Benjamin on the Law of Sale, 541; Gerard's New York Titles, 543; Mayer's LIST OF NEW LAW BOOKS PUBLISHED IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 563 UNITED STATES. - Supreme Court, Gold Cases, Bronson v. Rodes, 565; Butler v. Horwitz, 572; Tax Cases, 574. California - Civil Rights Bill, People v. Washington, 574. Massachusetts — U. S. District Court, The Brig Candace, 575; Supreme Judicial Court, Divorce, Duffy v. Duffy, 577; Custody of Child, In re O'Neal, 578. Michigan - Supreme Court, 581. New York-U. S. District Court, Collision, Sears v. The Scotia, 582. Ohio — U.S. Circuit Court, Prize of War, Coolidge v. Guthrie, 582. Pennsylvania — Supreme Court, 583. CANADA-Postage Stamps, United States v. Boyd, 584. GREAT BRITAIN -New Appointments, 584; Campbell's Lives of 565 Lyndhurst and Brougham, 585; Libel, Privilege, Wason v. Walter, 586; The Bankruptcy Digest has, by its length, crowded out the English Digest. The next number of the Law Review will contain the English cases for six months. THE universal presence of law among men is the necessary result of their social nature. It is impossible to imagine a community without rules for its government, and it is equally impossible that man should continue to exist except as a member of society. It is therefore as natural for him to make laws, to live under them and to enforce their precepts, as it is to hunt, to fish, or to cultivate the soil. If a hundred men and women of diverse origin and culture should suddenly find themselves thrown together on a desert island, a body of rules would soon come into being to regulate their fortuitous society. The intercourse with each other, which they could not avoid, and which they would naturally seek, would instantly demand laws to define and protect their mutual rights and interests. They would indeed be at liberty to determine, to some extent, what those laws should be. The customs to grow out of their intercourse would depend more or less upon their intelligence, their culture, and the antecedents of their best members. But they would not be free to exist without laws, without mutual rights and obligations, and without some means to enforce them. In this sense all must admit that government is the work of the same high power which called the universe into being and provides for its continued existence. Mankind cannot exist without social organization, and social organization is law. Ubi societas ibi jus. In the same high necessity the Law of Nations takes its origin. So long as the ancient civilization lasted, there was indeed no international code, for there was no society for it to govern. The States of antiquity knew each other only as enemies, and their intercourse was mainly that of force. The necessities of war required indeed occasional embassies to arrange truces or surrenders; and, accordingly, a code of heraldry and of ambassadorial privilege under the protection of religious rites, came gradually into being. But of a system of law which conceived of States as the subjects of rights and duties, as members of a community of nations, the polished and elegant jurisprudence of antiquity furnishes hardly a trace. In the same consummate code which still rules the most complex relations of life with a wisdom and justice which modern culture has hardly been able to improve stand side by side the high morality of a completed system of equity jurisprudence, and the savage doctrine, that strangers are enemies and that with enemies war is eternal. Amid such relations of states there was no place for law. But when, from the Christian doctrine of the brotherhood of man the inevitable corollary of the brotherhood of nations was deduced, a body of law to govern this new community followed as an inevitable consequence. It grew slowly at first, for the age was technical, and dynastic interests long absorbed the cares of statesmen. Scholiasts and commentators denied that there could be a law of nations, for where was the superior authority to enact it? It was difficult for lawyers to conceive of law without a tribunal to enforce it. Princes refused to admit that any rules restrained the prerogatives for which they claimed divine, origin. But philosophy advanced, while commerce spread wide her net and science threw down the barriers of time and space, until the contact of cabinets and of merchants with the most distant lands has grown to be easier and more frequent than it was two hundred years ago with their nearest neighbors. And while material causes were thus drawing men together, common theories of government were preparing them to become harmonious members of the new society. Feudalism perished, dynastic rights declined, freedom of trade and intercourse advanced, religious intolerance died out, the interests of the people became the avowed object of every measure of State. Every century marked the progress of the influence of law upon the intercourse of States, and the system of international jurisprudence grew pari passu with the advancing intercourse and intelligence of mankind. The Asiatic world at last abandoned its time-honored traditions, and advanced to give the hand to the rising system. While Turkey, in the West, proclaims that henceforth she adopts the maxims of Christian civilization, the oldest government in the East sends an American diplomat on a mission of friendship and commerce to every civilized power. And thus the commonwealth of nations, the problem of philosophers, and the dream of poets, is growing into harmonious, symmetrical, and universal being. To frame the laws which shall govern this majestic fabric, to found securely the system which shall protect and sustain it, to perpetuate and enforce the maxims of justice and equity which can alone preserve it, this is the weighty task which lies before the jurist of to-day. The book of Dr. Bluntschli marks an epoch in the prosecution of this important work. The Law of Nations has hitherto been embodied in conventions between States, and in the writings of commentators, who have labored to deduce from precedent and international usage a system of law. Bluntschli has gone a step further, and has sought to state this system in the form of an harmonious and logical code. To attempt so arduous an undertaking required not only thorough and comprehensive learning, but a courage not easily daunted. He brought to his task a mature and well-balanced mind, ripe and thorough scholarship, and a practical familiarity with public questions. He was born in Zurich, and studied under Savigny, Hasse, and Niebuhr. In the politics of Switzerland he played a distinguished part, adopting a position as far removed from the dreams of European republicanism as it was from the reactionary policy of the ultramontanists. In 1847, he was called to the chair of Public and International Law at Munich, where he remained until 1861, when he took the place of the distinguished Von Mohl, at Heidelberg. He is widely known in Europe as a voluminous publicist, and his works on public law are held in the highest esteem. The whole of his very industrious and scholarly career has been spent in the consideration of questions of constitutional and international jurisprudence, and few men have ever spoken upon those topics with more weight or authority than he. He was therefore eminently fitted for the difficult task he has so successfully achieved. It was suggested to him, he tells us, by the well-known instructions for the American armies, drawn up at the request of Mr. Stanton by Dr. Lieber, to whom the work |