The venerable John Adams said: "I have read this discourse with uncommon interest and peculiar delight. It is the production of great reading, profound reflection, a discriminating mind, and a pure taste. I have never read any discourse produced in America relative to the science of public law with so much satisfaction. Had I read such a discourse sixty-five years ago, it would have given a different and more respectable cast to my whole life." 1 Mr. Jefferson writes: "I thank you for the very able discourse you have been so kind as to send me on international law. I concur much in its doctrines, and very particularly in its estimate of the Lacedæmonian character. How such a tribe of savages ever acquired the admiration of the world has always been beyond my comprehension. I can view them but on a level with our American Indians, and I see in Logan, Tecumseh and the Little Turtle fair parallels for their Brasidas, Agesilaus, &c. The difficulty is to conceive that such a horde of barbarians could so long remain unimproved, in the neighborhood of a people so polished as the Athenians; to whom they owe altogether that their name is now known to the world. All the good that can be said of them is, that they were as brave as bull-dogs.' "2 Chief Justice Marshall, in a letter in reference to the reports, says: "I did not thank you while in Washington for your anniversary discourse, delivered before the Historical Society of New York, nor for your digest of the decisions of the Supreme Court, because I had not leisure, while at that place, to look into either. Since my return to this place, I have read the first with a great deal of pleasure, and have glanced over the digest with much satisfaction. "However preeminent the ancients may have been in some of the fine arts, they were, I think you very clearly show, much 1 John Adams to Mr. Wheaton, February 7, 1821. inferior to us, or a great way behind us, in the more solid and more interesting principles of international law; a law which contributes more to the happiness of the human race than all the statues which ever came from the hands of the sculptor, or all the paintings that were ever placed on canvas. I do not, by this, mean to lessen the value of the arts. I subscribe to their importance, and admit that they improve as well as embellish human life and manners; but they yield in magnitude to those moral rules which regulate the connection of man with man. "Old Hugo Grotius is indebted to you for your defence of him and his quotations. You have raised in him in my estimation to the rank he deserves." 1 Chancellor Kent, who, on occasion of the decision of a case in which Mr. Wheaton was counsel, and which rested on the French law of marriage,2 had acknowledged in the strongest terms his obligations for the elucidation of the nuptial community of goods which his argument afforded, and which he, alone of the bar, was capable of furnishing, thus addressed him, on the receipt of this pamphlet: :-"Be pleased to accept my thanks for your very interesting and able discourse on the History of International Law, delivered before the Historical Society. There is no person (unless it be our mutual friend and great master of jurisprudence, Judge Story) who could have handled the subject with so much erudition and enlightened judgment. It is a subject very much to my taste, and awakens the deepest interest. Be assured, my dear Sir, that I feel with full force the great obligations we are all under to you, for your professional efforts and illustrious attainments.' It will be recollected, in this connection, that the Law of Nations forms a branch of those "Commentaries on American Law," which now occupy with every student of the science 1 Chief Justice Marshall to Mr. Wheaton, March 24, 1821. 2 De Couche v. Savetier, Johns. Ch. Rep. vol. iii. p. 211, cited in Part II. ch. 2, § 6, p. 138. the place formerly allotted to Blackstone; while the name of Kent is associated with that of Wheaton, both at home and abroad, as an authority on International Law. Another occasional discourse, by Mr. Wheaton, was an address delivered at the opening of the New York Athenæum, in 1825, which is thus alluded to by Mr. Madison, in a letter expressing his disappointment that the author's occupations would not permit his undertaking a work that had been proposed to him:—“I shall not be singular in regretting that it could not be executed by the pen, which furnished such a specimen of judicious and interesting observations, as distinguished the elegant address at the opening of the New York Athenæum." In that discourse, Mr. Wheaton took a rapid survey of what had been accomplished in American literature; and pointing out the connection between the principles on which the ancient republics were founded and the rapid growth of the arts and sciences to which they gave encouragement — tracing analogies and causes in a manner which indicated deep reflection on the nature, spirit, and tendencies of our government-he presented an interesting view of the intellectual prospects of the country. To the periodical literature, and which received no inconsiderable elevation in the respect and consideration of the community, from the extensive attainments and personal reputation of the conductors of the Reviews established at Boston and Philadelphia, he was a large contributor. Accomplished scholars, such as Edward Everett, Jared Sparks, and Robert Walsh, were able to command the assistance, as collaborateurs, of many of the most eminent men of the Union; and the Quarterlies of the United States, at one period, would have favorably compared with the first periodicals of Europe. Mr. Wheaton's numerous essays in other journals cannot be accurately traced, but in almost every volume of the North American, commencing with the first number, in May, 1815, may be found papers emanating from his pen, or his name is introduced in connection with notices of his works. His ear liest article was a patriotic defence of the United States against the illiberal attacks of the British press; whose virulence, increased by the war, had been holding us up to the derision of Europe, because in our infancy our literature had not attained the ripeness of adolescence, and that while all our efforts were required for the creation of the necessaries, we were wanting in some of the refinements, which belong to nations where a favored class have the leisure to devote themselves to the elegancies of life.' 3 Among the reviews furnished by him, while yet at New York, is the exposition of the early Prize Code of the United States, already noticed, and he availed himself of the publication of Mr. Cushing's translation of Pothier on Maritime Contracts, the work by which the present Attorney-General of the United States marked his legal novitiate, to aid in making his countrymen acquainted with the merits of that most learned lawyer, by whose introduction to the English bar Sir William Jones deemed that he had, in some measure, paid the debt that every man owes to his profession. But he was not, as a jurist, exclusively absorbed in the civil and international law. His learning in the old Common Law appeared not only in his own Reports, but in the notice which he gave of Mr. Metcalf's edition of Yelverton, and by the numerous authorities cited in his edition of Selwyn's Nisi Prius ;5 while in making his readers acquainted with what he terms, in a letter to his friend, Mr. Butler, "Verplanck's beautiful speculation on the theory of the Law of Contracts, as to price," and in which he contends for absolute equality in contracts, as binding foro conscientiae, he had an opportunity of considering how far the doctrines of law and equity, as expounded by the courts, accorded with the rules of natural justice. 1 North Am. Rev. vol. i. p. 61. 3 Ibid. vol. xvi. p. 196. 5 Reviewed, North Am. Rev. vol. xix. 2 Ibid. vol. viii. p. 254. Supra, p. 22. 4 Ibid. vol. xvi. p. 169. p. 158. 6 Ibid. vol. xxii. p. 253. The review of a trial for manslaughter, which, arising from the killing of a counsellor-at-law, in an affray growing out of the occurrences at a trial, excited intense interest at the time, contains a learned disquisition on the distinctions between the criminal law of the Continent and that of England, especially in reference to the regard which the former pays, in certain offences, to the intent rather than to the event, as constituting the criminality.1 On the other hand, not only had Mr. Wheaton Daniel Webster as the reviewer to whom the "Reports" were assigned,2 but Edward Everett was himself the author of the learned notice which the Historical Address received.3 The last labor in which Mr. Wheaton engaged, while still in the United States, out of the regular performance of his professional duties, and disconnected with the offices which he held as Reporter and Revisor, was the preparation of the Life of William Pinkney; if, indeed, writing the biography of the most eminent member of the profession to which he belonged, and who was also among the most distinguished in the one on which he was about to enter, could be deemed a deviation from his appropriate pursuits.* If this enterprise had had no other effect than to elicit from President Madison two letters, explanatory of the events connected with the adoption of our restrictive system, and of the immediate circumstances that caused the declaration of war, at the time that it occurred, it would have been the means of adding valuable materials to history. In his letter, of the 18th of July, 1824, Mr. Madison says that the President was unofficially possessed of the Order in Council of November 11, 1807, when the message to Congress, of December 11, 1807, recommending an embargo, was sent; and this fact is corroborated by a note to him from Mr. Jefferson, confirming his recollections. 1 North Am. Rev. vol. xi. p. 114. Goodwin's Trial. 3 North Am. Rev. vol. xiii. p. 154. 2 Supra, p. 31. 4 Reviewed, Ibid. vol. xxiv. p. 68. |