Jurisprudence, History, Political Science, Mathematics, Physical Science, and Modern Languages and Literature, and other subjects which have hitherto been but too little cultivated by any section of the Spanish people. We have also received, by the courtesy of Baron de Gagern, the Secretary, the First Year's Report (1876-7) of the Scientific Club in Vienna, before which Prof. Benedikt's Paper on Capital Punishment was read. The Society has a Library and Reading-room, where the principal English as well as Continental Reviews may be seen, including The Law Magazine and Review, The American Law Review, The Reports of the Société de Législation Comparée, of Paris, &c. Messrs. Eyre & Spottiswoode send us Vols. XII. and XIII. of the Revised Statutes, printed with their usual accuracy, and carrying on the work of Revision from 1854 to 1861. OUR AMERICAN AND COLONIAL CONTEMPORARIES. Owing to the constant pressure of matter arising for notice nearer home, we have not been able to draw as much attention as we could have wished to the interesting and valuable contents of the various American and Colonial legal periodicals which we receive. They are all of them essentially practical in their scope. In the Albany Law Journal (Albany, N.Y., Weed, Parsons & Co.) the most recent cases are weekly reported and discussed, while questions of high International importance are treated by eminent Jurists, as, for instance, the Extradition question, treated in elaborate and impartial letters, by Hon. W. Beach Lawrence. In the American Law Review (Boston, Little, Brown & Co.) the New England Jurists have a high-class Quarterly, covering, for Transatlantic legal readers, a field very similar to our own. Its Digests of English cases reported in the "Law Reports" cannot fail to be of value to the American practitioner, although not to the same extent, we think, as our own system of giving the cases from all the Reports in which they appear. The Southern Law Review (St. Louis, G. I. Jones) gives the Jurists of the Southern and South-Western States a good literary bill of fare every two months, and also embraces cases reported in a certain specified number of American Law Journals, but the decisions appear to us to be sometimes too briefly given for clearness. The Canada Law Journal (Toronto, Willing & Williamson) has long afforded a useful means of intercommunication among members of the Legal Profession in the Dominion. From another far-distant quarter we are glad to welcome a new contemporary in the New Zealand Jurist (Dunedin, Reith & Wilkie), edited, we believe, by a resident member of the English as well as of the Local Bar, which promises to do good service in frank and full discussion of all questions affecting the well-being of the Legal Profession at the Antipodes. Books Received. We have to acknowledge the receipt of the following: Flood's Wills of Personal Property. W. Maxwell & Son. 1877. Bedford's Final Examination Guide to Bankruptcy. 3rd edition. We have also received to date: The American Law Review. The Southern Law Review. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. The Scottish Law Magazine. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. The New Zealand Jurist. Dunedin: N.Z. Journal de Droit International Privé. Paris: Marchal, Billard et Cie. Revue de Droit International. Gand. Rivista di Discipline Carcerarie. Rome. Revue Générale du Droit, &c. Paris: E. Thorin. Nouvelle Revue Historique de Droit. Paris: Larose. Circolo Giuridico. Palermo. 1877. Boletin de la Institucion Libre de Ensenanza. Madrid. Pressure on our space again compels us to postpone several Reviews. THE LAW MAGAZINE AND REVIEW. No. CCXXVII.-FEBRUARY, 1878. I.-ALBERICUS GENTILIS ON THE RIGHT OF WAR. A NOTEABLE treatise on the Right of War has been reclaimed from oblivion at an opportune moment, when Eastern Europe is involved in a war, which, as regards its motives and its possible results, is hardly second in importance to the Great War, which desolated Central Europe in the early part of the seventeenth century, and of which the prolonged duration, inflicting immeasureable woe on an entire generation of men, is commemorated by its title of "The Thirty Years' War." Coming events are said sometimes to cast their shadows before them. To such as have faith in that saying, it might seem that the near approach of that great contest in arms, probably the most ferocious and the most sanguinary on record of all the wars which have profaned the sacred cause of Religion, had evoked a spirit, which, forecasting the intensity of its horrors, sought to set limits to the violence of man in his appeal to the arbitrament of the sword, by applying the science of law to the usages of warfare. That spirit culminated in the great * Alberici Gentilis, J.C.D., J.C. Professoris Regii De Jure Belli, Libri Tres. Edidit Thomas Erskine Holland, J.C.D., Juris Gentium Professor Chichelianus, Coll. Omn. Anim. Socius, Necnon in Univ. Perusin. Juris Professor Honorarius. Oxonii, e Typographeo Clarendoniano MDCCCLXXVII. Londini, apud A. Macmillan et Socios. ΙΟ work of Grotius. Grotius however had his precursors. His treatise indeed on the Right of War and of Peace, published for the first time in Paris, in 1625, well deserved the high estimation in which it was held by Gustavus Adolphus "the Suede of Victory," who is said to have placed it every night during the thirty years' war under the pillow of his camp bed. But the jurisprudence of war, which was a plant of strong growth when it left the hands of Grotius, had been nurtured from seed cast upon the waters of strife more than half-a-century before him. Whilst some writers, amongst whom Mr. Hallam may be mentioned, are disposed to consider the treatise of Balthazar Ayala, the Judge Advocate of the Spanish army in the Netherlands, which he dedicated, in 1581,* to Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, under whom he served, to be the first work that reduced systematically the practice of Nations in the conduct of warfare to juridical rules, others have deferred the commencement of the new epoch to the teaching of Albericus Gentilis at Oxford, and to the appearance of his work "de Jure Belli," in 1598, which he dedicated to Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. On the other hand, Professor Mancini, of the University of Rome, under whose auspices, as Minister of Grace and of Justice for United Italy, the name of Albericus Gentilis has been reinstated on the roll of Italy's noblest citizens, has with commendable equity pointed out that Albericus Gentilis did not lead the way, but was preceded by Pierino Bello of Alba in Piedmont, a name almost unknown to jurists North of the Alps. Bello, or Bellinus, as he has been otherwise designated, and as we shall prefer to call him for greater clearness, was Judge Advocate of the Army of the Emperor Charles V., during the war which he *The first edition of this work was printed at Douai, in 12 mo., in 1582. It it very rare. A copy of it is on record in the Catalogue of the Library of Lincoln's Inn, but unfortunately a Sub-Committee appointed to get rid of the useless duplicates in that Library has sold it, prefering to retain the edition printed at Antwerp in 1597. successfully waged in the North of Italy against Francis I. of France. He subsequently became Chancellor of War and of State, to Philip II. of Spain, and at the time of his death was High Chancellor of Savoy, under Duke Emanuel Philibert, the father of Charles Emanuel the First. He was born in 1502, and died in 1575. His treatise," De re Militari et de Bello," was written in 1558, forty years before the publication of the treatise of Albericus Gentilis "de Jure Belli," and more than sixty years before the appearance of the great work of Grotius. Professor Mancini speaks of Bellinus, as a writer who, in respect of the subject matter of his work, its arrangement, the logical form of its argument, and the erudition displayed throughout it, may be recognised as a guide, whose services have been useful both to Gentilis and to Grotius, and Tiraboschi has confirmed by anticipation the opinion of Mancini, in declaring that Bellinus is the first writer, "che per avventura esteramente applicasse la scienza delle leggi all'uso della guerra." The treatise of Bellinus, which was first published at Venice by Portonari in 1563, is very rare, but the text of it has been printed in Vol. XVI. of the great collection of legal treatises (Tractatus Universi Juris) published at Venice by Francesco Zileti in 1584. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the work of the Piedmontese Jurist was known to Balthazar Ayala, although he does not allude to it.* It was certainly known to Albericus Gentilis as he refers to it in his Chapter "de Obsidibus." On the other hand it does not appear to have been known to Grotius, who has acknowledged his obligation to Joanne de Lignano and other writers, the contemporaries of Bellinus. We are, however, reluctant, in recognising the justice of the debt recently paid to Bellinus by Professor Mancini, to admit that his systematical treatment * Bodinus is in fact the only jurist of note, whom Ayala cites as an authority. His countrymen, Vasquez and Covarruvias, to whom he frequently appeals, take rank with the Canonists. |