under the orders of the Legislature, and pursuant to the Constitution. . . .

Why these Codes have been neglected in New York, it would not be difficult to say. The resistance which the first Code provoked, the conservatism, or, as I prefer to call it, the inertia of the profession, and the late revision of the statutes, have been the causes. It is not surprising that such a change as the first Code produced should have encountered vehement opposition. Most of the lawyers looked upon it with disfavor, some for one reason, some for another: the equity lawyers because it had so much of the common law, and the common lawyers because it had so much of equity; the admirers of special pleading because it made useless their favorite learning; and all, or almost all, who had learned and loved the old ways, were averse to treading in the new. The resistance, however, gradually lessened and at last died away; but in the mean time the old had forgotten, while the young had never learned, that the fragment of 1848 had been completed by the same codifiers, and that four other codes had been added for the purpose of completing the codification of all the law of the land.

Thus, at the end of thirty years a generation, consisting mostly of persons who had attained majority after the enactment of the Code, looked upon it as they looked upon other parts of the established law. They were strangers to the arguments for and against codification, which had agitated their predecessors, and fell unconsciously into the traditions of their profession. This profession, as I have already hinted, is occupied, in its daily life, with questions of law as existing, of what the law is, and not what it should be. The thoughts of its members are of the actual which engrosses them, and they have little time and no inclination for the possible. Excessive occupation and limited study, except in the course and for the daily tasks of the profession, have made them strongly averse to change. They have no mind for new things, as they have as much as they care to do in minding the old. For these reasons the force of habit takes a stronger hold of lawyers than of most other men, and thus it is that they are praised as conservative and denounced as inert. To them codification means the abandonment of forms, phrases, and sometimes of substan

tive rules, which, having mastered with labor, they have come to use with ease, and they recoil from an entry upon new studies and new fields of debate.

In 1870, twenty-two years after the enactment of the Code, the Legislature ordained a revision of the statutes. The revisers, ignoring the completed Code which the codifiers had prepared, and passing by the shapeless and tangled mass of statutes which cumbered the shelves of law libraries and made the heart of the searcher sick every day of his life, began with the Code, and after six years produced 1,496 sections, which they represented as part of a system of civil practice and convenient to be enacted before the remainder. Those sections the Legislature enacted, to take effect after another session. That other session came, the two Houses disagreed, and thus, while one Legislature was sitting, a law went into effect against the will of one of its Houses, solely because a Legislature that had gone out of office had so willed it. The second installment then came, with more than 1,800 sections. This has not yet been passed. It is not my purpose to make the present an occasion to criticise this work, either the first installment or the last, further than to show its effect upon general codification. That it has seriously interfered with the plan of codifying our law can hardly be denied by an intelligent observer. It is not comprehensive, which a code must be, and it is minute, which a code must not be. It professes to be what it is not, a code. This, as I have said, is a digest of all the law upon a given subject. This work, while it takes a name which implies comprehensiveness, is avowedly incomplete. Thus the fourth section, instead of defining the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, declares that it shall continue to exercise the jurisdiction now vested in it by law, except as otherwise here prescribed; in other words, enacting that the Court has the jurisdiction which it has, and what that is must be gathered from, I know not how many ordinances, statutes, and reports. The work contradicts the theory in another respect: it is particular and minute, while a code is general and comprehensive; it undertakes to provide for every case by an enumeration of particulars, while a code provides for the same things by general description. Meantime the contest over it has made the name of code odious to

many who, by a natural mistake, have made the particular instance to stand for the general principle. While the thirteen chapters now on the statute-book are a serious hindrance to codification, the nine chapters would be greater, and so long as either or both stand in the way, though the other branches of the law might be reduced to a code, the civil practice would remain without codification, and before it could be undertaken with success these thirteen or two-and-twenty chapters would have to be taken to pieces, enlarged on the one hand and diminished on the other, so as to include every general rule and exclude every unnecessary particular.

Despite all these obstacles, gentlemen, I believe that a codification of our law is not far off. If I were an Englishman, speaking to Englishmen, I should express my conviction that not many Imperial Parliaments will sit at Westminster, before the enactment of that Code Victoria, which an English chancellor foresaw, as the counterpart and rival of the Code Napoléon. As an American, speaking to Americans, I venture to predict that the instincts of our people and the inexorable logic of events will hasten the completion of the work here sooner than in England, and that not many returning summers will find the State of New York without that which her citizens long ago commanded, "a written and systematic code" of "the whole body of the law." We might have it, for the work is ready, even before the last tower is raised over the new Capitol. Fortunate will he be who foresees it, prepares for it, and helps its coming; unfortunate he who shall resist, and be overcome!

AN INTERNATIONAL CODE.

FIRST PROJECT OF AN INTERNATIONAL CODE. An address before the British Social Science Association, at Manchester, October 5, 1866.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN: Standing for the first time before the members of this Association, I must begin by making my acknowledgments for the honor which you conferred upon me some years ago by electing me a corresponding member. Though I have not been able to take part in your meetings, I have felt scarcely less interest in them than if I were present, and even take to myself a share of the self-congratulation which the actual participators must have felt. If I have not contributed to your transactions, I have been a humble sharer in the fame which the contributions of others have won.

The distinction which your Association has earned is, however, the least of its honors. The good which it has done in stimulating inquiry, concentrating opinion, and combining efforts toward the improvement of the law and the education and health of the people, would be a sufficient reward for all your labors, even if no distinction had been obtained.

The scope of your labors is not confined to your own country; it extends to every part of Christendom. So intimate is now the connection between all Christian nations that the social progress of one is sure to be felt more or less in the others. More especially is this true of your country and mine. We are bound together by so many ties that, forgetting for the present all things else, I will only think of the good we may

do each other, and the spirit of kindliness we may both pro

mote.

The particular subject to which I am to bespeak your attention is international law. In discoursing of it my purpose will be to answer, so far as I may be able, these questions: 1. What is that which is called international law? 2. Who made it? 3. Who enforce it? 4. Are any changes in it desirable? 5. If so, how can they be effected?

Law is a rule of property and of conduct, prescribed by sovereign power. In strictness, therefore, there is no such thing as a human law binding the nations, since they have no human superior. They may, however, as they have in part done, agree among themselves upon certain rules, both of property and of conduct, by which they will pledge themselves to regulate their own conduct toward each other and the conduct of their citizens respectively. These rules form what is called sometimes international law and sometimes the law of nations. Neither expression is precisely accurate. There is a body of rules, more or less distinctly stated, by which nations profess to comport themselves in their relations with each other; but they are not laws, nor are they imposed upon nations, nor yet are they international. They are laws only in each state, so far as they are promulgated by the sovereign power of that state, and they serve international purposes. Take, for example, a treaty concluded between the United States and Great Britain; when ratified and promulgated by the treaty-making power in the two nations, it becomes a rule for both, by virtue of their compact, and a rule in each nation for its own citizens, by virtue of the promulgation by its own sovereign authority. For want, however, of a better designation, and adopting the suggestion of Bentham, publicists and statesmen now generally refer to this body of rules as international law. If the word law is to be retained, I should have thought the expression public law, or the public law of the world, a better one.

Who made these rules, or this international law if you so call it, is explained by the definition which I have given. It was made by the nations themselves, either through express compact with each other or through general practice; that is to say, by treaty or by usage. Publicists, I know, looking be