There is the same diffusiveness connected with our military plans which characterized the operations of the Athenians against Sparta. We do not make the special advantage which we have over the South through our naval superiority available against her special vulnerability. We intimidate her, as Pericles did the Peloponnesians, by circumnavigating her territories with a great display of our naval power; we effect a few landings upon her coasts; but all these invasions lead to no grand results, they do not subdue our armed enemy. What with these errors in the general conduct of the war, and the lack of energy which characterizes every part, our prospects of ultimate success are fast being ruined. Unless some change be quickly effected, unless political sentiment can be made to give place to the original enthusiasm with which we commenced the war, and this enthusiasm be embodied in military enterprise, our case is a hopeless one. One the other hand, if things go on as they have been going on, the political opposition to the war will rise to such a height as to overturn the Administration, and in its place install those who are desirous of a reconstruction of the Union on a Southern basis. The same errors on the part of Athens led to just this result in Greece; an oligarchy came at last to rule even over the democratic city itself. The consequence was the downfall of Greece, and in her ruin was demonstrated the failure of ancient civilization. In a like event, nothing could save us, nothing could save modern civilization, from the same disastrous ruin.
The barbarism which at successive intervals in history has swept southward over Asia was, at the least, something fresher and better than that which it displaced. The Gothic barbarians were, in very truth, the scourges of God to the inferior and more despicable barbarians of Southern Europe. The former exemplified a barbarism unconscious of itself, and carrying in its very rudeness the hope of the world; and the more complete and overwhelming its revolutions, the more glorious the promise involved in them. But, from the establishment over a continent of a system so deliberately barbarous that it dares to array its brutal features against the sunlight of this nineteenth century, that it dares even to oppose itself, with a distinct confession of its base purposes, against the only free, beneficent, and hope-giving government in the world,—from the triumph of such a system and over such a government there is not the shadow of a hope, but rather the widest possible field for dismal apprehension. From this barbarism we have everything to fear; and the only way to successfully oppose it is through the movements of war. Only through a triumph gained in the battle-field, and held decisive for all future time, can we, as a nation, make our way out of the fatal entanglements of this present time into the bright and glorious heritage of the future.
* * * * *
My Diary, North and South. By W.H. RUSSELL. Boston: T.O.H.P. Burnham, pp. xxii., 602.
Plutarch, as a patriotic Boeotian, felt called on to write a tract concerning the malice of Herodotus in having told some unpleasant truths about the Thebans; and many of our countrymen have shown themselves as Boeotian, at least, if not as patriotic, in their diatribes against Mr. Russell, who is certainly very far from being an Herodotus, least of all in that winning simplicity of style which made him so dangerous in the eyes of Plutarch. It was foolish to take Mr. Russell at his own valuation, to elevate a clever Irish reporter of the London "Times" into a representative of England; but it was still more foolish, in attacking him, to mistake violence for force, and sensible people will be apt to think that there must have been some truth in criticisms which were resented with such unreasoning clamor. It is only too easy to force the growth of those national antipathies which ripen the seeds of danger and calamity to mankind; for there are few minds that are not capacious enough for a prejudice, and it has sometimes seemed as if, in our hasty resentment of the littlenesses of Englishmen, we were in danger of forgetting the greatness of England. A nation risks nothing in being underrated; the real peril is in underrating and misunderstanding a rival who may at any moment become an antagonist,—who will almost certainly become such, if we do our best to help him in it. Especially in judging the qualities of a people, we should be careful to take our measure by the highest, and not the lowest, types it has shown itself capable of producing. In moments of alarm, danger, or suffering, a nation is apt to relapse into that intellectual and moral condition of Mob from which it has slowly struggled upward; and this is especially true in an age of newspapers, where Cleon finds his way to every breakfast-table. It is her mob side that England has been showing us lately; but this should not blind us to the fact that in the long run the character of a nation tends more and more to assimilate itself to that ideal typified in its wisest thinkers and best citizens. In the qualities which historians and poets love to attribute to their country, national tendencies and aspirations are more or loss consciously represented; these qualities the nation will by-and-by learn to attribute to itself, until, becoming gradually traditional, they will at length realize themselves as active principles. The selfish clamor of Liverpool merchants, who see a rival in New York, and of London bankers who have dipped into Confederate stock, should not lead us to conclude, with M. Albert Blanc, that the foreign policy of England is nothing more or less thanune haine de commerçants et d'industriels, haine implacable et inflexible comme les chiffres.[A]
[Footnote A:Mémoires et Correspondence deJ. DE MAISTRE, p. 92.]
Mr. Russell's book purports to be, and probably is in substance, the diary from which he made up his letters to the London "Times"; and it is rather amusing, as well as instructive, to see the somewhat muddy sources which, swelled by affluents of verbiage and invention, gather head enough to contribute their share to the sonorous shallowness of "the leading journal of Europe." When we learn, as we do from this "Diary," what a contributor to that eminent journal is, when left to his own devices,—that he does not know the difference betweenwouldandshould, (which, to be sure, is excusable in an Irishman,) that he believesin pettoto meanin miniature, usesprotagonistwith as vague a notion of its sense as Mrs. Malaprop had of her derangement of epitaphs, and then recall to mind the comparative correctness of Mr. Russell's correspondence in point of style, we conceive a hearty respect for the proof-reader in Printing-House Square. We should hardly have noticed these trifles, except that Mr. Russell has a weakness for displaying the cheap jewelry of what we may calllingo, and that he is rather fond of criticizing the dialect and accent of persons who were indiscreet enough to trust him with their confidences. There is one respect, however, in which the matter has more importance,—in its bearing on our estimate of Mr. Russell as a trustworthy reporter of what he saw and heard. Conscientious exactness is something predicable of the whole moral and intellectual nature, and not of any special faculty; so that, when we find a man using words without any sense of their meaning, and assuming to be familiar with things of which he is wholly ignorant, we are justified in suspecting him of an habitual inaccuracy of mind, which to a greater or less degree disqualifies him both as observer and reporter. We say this with no intention of imputing any wilful misstatements to Mr. Russell, but as something to be borne in mind while reading his record of private conversations. A scrupulous fidelity is absolutely essential, where the whole meaning may depend on a tone of voice or the use of one word instead of another. Any one accustomed to the study of dialects will understand what we mean, if he compare Mr. Olmsted's extracts from his diary with Mr. Russell's. The latter represents himself as constantly hearing the wordBritisherused seriously and in good faith, and remarks expressly on an odd pronunciation ofEuropewith the accent on the last syllable, which be noticed in Mr. Seward among others. Mr. Russell's memory is at fault. What he heard wasEurópean; andBritisheris not, and never was, an Americanism.
We do not, however, mean to doubt the general truthfulness of Mr. Russell's reports. We find nothing in his book which leads us to modify the opinion we expressed of him more than a year ago.[B] We still think him "a shrewd, practised, and, for a foreigner, singularly accurate observer." We still believe that his "strictures, if rightly taken, may do us infinite service." But we must enter our earnest protest against a violation of hospitality and confidence, which, if it became common, would render all society impossible. Any lively man might write a readable and salable book byexploitinghis acquaintances; but such a proceeding would be looked upon by all right-minded people as an offence similar in kind, if not in degree, to the publication of private letters. A shrewd French writer has remarked, that a clever man in a foreign country should always know two things,—whathe is, andwherehe is. Mr. Russell seems habitually to have forgotten both. Even Montaigne, the most garrulous of writers, becomes discreet in speaking of other people. If we learn from him that the Duke of Florence mixed a great deal of water with his wine and the Duchess hardly any at all. we learn it, without any connivance of his, from his diary, and that a hundred and fifty years after his death.
[Footnote B:Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VIII., p. 765.]
One of the first reflections which occur to the reader, as he closes Mr. Russell's book, with a half-guilty feeling of being an accomplice after the fact in his indiscretions, to use the mildest term, is a general one on the characteristic difference between the traveller as he is and as he was hardly a century ago. A man goes abroad now not so much to see countries and learn something from them, as to write a book that shall pay his travelling-charges. The object which men formerly proposed to themselves, in visiting foreign lands, seems to have been to find out something which might be of advantage to their own country, in the way either of trade, agriculture, or manufactures,—and they treated of manners, when they touched upon them at all, with the coolness and impartiality of naturalists: They did not conclude things to be necessarily worse because they were different. A modern Tom Coryat, instead of introducing the use of the fork among his countrymen, would find some excuse for thinking the Italians anastypeople because they used it. In our day it would appear that the chief aim of a traveller was to discover (or where that failed, to invent) all that he possibly can to the disadvantage of the country he visits; and he is so scrupulous a censor of individual manners that he has no eyes left for national characteristics. Another striking difference between the older traveller and his modern successor is that the observer and the object to be observed seem to have reversed their relations to each other, so that the man, with his sensations, prejudices, and annoyances, fills up the greater part of the book, while the foreign country becomes merely incidental, a sort of canvas, on which his own portrait is to be painted for the instruction of his readers. Pliny used to say that something was to be learned from the worst book; and accordingly let us be thankful to the voyagers of the last thirty years that they have taught us where we can get the toughest steak and the coldest coffee which this world offers to the diligent seeker after wisdom, and have made us intimately acquainted with the peculiarities of the fleas, if with those of none of the other dwellers in every corner of the globe. Such interesting particulars, to be sure, may claim a kind of classic authority in Horace's journey to Brundusium; but perhaps a gnat or a frog that kept Horace awake may fairly assume a greater historical importance than would be granted to similar tormentors of Brown, Jones, and Robinson. Were it not for Mr. Olmsted, we should conclude the Arthur-Young type of traveller to be extinct, and that people go abroad merely for an excuse to write about themselves,—it is so much easier to write a clever book than a solid one. The plan of Montaigne, who wrote his travels round himself without stirring beyond his library, was as much wiser and cheaper as the result was more entertaining.
But, apart from the self-consciousness and impertinence which detract so much from the value of most recent books of travel, it may be doubted whether, since the French Revolution gave birth to the Caliban of Democracy, there has been a tourist without political bias toward one side or the other; and now that the "Special Correspondent" has been invented, whose business it is to be one-sided, if possible, and at all events entertaining, the last hope of rational information from anywhere would seem to be cut off. And of all travellers, the Englishman is apt to be the worst. What Fuller said of him two centuries ago is still in the main true,—that, "though some years abroad, he is never out of England." He carries with him an ideal England, made up of all that is good, great, refined, and, above all, "in easy circumstances," by which to measure the short-comings of other less-favored nations. He may have dined contentedly for years at the "Cock" or the "Mitre," but he must go first to Paris or New York to be astonished at dirt or to miss napkins. He may have been the life-long victim of the Londoncabby, but he first becomes aware of extortion as he struggles with the porters of Avignon or the hackmen of Jersey City. We are not finding fault with this insularity as a feature of national character,—on the contrary, we rather like it, for the first business of an Englishman is to be an Englishman, and we wish that Americanism were as common among Americans,—but, since no man can see more than is in his own mind, it is a somewhat dangerous quality in a traveller. Moreover, the Englishman in America is at a double disadvantage; for his understanding the language leads him to think that everything is easy to understand, while at the same time he cannot help looking on every divergence of manners or ideas from the present British standard in a nation speaking the same tongue, as a barbarism, if not as a personal insult to himself. Worse then all, he has perhaps less than anybody of that quality, we might almost say faculty, which Mirabeau called "political sociability," and accordingly can form no conception of a democracy which levels upward,—of any democracy, indeed, except one expressly invented to endanger the stability of English institutions, certainly the most comfortable in the world for any one who belongs to the class which has only to enjoy and not to endure them. The travels of an average Englishman are generally little more than a "Why, bless me, you don't say so! how very extraordinary!" in two volumes octavo.
Mr. Russell is only an Irishman with an English veneer, and, to borrow the Kalewala formula, is neither the best nor the worst of tourists. In range of mind and breadth of culture he is not to be compared with Mr. Dicey, who was in America at the same time, and whose letters we hope soon to see published in a collected form; but he had opportunities, especially in the Seceding States, such as did not fall, and indeed could not have fallen, to the lot of any other man. As the representative of an English journal, he was welcomed by the South, eager to show him its best side; as a foreigner, his impressions were fresh and vivid; and his report of the condition of things there is the only even presumably trustworthy one we have had since the beginning of the Rebellion. The New England States, he tells us, he did not visit; but that does not prevent his speaking glibly of their "bloody-minded and serious people," and of the "frigid intellectuality" of Boston, about both of which he knows as little as of Juvenal. This should serve to put us on our guard against some of his other generalizations, which may be based on premises as purely theoretic. But it is not in generalizations that Mr. Russell is strong, nor, to do him justice, does he often indulge in them,—always excepting, of course, theex officioone which he owes his employers, and which he was sent out to find arguments for, that the Union is irrevocably split asunder. It is as a reporter that he has had his training, and it is as a reporter that he is valuable. Quick to catch impressions, and from among them to single out thetakingparts, his sketches of what he saw and heard, if without any high artistic merit, have a coarse truth that will make them of worth to the future student of these times. They are all the better that Mr. Russell was unable, from the nature of the case, to elaborate andTimesifythem.
The first half of the book is both the most interesting and the most valuable,—the second half being so largely made up of personal grievances (which, if Mr. Russell had not the dignity to despise them, he might at least have been wise enough to be silent about) as to be tedious in comparison. We regret that Mr. Russell should have been subjected to so many personal indignities for having written what we believe to have been as impartial an account of what he saw of the panic-rout which followed the Battle of Manassas as any one could have written under the same conditions,—though we doubt if the correspondent of a French newspaper would come off much better, under like circumstances, in England. It is not beyond the memory of man that the Duke of Wellington himself was pelted in London. But we are surprised that Mr. Russell should have so far misapprehended his position, should have so readily learned to look upon himself as an ambassador, (we believe the "Times" is not yet recognized by our Government as anything more than a belligerent power,) as to consider it a hardship that he was not allowed to accompany General McClellan's army to the Peninsula. He seems to have thought that every thing happens in America, as La Rochefoucauld said of France. We are sorry that he was not permitted to go, for he would have helped us to some clearer understanding of a campaign about whose conduct and results there seems to be plenty of passionate misjudgment and very little real knowledge. But when should we hear the last of the vulgar presumption of an American reporter who should try to hitch himself in the same way to the staff of a British army?
Mr. Russell's testimony to the ill effects of slavery is as emphatic, if not so circumstantial, as that of Mr. Olmsted. It is of the more weight as coming from a man who saw the system under its least repulsive aspect. His report also of what he heard from some of the chief plotters in the Secession conspiracy as to their plans and theories is very instructive, and deserves special attention now that their allies in the Free States are beginning to raise their heads again. We have always believed, and our impression is strengthened by Mr. Russell's testimony, that the Southern leaders originally intended nothing more than acoup d'état, which, by the help of their fellow-conspirators at the North, was to put them in possession of the Government. It is plain, also, from what Mr. Russell tells us, that the movers of the slaveholding treason reckoned confidently on aid from abroad, especially from England; and this may help Englishmen to understand that the sensitiveness of Northern people and statesmen to the open sympathy which the Rebellion received from the leading journals and public men of Great Britain was not so unreasonable as they have been taught to regard it. Cousins of England, we feel inclined to say, remember that there is nothing so hard to bear as contempt; that there may be patriotism where there are no pedigrees; that family-trees are not the best timber for a frame of government; that truth is no less true because it is spoken through the nose; and that there may be devotion to great principles and national duties among men who have not the air of good society,—nay, that, in the long run, good society itself is found to consist, not of Grammonts and Chesterfields, but of the men who have been loyal to conviction and duty, and who have had more faith in ideas than in Vanity Fair. People on both sides of the water may learn something from Mr. Russell's book, if they read it with open minds, especially the lesson above all others important to the statesman, that even being right is dangerous, if one be not right at the right time and in the right way.
The Results of Emancipation. By Augustin Cochin, Ex-Maire and Municipal Councillor of Paris. Translated by Mary L. Booth, Translator of Count De Gasparin's Works on America, etc. Boston: Walker, Wise, & Co.
It is doubtless a little unfashionable to question the all-sufficiency of statistics to the salvation of men or nations. Nevertheless we believe that their power is of a secondary and derivative character. The confidence which first leads brave souls to put forth their energies against a giant evil comes through deductive, not inductive, inquiry. The men and women who have efficiently devoted themselves to awaken the American people to the element of guilt and peril in their national life have seldom been exhaustively acquainted with the facts of slavery or those of emancipation. Few of them were political economists, or had much concern with scientific relations. They were persons of emotional organization, and of a delicate moral susceptibility. It was sufficient for them to know that one God reigned, and that whatever He had caused to be a true political economy must accord with those Christian ethics which command acknowledgment from the human soul. They wanted no catalogue of abuses to convince them that an institution which began by denying a man all right in his own person was not and could not come to good. And this fine impressibility of nature, which needs no statistics, when it is combined with genius,—if we may be pardoned an Hibernicism which almost writes itself,—may be said to create its own statistics. Shakspeare needed not to dog murderers, note-book in hand, in order to give in Macbeth a comprehensive summary of their pitiable estate. It may, indeed, be necessary for physicians to study minutely many special cases of insanity in order to build up by induction the grand generalization of Lear; but he who gave it grasped it entire in an ideal world, and left to less happy natures the task of imitating its august proportions by patiently piling together a thousand facts. The abolition of slavery must be demanded by the moral instinct of a people before their understanding may be satisfied of its practical fitness and material success. The evidences in favor of emancipation are useful after the same manner as the evidences of Christianity: the man whose heart cannot he stirred by the tender appeal of the Gospel shall not be persuaded by the exegetical charming of the most orthodox expositor.
But now that circumstances have caused loyal American citizens to think upon slavery, and to mark with a quickened moral perception its enormous usurpations, there could be no publication more timely than this volume by M. Cochin. To be sure, all illustration of the results of this legalized injustice, derived from a past experience, must be tame to those who stand face to face with the gigantic conspiracy in which it has concentrated its venom, and from which it must stagger to its doom. The familiar proverb which declares that the gods make mad those whom they would destroy has a significance not always considered. For when a man loses his intellectual equilibrium, a baseness of character which never broke through the crust of conventionality may be suddenly revealed; and when a wicked system goes mad, such depths of perfidy are disclosed as few imagined to exist. During the last two years, while our Southern sky has been aglow with the red light of the slave-masters' insurrection, few of us could probe and pry about among details of lesser villanies than those pertinent to the day. And so it is fortunate that M. Cochin now comes to address a people instinctively grasping at the principle which may give them peace, and to offer them his calm and thorough investigation of the material basis whereon that principle may surely rest.
"L'Abolition de l'Esclavage," of which the first volume is translated under the title at the head of this notice, was published in 1861. It is a diligent study of official and other testimony bearing upon slavery and emancipation. M. Cochin had access to the unpublished records of every ministry in Europe, and gives his evidence with scientific precision. He has faithfully detailed the effects of liberating the slaves in the colonies of France and England, as well as in those of Denmark, Sweden, and Holland. By an admirable clearness of arrangement, and a certainnetietéof statement, the reader retains an impression of the experience in slavery and its abolition which each colony represents. That no disturbance should follow emancipation, we apprehend that no one, who believes in the moral government of the world, can seriously expect. Ceasing to persist in sin frees neither man nor nation from the penalty it entails. But the distressing consequences of any social upheaval make a far greater impression upon the common mind than the familiar evils of the condition from which the community emerges. The amount of suffering which must temporarily follow an act of justice long delayed is always over-estimated. Many half-measures for the public safety, many blunders easy to be avoided, produce the derangement of affairs which the enemies of human freedom are never tired of proclaiming. It is the merit of M. Cochin to separate that penalty of wrong which it is impossible to extinguish from the disastrous results of causes peculiar to the politics of a given nation, or to the private character of its officers. He certainly shows that production and commerce have not been annihilated by the abolition of slavery, while the moral condition of both races has been manifestly improved. Recognizing the immutable laws which are potent in the life of nations, M. Cochin touches upon the remote antecedents of slavery as well as the immediate antecedents of emancipation. His results are divided into groups, material, economical, and moral; thus the reader may easily systematize the information of the book. There are practical lessons in relation to the great deed to which our nation has been called that may well be laid to heart. The insurrection of San Domingo preceded emancipation, and was due to the absurd law of the Constituent Assembly which gave the same privileges to freemen of every color and every degree of education and capacity. While we recognize the negro as a man, let us remember that the time for recognizing him as a citizen is not yet. We must also mark the importance of paying with promptness the indemnity to the master, in order that the greater part of it may pass in the form of wages into the hands of the servant. Forewarned of mistakes in the methods of emancipation, which other nations deplore, we encounter the question with many important aids to its solution.
M. Cochin, though not a Protestant like Count de Gasparin, writes in a similar spirit of fervent Christian belief. In the second volume of his work, which we trust will soon appear in America, the relation of Christianity to slavery is powerfully discussed. The Catholic Church is shown to oppose this crime against humanity, and the Pope, as if to indorse the conclusion, has conferred an order of knighthood upon the author since the publication of his book. It is worth while to note that the most logical and effective assailants of slavery that these last years have produced have been devout Catholics,—Augustin Cochin in France, and Orestes A. Brownson in America. And while we think that it will require a goodly amount of special pleading to clear either the Catholic Church or most Protestant sects from former complicity with this iniquity, we heartily rejoice that those liberal men who intelligently encourage and direct the noblest instinct of the time are the exclusive possession of no form of religious belief. From every ritual of worship, from every variety of speculative creed, earnest minds have reached the same practical ground of labor for the freedom of man. Such minds realize that Christianity can approximate its exact application only as the machinery of human society is rightly comprehended. The Gospel, acting through the church, the meeting-house, the lecture-room, and the press, is demanding the redemption of master and slave from the mutual curse of their relation. Every affliction and struggle of this civil war may be sanctified, not only to the moral improvement, but also to the material prosperity of our land.
Great events are required to inspire a people with great ideas.Sicut patribus sit Deus nobisis the motto of the city whence the "Atlantic" goes forth to its readers. Let all who adopt this aspiration remember for what they ask. God was with our fathers, and sent them hardship, peril, defeat, that, battling painfully therewith, they might become great and fruitful men. Not otherwise can He be with us. From the misery of our civil strife we may educe a future happiness, as well as a present blessedness. The fierce excitement of physical action has been contagious to the heart and intellect of the time. Realities have presented themselves which can be met only by ideas. In the seeming distant years of our old prosperity, a few men and women sought to abolish slavery because it oppressed the inferior race; today, the nation deals with it because it has rendered the superior race hopelessly violent and corrupt. Of course, there will always be a class of doubting Thomases ready to deny the presence of any divine leadership that may not at once be touched and weighed and measured. To the prototype of these men such tangible evidence as his feeble faith could accept was not withheld. And those among us who are in like condition may read M. Cochin's book, and be convinced that a system which to the common sense of the Christian world seems morally wrong is neither politically expedient nor materially necessary.
A Treatise on the Law of Promissory Notes and Bills of Exchange. By THEOPHILUS PARSONS, LL.D., Dane Professor of Law in Harvard University, and Author of Treatises on the Law of Contracts, on the Elements of Mercantile Law, on Maritime Law, and the Laws of Business for Business-Men. In Two Volumes. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.
We eat and drink paper and live upon paper, is a metaphor which has been true enough these many years, but we probably appreciate the liveliness of it just at the present time more thoroughly than ever before. But even now we realize very imperfectly what a power in the world paper-money is; for we are apt to think of it only as a circulating medium in the form of bank-notes, or treasury-notes, or of somebody's currency which has the merit of making no pretensions to the theoretical idea of a currency which represents gold, the representative of everything else. Bills of exchange and promissory notes are instruments quite as indispensable to modern commerce and civilization; and when the necessities of an enlarged commercial intercourse, some five or six hundred years ago, first led to the use of paper as a representative of money, it was in the form of bills of exchange. All the absolute requirements of social life and of commerce among the ancient Greeks and Romans were satisfied by the use of the precious metals as money, though the want of new facilities and new instruments of commercial exchange must have been constantly experienced. Cicero, writing to his friend Atticus, when he was about to send his son to Athens, inquires whether he can have credit upon Athens for what money his son may have occasion for, or whether the young man must carry it with him in specie. Cicero desired to accomplish what is now effected by a negotiable bill of exchange; and if such instruments had been in use, he would have gone to the forum and purchased a bill on Athens for the requisite amount. But as it was, though he may possibly have found some one at Rome who had money owing to him by some one at Athens, and may have arranged with this Roman creditor that this debt should be paid to his son at Athens by the debtor there, it is quite certain that no instrument answering to our negotiable bill of exchange was used in the transaction.
Though the discovery or invention of bills of exchange cannot be ascribed with certainty to any precise period, they are for the first time unmistakably referred to in laws of the commercial nations of Southern Europe in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and they probably came into frequent use soon after that time. Perhaps the earliest bill of exchange of which we have an authentic copy is one made at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and which approaches pretty nearly to the form now in use. A translation of the instrument from the Italian. in which it was written, is as follows:—
"Francisco de Prato and Company at Barcelona. In the name of God, Amen.The 28th day of April, 1404. Pay by this first of exchange at usance toPietro Gilberto and Pietro Olivo one thousand scuti at ten shillingsBarcelona money per scuto, which thousand scuti are in exchange withGiovanni Colombo at twenty-two grosses per scuto, and place to ouraccount; and Christ keep you." "ANTONIO QUARTI SAB. DI BRUGIS."
For this curious relic of commercial history we are indebted to the fact that the mercantile company upon which the bill was drawn failed to pay it, whereupon the parties fell into a dispute about the matter of damages, and the magistrates of Bruges wrote to those of Barcelona, setting forth this bill with the facts of the case, and requesting information upon the usage respecting bills of exchange in their city.
A bill drawn in England about the year 1500 bears less resemblance to the form now used, and instead of commencing and ending with the devout expressions of the Italian bill, it has the formal words, "Be it known to all M'e y't I," etc., and "hereto I bynde me myn executours and all my Goodis, wheresoever they may be founde, in Wytnesse whereof I have written and sealyed this Byll, the X Day of," etc. It was made payable to a person named, "or to the Bringer of this Byll."
Bills of exchange were first used only for the benefit of a specified payee, but it was not long before the element of negotiability was added to foreign bills, which, thus perfected, became at once the indispensable instruments of commerce which they now are. The negotiability of inland bills and of promissory notes was not recognized till long afterwards. In England, inland bills were not used in any form till about the middle of the seventeenth century; and Lord Holt, in a case reported half a century later, said he remembered the time when actions upon inland bills first began. Indeed, the earliest case in which foreign bills of exchange are mentioned in the English Reports is as late as the first year of the reign of James I., though they appear to have been known to the courts in the preceding reign of Elizabeth, for there are extant precedents of declarations upon them of that period. The earliest reported case of an inland bill occurs in 1663. It appears that the negotiability of promissory notes was a matter of doubt with the Court of Queen's Bench as late as 1702. The court seem to have felt very little confidence in their own opinion upon the question; for Chief Justice Holt, after urging his opinion against the negotiability of such instruments, took occasion to speak with two or three of the most famous merchants in London, as to the consequences it was alleged would follow from obstructing their negotiability; and on another day he says that they had told him it was very frequent with them to make such notes, and that they looked upon them as bills of exchange, and that they had been used a matter of thirty years, and were frequently transferred and indorsed as bills of exchange. In 1704 Parliament put an end to the dispute between Lord Holt and the merchants by recognizing the negotiable qualities of promissory notes which now belong to them.
The law of promissory notes and bills of exchange is thus seen to be of very recent origin. In the early part of the seventeenth century there was a single reported case in the English language in this department of legal learning; now these volumes of Professor Parsons present us an array of more than ten thousand oases decided in the highest courts of England and America, and a great majority of these are cases that have occurred within the present century, if not within the last quarter of a century. Though the subject is apparently a simple one, it has presented a multitude of questions for the consideration of the courts, many of which it has taxed their highest wisdom to rightly solve.
A new book in any department of the law has one merit, if it is worth anything at all,—and that is, the merit of presenting the latest conclusions of the courts upon the topics treated of. In the department of the law treated of by the work now under notice, this merit is one of special consideration, for it has hardly reached its full development, and some of its important rules are hardly settled. In this treatise Professor Parsons has taken much pains to present the law just as judicial determinations and legislative enactments have left it up to the period of publication. But this work has merits which will last after its newness is gone. It is comprehensive in its plan, embracing the discussion of many points in the law of negotiable paper which are not referred to in other treatises upon the subject. In style, the text of the work is written with a clearness and grace which often give it all the pleasantness of a finished essay, if one chooses to read on without allowing his attention to be called off by the frequent references to the notes. The notes occupy much space, and give very full discussions of the more important points, with quotations from the most important decisions. They are printed in a smaller type, and the author is thereby enabled to give much more matter in his work than he otherwise could. A logical arrangement of the subject-matter in chapters which are subdivided into numerous sections, each treating of a separate topic, which is tersely expressed in a heading to it, makes it very easy for one to find the statement or discussion of any point which he desires to investigate. This admirable mode of arrangement and division of the subject is a characteristic of all the legal treatises of Professor Parsons, and our own experience is that it is much easier to find what we want in his works than in any others that we have had occasion to use or refer to. The usefulness of a law-book depends also very much upon its index; and the completeness and accuracy of this part of the work are noticeable in this as well as in the other treatises of the author.
In our examination of the work we had marked several chapters, with the intention of making special reference to them: the first chapters of the work, for the precision and clearness with which the essential elements of bills and notes are defined and explained; the chapter on Checks, for presenting the most complete statement which we have of the law upon that important topic; the chapters upon Action and Evidence, for giving in a systematic form much matter which is of the greatest use to the practitioner, but which the textbooks have generally left him to pick up as best he may, or have presented in a brief and unsatisfactory manner; and other chapters for still other features of excellence. But we have not space for further comment. These volumes are the result of a truly vast amount of labor, and we are confident that they will be received by the profession, by students, and by business-men with a hearty gratitude to the author for the service he has done them in writing this new work.
There is a short Appendix, containing a reprint of the provisions of the Stamp Act of the United States in relation to bills, notes, letters of credit, drafts, orders, and checks; together with an examination of some of the questions which the statute suggests.
The mechanical execution of these volumes is very superior.
* * * * *
Poems. By Thomas Bailey Aldrich. New York, G.W. Carleton. 32mo. pp. 161. $1.00.
The King's Bell. By Richard Henry Stoddard. New York. G.W. Carleton. 12mo. pp. 72. 75 cts.
Somebody's Luggage. By Charles Dickens. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson &Brothers. 8vo. paper. pp. 86. 25 cts.
A Talk with Sly Pupils. By Mrs. Charles Sedgwick. New York. Published for the Author by John Hopper. 12mo. pp. iv., 235. $1.00.
Lyra Coelestis. Hymns on Heaven. Selected by A.C. Thompson, D.D., Author of "The Better Land," "Gathered Lilies," etc. Boston. Gould & Lincoln. 12mo. pp. 382. $2.00.
The Results of Emancipation. By Augustin Cochin, Ex-Maire and MunicipalCouncillor of Paris. Work crowned by the Institute of France (AcadémieFrançaise). Translated by Mary L. Booth, Translator of Count DeGasparin's Works on America, etc. Boston. Walker, Wise, & Co. 12mo. pp.xiv., 412. $1.50.
Poems of Religious Sorrow, Comfort, Counsel, and Aspiration. New York.Sheldon & Co. crown 8vo. pp. iv., 204. $1.25.
The Black Man, his Antecedents, his Genius, and his Achievements. By William Wells Brown, Author of "Sketches of Places and People Abroad," etc. New York. Thomas Hamilton. 12mo. pp. 288. $1.00.
A Manual of Elementary Instruction, for the Use of Public and PrivateSchools and Normal Classes; containing a Graduated Course of ObjectLessons for training the Senses and developing the Faculties ofChildren. By E.A. Sheldon, Superintendent of Public Schools, Oswego,N.Y.; assisted by Miss M.E.M. Jones and Professor H. Krusi. New York. C.Scribner. 12mo. pp. 465. $1.50.
Elements of Military Art and History: comprising the History and Tactics of the Separate Arms; the Combination of the Arms; and the Minor Operations of War. By Edw. De la Barre Duparcq, Captain of Engineers in the Army of France, and Professor of the Military Art in the Imperial School of Saint-Cyr. Translated and edited by Brigadier-General George W. Cullum, Chief of Staff of the General-in-Chief of the Armies of the United States; late Aide-de-Camp to Lieutenant-General Scott; and Chief of Staff and of Engineers of Major-General Halleck, while commanding the Departments of the Missouri and Mississippi. New York. D. Van Nostrand. 8vo. pp. 456. $4.00.
Papers on Practical Engineering. No. 8. Official Report to the UnitedStates Engineer Department, of the Siege and Reduction of Fort Pulaski,Georgia, February, March, and April, 1862. By Brigadier-General Q.A.Gillmore, U.S. Volunteers, Captain of Engineers, U.S.A. Illustrated byMaps and Engraved Views. New York. D. Van Nostrand. 8vo. pp. 96. $2.50.
St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans: newly translated, and explained from a Missionary Point of View. By the Right Rev. J.W. Colenso, D.D., Bishop of Natal. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 261. $1.25.
The Soldier's Book: A Pocket-Diary for Accounts and Memoranda, forNon-Commissioned Officers and Privates of the U.S. Volunteer and RegularArmy. By Captain Robert N. Scott, Fourth U.S. Infantry. New York. D.Appleton & Co. 18mo. pp. 8. 25 cts.
The Trial of the Constitution. By Sidney George Fisher, Author of "The Law of the Territories," "The Laws of Race as connected with Slavery," etc., etc. Philadelphia. J.B. Lippincott & Co. 8vo. pp. 391. $2.00.
Meditations and Hymns. By "X." Philadelphia Protestant Book Society. 18mo. pp. 184. 60 cts.