CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS OF FRANCIS LIEBER. CONTRIBUTIONS TO CONSTITUTIONAL LAW: On the Rise of the Constitution of the United States, 1872 Two Lectures and an Appendix on the Constitution of the United Amendments Proposed for the Constitution of the United States, 1865. Amendments Proposed for the Constitution of New York, 1867 On Nationalism and Internationalism, 1868 CONTRIBUTIONS TO MILITARY LAW: Instructions for Armies in the Field: "General Order No. 100," 87 LIEBER'S SERVICE TO POLITICAL SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL LAW. BY DR. J. C. BLUNTSCHLI, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERG, AND FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE INSTITUT Dde droit iNTERNATIONAL. IT affords me pleasure to comply with your request for an expression of my views concerning the importance to science of our dear departed friend. His place and influence are not yet so fully known and appreciated as they ought to be. If I can contribute towards making them better understood, I shall regard it not merely as a discharge of duty, but at once as a satisfaction and a joy. Francis Lieber first attained his scientific maturity in America, the land of his adoption. His most important works, "Political Ethics," "Civil Liberty," and "Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field," had their origin in America, and were first written in English. This was likewise the case with his numerous and able minor treatises. In so far, then, Lieber belongs to the United States of America, and has claim to a high rank among American scholars and authors. But he was born in Berlin, and obtained his scientific training and a large part of his intellectual wealth at German schools and universities, and in the closest intercourse with representatives of German science. In so far, then, the German nation also has a share in the merits and fame of the son whom she bore and educated. The stormy time of Lieber's youth was passed in a period when, in Germany, two opposing schools of law and political science stood over against one another: on the one side, the 7 older and so-called philosophical school, advocating a law of nature; and on the other, the so-called historical school. The latter charged the former with disregarding the safe and solid ground of historical facts and relations; with soaring aloft to the clouds in flights of abstract thought; and with pursuing dreamy ideals, without ever being able to realize them. The philosophical school, on the other hand, blamed the historical school for turning its thoughts entirely towards the past; for yielding slavish obedience to the powers of tradition; for not tolerating progress or improvement; and for being destitute of ideas and genius. If the philosophical method was suspected of revolutionary tendencies, the historical method, on the contrary, had the reputation of being reactionary. It is characteristic of Lieber, that, in himself, he early triumphed over these opposing tendencies. He was of a decidedly ideal nature. His mind delighted in philosophic contemplation from the heights of human consciousness. In his youth, enthusiasm for national independence and the liberties of the people had brought him into dangerous conflict with a meddlesome and stupid police, and allured him into that philhellenic, wild adventure to Greece. Actual experience in life had somewhat toned him down, but by no means extinguished his love of ideal things. He never lost sight of the highest goal of human destiny. The harmonious development of all moral and intellectual powers, which is the highest kind of liberty, appeared to him the appointed task of individual man and of humanity. All of Lieber's writings are warm and glowing with noble ideas concerning the improvement and development of our race. By a kind of predilection, he draws his arguments from the loftiest principles of divinely created human nature and divinely appointed human destiny. The philosophic, ideal tendencies of his thoughts and aspirations stand everywhere boldly forth. He is a Liberal both as man and as scholar. But he was in no wise a follower of Rousseau, and by no means captivated with those airy systems of the philosophical school in which unwary and unpractical men had allowed themselves to be caught, like flies in cobwebs, by meshes spun out according to mathematical rules. He had brought along from home and school too good a satchel, filled with positive knowledge. He had made too many and too thorough studies in the actual history of nations; and not in vain had been his years of daily intercourse with Niebuhr, a leader in the historical school, who could hardly be charged with a lack of ideas or of genius. Lieber had also suffered various painful experiences which made him keenly sensible of the power which dwells in historic institutions and in the established order. But above all, in America there dawned upon him a full consciousness of the hard realities of life, and the inexpugnable power of facts. Here, better than in Europe, he learned to apply the standard of feasibility and of cautious, calculating experience. On this account all his writings teem with historical proofs and precedents and with useful observations. He knew well the value of hard common sense, and he could harmonize with it his own practical understanding, thus rendering the latter approved. In all these respects he employed the historical method with great advantage. The settlement of that old-time conflict of schools and the union of the philosophical and historical methods, in contrast to the dangerous one-sidedness of either of the two, was a mark of great progress, effected gradually, and, for the most part, since 1840, in the jurisprudence and political science of Germany; somewhat later, however, in Italy. Lieber belongs to the first representatives of this peaceful alliance, although, indeed, it had been tried by the best politicians long before, by Aristotle, and by Cicero, and recommended by Bacon. Lieber especially emphasizes in his writings the moral side of civil society. He is always inclined to associate right and duty, not in the sense that a man who has simply a duty stands. over against the man who has simply a right, but in the sense that whoever possesses a right has also a duty to exercise. It is one of the merits of Rudolf Gneist to have been the first in Germany to advocate and decidedly to promote this idea of the obligatory character of civil right. "Civil rights are civil |