounced without veneration, as

The next great division of the subject is the "law of nations," strictly and properly so called. I have already hinted at the general principles on which this law is founded. They, like all the principles of natural jurisprudence, have been more happily cultivated, and more generally obeyed. in some ages and countries than in others; and, like them, are susceptible of great variety in their application, from the character and usage of nations. I shall consider these principles in the gradation of those which are necessary to any tolerable intercourse tial to all well-regulated and mutually adbetween nations, of those which are essen

long as wisdom and integrity are revered among men :-"Inasmuch as the laws of all nations are doubtless raised out of the ruins of the civil law, as all governments are sprung out of the ruins of the Roman empire, it must be owned that the principles of our law are borrowed from the civil law, therefore grounded upon the same reason in many things." -12 Mod. Rep. 482.

rather as a necessary part of it, I shall conclude with a survey of the diplomatic and conventional law of Europe, and of the treaties which have materially affected the distribution of power and territory among the European states,-the circumstances which gave rise to them, the changes which they effected, and the principles which they in troduced into the public code of the Christian commonwealth. In ancient times the knowledge of this conventional law was thought one of the greatest praises that could be bestowed on a name loaded with all the honours that eminence in the arts of peace and war can confer: "Equidem existimo judices, cùm in omni genere ac varietate artium, etiam illarum, quæ sine summo otio non facilè discuntur, Cn. Pompeius excellat, sin

vantageous intercourse, and of those which are highly conducive to the preservation of a mild and friendly intercourse between civilized states. Of the first class, every understanding acknowledges the necessity, and some traces of a faint reverence for them are discovered even among the most barbarous tribes; of the second, every wellinformed man perceives the important use, and they have generally been respected by all polished nations; of the third, the great benefit may be read in the history of modern Europe, where alone they have been carried to their full perfection. In unfolding the first and second class of principles, I shall naturally be led to give an account of that law of nations, which, in greater or less perfection, regulated the intercourse of savages, of the Asiatic empires, and of the an-gularem quandam laudem ejus et præstabicient republics. The third brings me to the lem esse scientiam, in fœderibus, pactioniconsideration of the law of nations, as it is bus, conditionibus, populorum, regum, extenow acknowledged in Christendom. From rarum nationum: in universo denique belli the great extent of the subject, and the par- jure ac pacis."* Information on this subject ticularity to which, for reasons already given, is scattered over an immense variety of I must here descend, it is impossible for me, voluminous compilations, not accessible to within my moderate compass, to give even every one, and of which the perusal can be an ontline of this part of the course. It com- agreeable only to a very few. Yet so much prehends, as every reader will perceive, the of these treaties has been embodied into the principles of national independence, the in- general law of Europe, that no man can be tercourse of nations in peace, the privileges master of it who is not acquainted with them. of ambassadors and inferior ministers, the The knowledge of them is necessary to necommerce of private subjects, the grounds gotiators and statesmen; it may sometimes of just war, the mutual duties of belligerent be important to private men in various situand neutral powers, the limits of lawful hos- ations in which they may be placed; it is tility, the rights of conquest, the faith to be useful to all men who wish either to be acobserved in warfare, the force of an armis- quainted with modern history, or to form a tice, of safe conducts and passports, the sound judgment on political measures. nature and obligation of alliances, the means shall endeavour to give such an abstract of of negotiation, and the authority and inter- it as may be sufficient for some, and a conpretation of treaties of peace. All these, venient guide for others in the farther proand many other most important and compli-gress of their studies. The treaties which I cated subjects, with all the variety of moral reasoning, and historical examples which is necessary to illustrate them, must be fully examined in that part of the lectures, in which I shall endeavour to put together a tolerably complete practical system of the law of nations, as it has for the last two centuries been recognised in Europe.

"Le droit des gens est naturellement fondé sur ce principe, que les diverses nations doivent se faire, dans la paix le plus de bien, et dans la guerre le moins de mal, qu'il est possible, sans nuire à leurs véritables intérêts. L'objet de la guerre c'est la victoire, celui de la victoire la conquête; celui de la conquête la conservation. De ce principe et du précédent, doivent dériver toutes les loix qui forment le droit des gens. Toutes les nations ont un droit des gens; et les Iroquois même, qui mangent leurs prisonniers, en ont un. Ils envoient et reçoivent des embassades; ils connoissent les droits de la guerre et de la paix: le mal est que ce croit des gens n'est pas fondé sur les vrais principes."* As an important supplement to the practiral system of our modern law of nations, or

• De l'Esprit des Loix. liv. i. c. 3.

I

shall more particularly consider, will be those of Westphalia, of Oliva, of the Pyrenees, of Breda, of Nimeguen, of Ryswick, of Utrecht, of Aix-la-Chapelle, of Paris (1763), and of Versailles (1783). I shall shortly explair the other treaties, of which the stipulations are either alluded to, confirmed, or abrogated in those which I consider at length. I shall subjoin an account of the diplomatic intercourse of the European powers with the Ottoman Porte, and with other princes and states who are without the pale of our ordinary federal law; together with a view of the most important treaties of commerce, their principles, and their consequences.

As an useful appendix to a practical treatise on the law of nations, some account will be given of those tribunals which in different countries of Europe decide controversies arising out of that law; of their constitution, of the extent of their authority, and of their modes of proceeding; more especially of those courts which are peculiarly appointed for that purpose by the laws of Great Britain..

Though the course, of which I have sketched the outline, may seem to comprehead so

* Cic. Orat. pro L. Corn. Balbo, c. vi.

great a variety of miscellaneous subjects, yet | dual in the conviction, that justice is the they are all in truth closely and inseparably permanent interest of all men, and of all interwoven. The duties of men, of subjects, commonwealths. To discover one new link of princes, of lawgivers, of magistrates, and of states, are all parts of one consistent system of universal morality. Between the most abstract and elementary maxim of moral philosophy, and the most complicated controversies of civil or public law, there subsists a connection which it will be the main object of these lectures to trace. The principle of justice, deeply rooted in the nature and interest of man, pervades the whole system, and is discoverable in every part of it, even to its minutest ramification in a legal formality, or in the construction of an article in a treaty. I know not whether a philosopher ought to confess, that in his inquiries after truth he is biassed by any consideration,-even by the love of virtue. But I, who conceive that a real philosopher ought to regard truth itself chiefly on account of its subserviency to the happiness of mankind, am not ashamed to confess, that I shall feel a great consolation at the conclusion of these lectures, if, by a wide survey and an exact examination of the conditions and relations of human nature, I shall have confirmed but one indivi

of that eternal chain by which the Author of the universe has bound together the hap piness and the duty of His creatures, and indissolubly fastened their interests to each other, would fill my heart with more plea sure than all the fame with which the most ingenious paradox ever crowned the most eloquent sophist. I shall conclude this Discourse in the noble language of two great orators and philosophers, who have, in a few words, stated the substance, the object, and the result of all morality, and politics, and law. "Nihil est quod adhuc de republicâ putem dictum, et quo possim longius progredi, nisi sit confirmatum, non modo falsum esse illud, sine injuriâ non posse, sed hoc verissimum, sine summa justitiâ rempublicam geri nullo modo posse."* "Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society, and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the sus picion of being no policy at all."t

Cic De Repub. lib. ii.

Burke, Works, vol. iii. p. 207.

LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.

ARISTOTLE and Bacon, the greatest philo- private life. These are extreme cases: but sophers of the ancient and the modern world, there are other men, whose manners and agree in representing poetry as being of a acts are equally well known, whose indimore excellent nature than history. Agree-vidual lives are deeply interesting, whose ably to the predominance of mere under- characteristic qualities are peculiarly striking, standing in Aristotle's mind, he alleges as his cause of preference that poetry regards general truth, or conformity to universal nature; while history is conversant only with a confined and accidental truth, dependent on time, place, and circumstance. The ground assigned by Bacon is such as naturally issued from that fusion of imagination with reason, which constitutes his philosophical genius. Poetry is ranked more highly by him, because the poet presents us with a pure excellence and an unmingled grandeur, not to be found in the coarse realities of life or of history; but which the mind of man, although not destined to reach, is framed to contemplate with delight.

The general difference between biography and history is obvious. There have been many men in every age whose lives are full of interest and instruction; but who, having never taken a part in public affairs, are altogether excluded from the province of the historian: there have been also, probably, equal numbers who have influenced the fortune of nations in peace or in war, of the peculiarities of whose character we have no information; and who, for the purposes of the biographer, may be said to have had no

who have taken an important share in events connected with the most extraordinary revolutions of human affairs, and whose biography becomes more difficult from that combination and intermixture of private with public occurrences, which render it instructive and interesting. The variety and splendour of the lives of such men render it often difficult to distinguish the portion of them which ought to be admitted into history, from that which should be reserved for biography. Generally speaking, these two parts are so distinct and unlike, that they cannot be confounded without much injury to both ;-as when the biographer hides the portrait of the individual by a crowded and confined picture of events, or when the historian allows unconnected narratives of the lives of men to break the thread of history. The historian contemplates only the surface of human nature, adorned and disguised (as when actors perform brilliant parts before a great audience), in the midst of so many dazzling circumstances, that it is hard to estimate the intrinsic worth of individuals,

and impossible, in an historical relation, to exhibit the secret springs of their cou duct,

The biographer endeavours to follow the hero and the statesman, from the field, the council, or the senate, to his private dwelling, where, in the midst of domestic ease, or of social pleasure, he throws aside the robe and the mask, becomes again a man instead of an actor, and, in spite of himself, often betrays those frailties and singularities which are visible in the countenance and voice, the gesture and manner, of every one when he is not playing a part. It is particularly difficult to observe the distinction in the case of Sir Thomas More, because he was so perfectly natural a man that he carried his amiable peculiarities into the gravest deliberations of state, and the most solemn acts of law. Perhaps nothing more can be universally laid down, than that the biographer never ought to introduce public events, except in as far as they are absolutely necessary to the illustration of character, and that the historian should rarely digress into biographical particulars, except in as far as they contribute to the clearness of his narrative of political occurrences.

Sir Thomas More was born in Milk Street, in the city of London, in the year 1480, three years before the death of Edward IV. His family was respectable,-no mean advantage at that time. His father, Sir John More, who was born about 1440, was entitled by his descent to use an armorial bearing,-a privilege guarded strictly and jealously as the badge of those who then began to be called gentry, and who, though separated from the lords of parliament by political rights, yet formed with them in the order of society one body, corresponding to those called noble in the other countries of Europe. Though the political power of the barons was on the wane, the social position of the united body of nobility and gentry retained its dignity.* Sir John More was one of the justices of the court of King's Bench to the end of his long life; and, according to his son's account, well performed the peaceable duties of civil life, being gentle in his deportment, blameless, meek and merciful, an equitable judge, and an upright man.t

so bright, that the reputation of schools was carefully noted, and schoolmasters began to be held in some part of the estimation which they merit. Here, however, his studies were confined to Latin; the cultivation of Greek, which contains the sources and models of Roman literature, being yet far from having descended to the level of the best among the schools. It was the custom of that age that young gentlemen should pass part of their boyhood in the house and service of their superiors, where they might profit by listening to the conversation of men of experience, and gradually acquire the manners of the world. It was not deemed derogatory from youths of rank,-it was rather thought a beneficial expedient for inuring them to stern discipline and implicit obedience, that they should be trained, during this noviciate, in humble and even menial offices. A young gentleman thought himself no more lowered by serving as a page in the family of a great peer or prelate, than a Courtenay or a Howard considered it as a degradation to be the huntsman or the cupbearer of a Tudor.

More was fortunate in the character of his master: when his school studies were thought to be finished, about his fifteenth year, he was placed in the house of Cardinal Morton, archbishop of Canterbury. This prelate, who was born in 1410, was originally an eminent civilian, canonist, and a practiser of note in the ecclesiastical courts. He had been a Lancastrian, and the fidelity with which he adhered to Henry VI., till that unfortunate prince's death, recommended him to the confidence and patronage of Edward IV. He negotiated the marriage with the princess Elizabeth, which reconciled (with whatever confusion of titles) the conflicting pretensions of York and Lancaster, and raised Henry Tudor to the throne. By these services, and by his long experience in affairs, he continued to be prime minister till his death, which happened in 1500, at the advanced age of ninety.* Even at the time of More's entry into his household, the old cardinal, though then fourscore and five years, was pleased with the extraordinary promise of the sharp and lively boy; as aged Sir Thomas More received the first rudi-persons sometimes, as it were, catch a ments of his education at St. Anthony's school, in Thread-needle Street, under Nicholas Hart: for the daybreak of letters was now

glimpse of the pleasure of youth, by entering for a moment into its feelings. More broke into the rude dramas performed at the cardinal's Christmas festivities, to which he was too young to be invited, and often invented at the moment speeches for himself,

which made the lookers-on more sport than all the players beside." The cardinal, much delighting in his wit and towardness, would often say of him unto the nobles that dined with him,-"This child here waiting at the table, whosoever shall live to see it, will

"In Sir Thomas More's epitaph, he describes himself as born of no noble family, but of an honest stock,' (or in the words of the original, familiâ non celebri, sed honestâ natus.) a true translation, as we here take nobility and noble; for none under a baron, except he be of the privy council, doth challenge it; and in this sense he meant it; but as the Latin word nobilis is taken in other countries for gentrie, it was otherwise. Sir John More bare arms from his birth; and though we cannot certainly tell who were his ancestors, they must needs be gentlemen."-Life of More *Dodd's Church History, vol. i. p. 141. The (commonly reputed to be) by Thomas More, his Roman Catholics, now restored to their just rank great grandson, pp. 3, 4. This book will be cited in society, have no longer an excuse for not conhenceforward as "More." tinuing this useful work. [This has been accord. "Homo civilis, innocens, mitis, integer."-ingly done since this note was written, by the Rev Epitaph M. A. Tierney.-Ed.]

prove a marvellous man."* More, in his historical work, thus commemorates this zarly friend, not without a sidelong glance at the acts of a courtier:-"He was a man of great natural wit, very well learned, honourable in behaviour, lacking in no wise to win favour." In Utopia he praises the cardinal more lavishly, and with no restraint from the severe justice of history. It was in Morton's house that he was probably first known to Colet, dean of St. Paul's, the founder of St. Paul's school, and one of the most eminent restorers of ancient literature in England; who was wont to say, that "there was but one wit in England, and that was young Thomas More."

man of high capacity, and of ambition be coming his faculties, could read Cicero without a desire to comprehend Demosthenes and Plato? What youth desirous of excellence but would rise from the study of the Georgics and the Æneid, with a wish to be acquainted with Hesiod and Apollonius, with Pindar, and above all with Homer? These studies were then pursued, not with the dull languor and cold formality with which the indolent, incapable, incurious majority of boys obey the prescribed rules of an old establishment, but with the enthusiastic admiration with which the superior few feel an earnest of their own higher powers, in the delight which arises in their minds at the contemplation of new beauty, and of excellence unimagined before.

More went to Oxford in 1497, where he appears to have had apartments in St. Mary's More found several of the restorers of Hall, but to have carried on his studies at Grecian literature at Oxford, who had been Canterbury College, on the spot where the scholars of the exiled Greeks in Italy;— Wolsey afterwards reared the magnificent Grocyn, the first professor of Greek in the edifice of Christchurch. At that university university; Linacre, the accomplished founhe found a sort of civil war waged between der of the college of physicians; and Wilthe partisans of Greek literature, who were liam Latimer, of whom we know little more then innovators in education and suspected than what we collect from the general tesof heresy, if not of infidelity, on the one timony borne by his most eminent contemhand; and on the other side the larger body, poraries to his learning and virtue. Grocyn, comprehending the aged, the powerful, and the first of the English restorers, was a late the celebrated, who were content to be no learner, being in the forty-eighth year of his wiser than their forefathers. The younger age when he went, in 1488, to Italy, where followers of the latter faction affected the the fountains of ancient learning were once ridiculous denomination of Trojans, and as- more opened. After having studied under sumed the names of Priam, Hector, Paris, Politian, and learnt Greek from Chalconand Eneas, to denote their hostility to the dylas, one of the lettered emigrants who Greeks. The puerile pedantry of these cox- educated the teachers of the western nations, combs had the good effect of awakening the he returned to Oxford, where he taught that zeal of More for his Grecian masters, and of language to More, to Linacre, and to Erasinducing him to withstand the barbarism mus. Linacre followed the example of Growhich would exclude the noblest produc- cyn in visiting Italy, and profiting by the intions of the human mind from the education structions of Chalcondylas. Colet spent four of English youth. He expostulated with the years in the same country, and in the like university in a letter addressed to the whole studies. William Latimer repaired at a body, reproaching them with the better ex- mature age to Padua, in quest of that knowample of Cambridge, where the gates were ledge which was not to be acquired at home. thrown open to the higher classics of Greece, He was afterwards chosen to be tutor to as freely as to their Roman imitators. The Reginald Pole, the King's cousin; and Erasestablished clergy even then, though Luther mus, by attributing to him "maidenly mohad not yet alarmed them, strangers as they desty," leaves in one word an agreeable imwere to the new learning, affected to con- pression of the character of a man chosen for temn that of which they were ignorant, and his scholarship to be Linacre's colleague in a could not endure the prospect of a rising projected translation of Aristotle, and solicigeneration more learned than themselves. ted by the latter for aid in his edition of the Their whole education was Latin, and their New Testament.* instruction was limited to Roman and canon law, to theology, and school philosophy. They dreaded the downfal of the authority of the Vulgate from the study of Greek and Hebrew. But the course of things was irrresistible. The scholastic system was now on the verge of general disregard, and the perusal of the greatest Roman writers turned all eyes towards the Grecian masters. What

Roper's Life of Sir T. More, edited by Singer. This book will be cited henceforward as "Roper." History of Richard III.

↑ More, p. 25.

Athene Oxonienses, vol. i. p. 79.

At Oxford More became known to a man far more extraordinary than any of these scholars. Erasmus had been invited to England by Lord Mountjoy, who had been his pupil at Paris, and continued to be his friend during life. He resided at Oxford during a great part of 1497; and having returned to Paris in 1498, spent the latter portion of the same year at the university of Oxford, where he again had an opportunity of pouring his zeal for Greek study into the mind of More. Their friendship, though formed at an age of considerable disparity,-Erasmus being then

For Latimer, see Dodd, Church History, vol. See this Letter in the Appendix to the second i. p. 219. : for Grocyn, Ibid. p. 227: for Colet and volume of Jortin's Life of Erasmus. Linacre, all biographical compilations.