in its kind, unrivalled collection of the maxims of international justice, standing, as it does, on the very threshold of what is properly called modern history, ought to be considered, perhaps, as the grandest monument which human hands have yet erected to the influence of Christianity. Before the sixteenth century, the conventional law of nations hardly deserves notice; treaties are but few and meagre: but Europe was a family of nations bound together in the unity of a common faith and the law of enlightened reason and of good will among men, proclaimed from the pulpit and at the altar, established itself, gradually and by tacit consent, in the practice of mankind. It is thus that most of the usages which give such a hideous and barbarous aspect to war, even in the most civilized periods of antiquity, have been effaced. Certainly some additional reforms might be made in international law, as, for example, in the matter of maritime captures, to which allusion has already been had. These reforms, to the honor of our country be it said, have been incessantly aimed at and perseveringly pursued, in her negotiations, from the very first into which she entered as an independent nation down to the present time. Your committee trust that no administration will ever lose sight of them; they are confident of ultimate success; they have unlimited faith in the truth, justice, and wisdom of the maxims involved in those reforms; but it is only from the gradual progress of social improvement that such a consummation is to be hoped for. It is not a code or collection of these maxims that is wanted: it is the power to enforce or the spirit to practice them, which no code can give.

With regard to the proposed international board of arbitration, the objections of the committee are still stronger. A code, digested and promulged as the memorialists desire, would do no good, but it could scarcely do any harm. Not so with a tribunal of any sort. The probability, to be sure, is, that the decrees of such a one as is here contemplated, would be merely nugatory; but, if it had any influence at all, it might, in the actual relations of the great powers, easily be perverted to the worst ends. It might be made especially to impede the progress of the very improvements it would have been instituted to promote, and, instead of disarming the mighty, become in their hands an engine of usurpation and tyranny. He is but superficially versed in the history of nations who does not know that some of the greatest revolutions in society have been brought about through the instrumentality of judicial tribunals. The committee will cite but one example: they refer to the gradual subversion of the feudal confederacy of France, by the crown exercising, as it did, a paramount influence over a nominal court of peers. The authority of law, once established and acknowledged among men, is second only to that of religion. Judges do much more

than pronounce and enforce judgment in particular cases; they shape the opinions of mankind in analogous ones; and those opinions, as we have seen, are the basis of government and legislation.

It will immediately occur to the House that the only republic in the world should be very careful not to commit its destinies, in any serious degree, to institutions which might and would be controlled by influences hostile to its principles; and the more especially, as the natural tendency of things is more favorable to those principles than any policy shaped or controlled by the existing governments of Europe can possibly be expected to prove. In the nature of things, every organ, however constituted, of such governments, must speak the language of what is called "resistance" to the spirit of the age; and if any thing could enable them to resist that spirit, it would be a permanent congress of Laybach or Verona, laying down the law of war and peace for all nations. This was, indeed, the very scheme of the holy alliance to which this country was formally invited to accede.

The example of the Amphictyonic Council of Greece, which has been cited with confidence by the petitioners, is, in the opinion of the committee, as unfavorable to their purpose as any that could be selected from the records of the past. Without going into a critical examination of its history, for which this is not a suitable occasion, it is sufficient to refer to indisputable general results, to what every one who will cast his eye, however, carelessly, over the annals of those commonwealths will at once perceive that it had no effect whatever in healing their fatal dissensions; that so long as there was any thing like a balance of power among the principal states, they continued to make war upon each other, without the least regard to the imaginary jurisdiction of that assembly; that, although by its constitution, the twelve peoples composing it had each an equal voice in it, whatever might be their inequality of weight and importance, yet its decisions were continually and openly swayed by the influence of the power or powers in the ascendant for the time being; and finally, that it was by availing himself of his absolute control over it, and by taking advantage of a favorable juncture in affairs, brought about by its policy, that Philip of Macedon found a plausible pretext, and a show of legitimate authority, to sanctify the machinations which he had been long contriving, and the war which he ultimately waged with success against the liberties of Greece.

Every other mere confederation, both in ancient and modern times, except under circumstances so peculiar as to make them unfit to be considered as precedents, has been attended with the same results. Either the leading members of them, at the head of standing, systematic parties, have been at perpetual war with

each other, or the overruling ascendant of some one of them has enabled it to invade the rights of all the rest, in every form of violence and artifice. The late German empire, for example, affords us instances of both these tendencies. Some of the longest and most desolating wars that have scourged Europe have grown out of the conflicting interests of the members of that league of peace, and had for their avowed object the adjustment of those interests according to the true theory of its public law. This was as much the case after as before the treaty of Westphalia, although one capital object of that memorable negotiation was to reform the constitution or the administration of the Imperial Chamber and the Aulic Council-in which jurisdiction in federal and feudal causes had been vested, without any effect, however, in deciding them to the satisfaction of the weaker party. Neither ought it to be forgotten that by that treaty a majority of suffrages in the diet was no longer to give the law in any matters that related to religion, or in which the two great parties as such, should vote differently, or, in general, in any case, wherein all the states could not be considered as forming a single consolidated nation. In all such cases the questions submitted to them were to be treated as those arising between foreign nations, and to be arranged by compromise, with no appeal but to the sword. So difficult is it to accomplish what the memorialists propose-the peaceful decision of controversies between states whose interests are materially different-that even where tribunals have been instituted for that purpose, the abuses to which they have been made to lend their authority have seldom failed, in the end, to aggravate and multiply the very evils they were intended to prevent. Experience shows, that of all wars, the most obstinate and terrible are those which grow out of such abuses. They partake of the nature of revolution and civil war, the color of authority on the one side, the sense of injustice on the other, inflame the usual bitterness of hostility; and battles are more sanguinary and victory less merciful where the contest is waged by parties standing towards each other in the supposed relation of rebel and tyrant. Such institutions, therefore, unless where the circumstances of a country are very peculiar, have inevitably one of two effects: they either strengthen the hands of the oppressor, or they lead to dreadful and desolating wars to overthrow him; sometimes, as in the case of the Germanic empire and the house of Austria, in the seventeenth century, to both.

Upon the whole, your committee are of opinion that time is the best reformer in such things, and that any attempt to anticipate the natural progress of events, by institutions arbitrarily adopted, would either be vain or something worse than vain. They have endeavored to show that the cause of peace is visibly

gaining ground; that mankind are already become, and will daily become more and more disposed to sacrifice their comforts and their business to the ambition of Governments; nay, that Governments themselves, partaking of the spirit of the times, or dreading its effects, avoid, as much as possible, those ruinous contests by which nations are rendered discontented, and rulers more dependent on them, just when suffering and poverty most dispose them to revolt. Instead of congresses to put an end to war, generally on the foot of the status quo ante bellum, there are congresses to prevent a rupture, and piles of protocols attest that power, as was said of the Spartans after a memorable defeat, has lost much of its insolent and peremptory brevity of speech. The truth is that every war, hereafter, will, by the social disorders that are likely to accompany or to follow such an event, throw additional obstacles in the way of future ones. sword will thus prove the best guaranty of peace.

The

Your Committee, therefore, do not think the establishment of a permanent international tribunal, under the present circumstances of the world, at all desirable; but they heartily concur with the memorialists in recommending a reference to a third power of all such controversies as can safely be confided to any tribunal unknown to the constitution of our own country. Such a practice will be followed by other powers, already inclined, as we have seen, to avoid war, and will soon grow up into the customary law of civilized nations. They conclude, therefore, by recommending to the memorialists to persevere in exerting whatever influence they may possess over public opinion, to dispose it habitually to the accommodation of national differences without bloodshed; and to the House the adoption of the following resolution:

Resolved, That the committee be discharged from the further consideration of the subject referred to them.

CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF GREECE.

1. The Historical Antiquities of the Greeks, with reference to their political institutions. By WILLIAM WACHSMUTH, Professor of History in the University of Leipzig. Translated from the German, by EDMUND WOOLRYCH, Esq. Oxford. 1837. D. A. Talboys.

2. A Manual of the Political Antiquities of Greece, historically considered; from the German of CHARLES FREDERICK HERMANN, Professor of the University of Heidelberg. Oxford. 1836. D. A. Talboys.

THE remarks which we had occasion to make in a recent paper,* on the great superiority, over all others, of the German philologists of the present day, especially in matters of historical criticism, are most strikingly exemplified in the two works at the head of this article. We take it upon us to assure such of our readers as have a taste for this department of study, that they will be amply repaid for any pains they may be put to in possessing themselves of their contents. The translation of them into English is but one more proof of the homage now universally done to those great masters of an erudition almost without bounds, informed and elevated by the spirit of a philosophy every way worthy of it. These are acquisitions to our language that deserve, in point of usefulness, to be placed by the side of the versions of Böckh's "Public Economy of Athens, and of Müller's "Dorians," both of which have been given to the English world within the last ten or twelve years. The works under review are, indeed, a necessary supplement to those admirable disquisitions, and can be studied with perfect advantage only in connection with them. We do not think we hazard much in saying, that whoever is not thoroughly familiar with Böckh's masterly view (so far as it goes) of the principles of Athenian government and administration, has yet to learn his elements as a student of history in one of its most interesting branches. It is a work deserving, in our opinion, to be adopted as a text-book in our public schools and colleges, instead of those handed down from an age far less accurately informed in such

* On the Origin, History, and Influence of Roman Legislation. New-York Review, No. 10.