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That it is, consequently, advantageous to establish a uniform doctrine on so important a point;

That the plenipotentiaries assembled in congress at Paris, cannot better respond to the intentions by which their governments are animated, than by seeking to introduce into international relations fixed principles in this respect

The above-mentioned plenipotentiaries being duly authorised, resolved to concert among themselves as to the means of attaining this object; and, having come to an agreement, have adopted the following solemn declaration:

1. Privateering is, and remains, abolished;

2. The neutral flag covers enemy's goods, with the exception of contraband of war;

3. Neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war, are not liable to capture under the enemy's flag;

4. Blockades, in order to be binding, must be effective; that is to say, maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy.1

The governments of the undersigned plenipotentiaries engage to bring the present declaration to the knowledge of the states which have not taken part in the congress of Paris, and to invite them to accede to it. Convinced that the maxims which they now proclaim cannot but be received with gratitude by the whole world, the undersigned plenipotentiaries doubt not that the efforts of their governments to obtain the general adoption thereof will be crowned with full success.

The present declaration is not and shall not be binding, except between those powers who have acceded, or shall accede to it. Done at Paris, the 16th of April, 1856."

It will be observed that, although the above important declaration does not in the least define what is or what is not contraband of war, leaving this question in its former position, yet it is a remarkable step taken by the leading powers of Europe, evincing an advance in enlightenment amongst them, and progress in general civilisation; and it is much to be regretted that the

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1 In 1780, and again in 1801, the principles enunciated in articles 2, 3, and 4, were endeavoured to be enforced by the "Armed Neutrality;" but Great Britain then strenuously, and in the end effectually, resisted their introduction into international law. Sir Archibald Alison, in his History of Europe from 1789 to 1815" (c. 33, vol. 7, p. 336, et seq. 7th ed.), gives an interesting account of the "Armed Neutrality," and of the causes which led to it.

United States of America1 should have declined to join the European powers in settling these very important points of inter

national law.

Whether the great nations, which have been wise enough to see their common interest in regulations of this kind expressed as above, will also be wise and consistent enough to abide thereby honestly, by giving a liberal interpretation to the terms employed, remains to be seen. Austria, in the war which is just concluded, declared, without consulting the neutral powers, parties to the Paris declaration, that she would consider coal contraband of war. Now, it is obvious that, if it lie in the power of any one state thus to declare any particular kind of merchandise contraband of war, the effect of articles 2 and 3 of the Paris declaration may, at any time, be entirely neutralized.

That the governments of civilized countries may be led to see the mutual advantages derived from acting upon principles recognized as morally right, may at the present day be well expected. The sagacity which should induce them so to act, would give a promise that wars themselves should be, hereafter, less likely entered upon, or at least speedily and rationally concluded.

ART. VII.-Literary Remains (consisting of Lectures and Tracts on Political Economy) of the late Rev. Richard Jones, formerly Professor of Political Economy at the East India College, Haileybury, and Member of the Tithe and Charity Commissions. Edited, with a Prefatory Note, by the REV. WILLIAM WHEWELL, D.D., Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. London: John Murray, 1859.

OME apology may seem at first sight to be required for the

SOME

discussion of political economy (albeit connected with the name of an eminent jurist) in a legal review. The extensive

The Americans were unwilling to accede to the first article of the declaration with respect to privateering, which, after all, can be considered as little better than piracy.

basis, however, of legal science, connects it closely with that science which explains the rise of those rights of person and property which it is the object of the law to conserve, On every side, indeed, the subject of wealth has outlets into the science of jurisprudence. In law, as in political economy, no system can long hold its ground which is at variance with social conditions. In either case social conditions are the mould, recasting into its own shape the most rigid and ancient conventions; and thus even in its prohibitive relations, as well as in those in which it throws its ægis over rights, the law must take notice of the gradual upheaving of new strata of opinion: must forego the obsolete, while it recognizes the binding enactment; and thus, by the force of her decisions and the tempered wisdom of her judges, illumine the path of the legal reformer.

The Rev. Richard Jones, whose literary remains head our article, was happy in being the main instrument in carrying out a great social and legal improvement, and also in throwing a broad light on some yet untrodden ground in political economy. The character of his mind happily blended the finer qualities of the man of thought and the man of action; though the equilibrium of his mind seemed finally to rest in practical and proximate ends, rather than in the more distant horizon of ultimate and universal conditions; and here a certain impatience of longcontinued analysis, a geniality of temper sympathizing with the actual and the visible, and the enormous facility with which he brought into action his large faculty of observation, must be pleaded as a reason, and perhaps as an excuse, for certain errors into which this very eminent man seems to us to have now and then tripped, in the more speculative routes of political economy; and this at the very moment when, in the domain of practical use and of proximate arrangements, in those combinations of concrete facts which tend to the prudential management of the national resources, he was a thinker, perhaps only surpassed by John Stuart Mill, that unrivalled master at once of the science of living and of the art of life.

The natural function of Professor Jones was that of a great

social and economical administrator, as well as an expounder of wide and vigorous economic views. His instinct into truth was quick, his penetration into motives unerring, and his quick sympathies, added to his sagacity, enabled him to trace the probable future of human action both in masses and in detail; well aware too, as he was, that no mere formulas of the intellect could span those various impulses, which, springing from deep social causes, so greatly modify the path of man.

At the age of twenty-two, Mr. Jones was sent to Cambridge, where the robustness of his intellect, his truly natural character, his joyousness and wit, endeared him to his distinguished contemporaries by the banks of Cam; in those old days when Herschel, Peacock, Jacob, Babbage, Ryan, and, we at least may add not the least famous, Whewell, were among the stars which sparkled along her firmament. His health being deemed too weak for the bar, Mr. Jones entered the church, and, as a curate on the wolds of Kent, his practical sagacity and usefulness soon demanded a wider sphere. Taking a great interest in the agricultural welfare of his parishioners, his mind soon emerged into political economy; and, before the year 1833, his name had become celebrated for his work on the "Distribution of Wealth," and his treatise on "Rent." In the year 1833 he became Professor of Political Economy at King's College, London; and subsequently he received an additional appointment. The Professorship of Political Economy at Haileybury was added to his duties. His rare legislative skill was soon afterwards manifested in the large share which he took in the construction of the Tithe Commutation Act, introduced by Lord John Russell in the year 1836, and in surmounting the difficulties which this great masterpiece of successful compromise encountered in its progress. For this good work he received the wellmerited reward of a tithe commissionership at the instance of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In the duties of administering this great experimental act—which he turned into a practical reality; in his professorships at King's College and at Haileybury, in which he succeeded to the chair of Malthus; and, towards the close of his

career, as a charity commissioner-this highly meritorious servant of the state passed his laborious life, which terminated on January 20th, 1855.

The present work has been edited by Dr. Whewell. We rather regret the absence of dates to several of the essays, especially on so quick-growing a subject as political economy; some repetition there is, too; but the main desideratum of the work is, a large reference to fixed principles in political economy; a science requiring throughout its structure the constant presence of definitions and axioms, which may act as party walls, preventing common confusion in the extreme admixture of its concrete details. These details may be likened to the condition of a large crowd of men requiring in a limited space barriers to prevent overpressure. The principles of political economy have a constant tendency to press upon and overlap each other; the consequence is, that reasoners must constantly recur to those most fundamental. Thus differing from the gradations of geometry, where each floor, so to speak, is so aptly placed upon the last-that the first principles once established, we can neglect the ladders by which we mounted. On the other hand, in political economy, in the entanglement of social conditions, we are often compelled to reduce our first principles to the simplest form, in order to observe their normal tendencies when in conflict with other principles; and if, as Mr. Buckle (Civilisation, vol. i.) asserts, the science is so much indebted to Hutcheson, who deduced its leading conceptions from the phenomena of selfishness, it is that the stimulus of this instinct is required in complicated cases to show us the direction of our rights, at the same time that it healthfully checks the vagueness of speculation.

In Lecture I, pp. 1–20, Mr. Jones gives us a vivid anticipation of a view lately extended by Mr. Buckle, upon the relative bearing of natural and moral agents upon the production of wealth; and shows us that where the luxuriant bounty of nature is left to its full effect, the agencies of man are oft n stifled, and his labour paralyzed. The author first referred to, while he connects the efficiency of labour with the influence of climate, sees 2 B

VOL. VII. NO. XIV.

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