it, and at whatever precise point of time the Consolato may have been compiled, it is certain that it became the common law of all the commercial powers of Europe. The marine laws of Italy, Spain, France, and England, were greatly affected by its influence; and it formed the basis of subsequent maritime ordinances. It has been translated into the Castilian, Italian, German, and French languages; and an entire translation of it into English has long been desired and called for by those scholars and lawyers who were the most competent to judge of its value.b

We are naturally induced to overlook the want of order and system in the Consolato, and the severity of some of its rules, and to justify Emerigon and Boucher in their admiration of the good sense and spirit of equity which dictated its decisions upon contracts, when we consider that the compilation was the production of a barbarous age. It is, undoubtedly, the most authentic and venerable monument extant, of the commercial usages of the middle ages, and especially among the people who were concerned in the various branches of the Mediterranean trade. It was as comprehensive in its plan as it was liberal in its principles. It treated of maritime courts, of shipping, of the ownership and equipment of ships, of the duties and responsibilities of the owners and master, of freight and seamen's wages, of the duties

a Casaregis, who was one of the most competent and learned of commercial lawyers, says, in one of his discourses, (Dis. 213. n. 12.) that the Consolato had, in maritime matters, by universal custom, the force of law among all provinces and nations.

b There has been a translation of two chapters on prize by Dr. Rob. inson, and of some chapters on the ancient consular or commercial courts, and on re-captures, inserted in the 2d, 3d, and 4th volumes of Hall's American Law Journal.

Kc Bynkershoeck, in his Quæstiones Jur. Pub. lib. 1. ch. 5. praises the justice of some of its rules, while he, at the same time, speaks disrespectfully and unjustly of the work at large, as a farrago legum nauticarum.

and government of seamen, of ransoms, salvage, jettisons, and average contributions, It treated also of maritime captures, and of the mutual rights of neutral and belligerent vessels; and, in fact, it contained the rudiments of the law of prize. Emerigon very properly rebukes Hubner for the light and frivolous manner in which he speaks of the Consolato; and he says in return, that its decisions are founded on the law of nations, and have re-united the suffrages of mankind."

The laws of Oleron were the next collection in point of time and celebrity. They were collected and promulgated in the island of Oleron, on the coast of France, in or about the time of Richard I. The French lawyers in the highest repute, such as Cleirac, Valin, and Emerigon, have contended, that the laws of Oleron were a French production, compiled under the direction of Queen Eleanor, Dutchess of Guienne, in the language of Gascony, for the use of the province of Guienne, and the navigation on the coasts of the Atlantic; and that her son, Richard I, who was King of England, as well as Duke of Guienne, adopted and enlarged this collection. Selden, Coke, and Blackstone, on the other hand, have claimed it as an English work, published by Richard I. in his character of King of England. It is a proof of the obscurity that covers the early history of the law, that the author of such an important code of legislation as the laws of Oleron, should have been left in so much obscurity as to induce

a Traité des Assurances, pref.

The question is of no sort of moment to us at the present day, but it is quite amusing to observe the zeal with which Azuni, Boucher, and Boulay Paty, engage in the contest. They insist, that the pretention, as they term it, of such men as Selden and Blackstone, was founded on a desire to flatter the English nation, and to deprive the French of the glory of the composition of those nautical ordinances.

profound antiquaries to adopt different conclusions, in like manner as Spain and Italy have asserted rival claims to the origin of the Consolato. The laws of Oleron were borrowed from the Rhodian laws, and the Consolato, with alterations and additions, adapted to the trade of western Europe. They have served as a model for subsequent sea laws, and have at all times been extremely respected in France, and perhaps equally so in England, though not under the impulse of the same national feeling of partiality. They have been admitted as authority on admiralty questions in the courts of justice in this country.

The laws of Wisbuy were compiled by the merchants of the city of Wisbuy, in the island of Gothland, in the Baltic sea, about the year 1288. It had been contended by some writers, that these laws were more ancient than those of Oleron, or even than the Consolato. But Cleirac says, they were but a supplement to the laws of Oleron, and constituted the maritime law of all the Baltic nations north of the Rhine, in like manner as the laws of Oleron governed in England and France, and the provisions of the Consolato on the shores of the Mediteranean. They were, on many points

r See Walton v. The Ship Neptune, 1 Peters' Adm. Dec. 142. Natterstrom v. Ship Hazard, in the District Court of Massachusetts, 2 Hall's L. J. 359. Sims v. Jackson, 1 Peters' Adm Dec. 157. all of which were decided on the authority of the laws of Oleron. Cleirac published in the middle of the seventeenth century, the laws of Oleron, in his work entitled, Les Us et Coutumes de la Mer, with an excellent commentary. They were translated into English, with the notes of Cleirac, considerably abridged, and published in the collection of sea laws made in the reign of Queen Anne. They have likewise been published in this country in the Appendix to the first volume of Peters' Admiralty Decisions from the copy in the Sea Laws. There is. likewise, annexed to these reports, a copy of the laws of Wisbuy, of the Hause Towns, and of the marine ordinances of Lewis XIV., and they have given increased interest to a valuable publication.

on many points, a repetition of the judgments of Oleron, and became the basis of the ordinances of the Hanseatic league."

The renowned Hanseatic association was begun at least as early as the middle of the thirteenth century, and it originated with the cities of Lubec, Bremen, and Hamburgh. The free and privileged Hanse Towns became the asylum of commerce, and the retreats of civilization, when the rest of Europe was subjected to the iron sway of the feudal system, and the northern seas were infested by savage clans, and roving barbarians." Their object was mutual defence against piracy by sea, and pillage by land. They were united by a league offensive and defensive, and with an intercommunity of citizenship and privileges. The association of the cities of Lubec, Brunswick, Dantzick and Cologne, commenced in the year 1254, according to Cleirac, and in 1164, according to Azuni; and it became so safe and beneficial a confederacy, that all the cities and large towns on the Baltic, and on the navigable rivers of Germany, to the number of eighty-one, acceded to the

a Cleirac, in his preamble to the ordinances of Wisbuy, (Les Us el Coutumes de la Mer, p. 136 ) gives from Johannes Magnus, and his brother Olaus, the historians of Sweden, and the Goths, a very glowing account of the former wealth and commercial prosperity and splendour of Wisbuy, the ancient capital of Gothland, and then a free and independent city. It was once the most celebrated and flourishing emporium in Europe, and merchants from all parts came there to traffick, and had their shops and warehouses, and enjoyed the same privileges as the Dative inhabitants. But, in Cleirac's time, this bright vision had vanished, and the town, with its trade and riches, was destroyed, and nothing was to be seen but heaps of ruins, the sad evidence of its former splendour and magnificence. Here is one ground for the melancholy admonition of the Poet," That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay." But the logic of the muse is entirely refuted by the stability of commercial power in other illustrious examples.

union. One of the means adopted by the confederates to insure prosperity to their trade, and to protect them from controversies with each other, was the formation of a code of maritime law. The consuls and The consuls and deputies of the Hanseatic league, in a general convention at Lubec in 1614, added to their former ordinances of 1597, (or 1591, as Azuni insists,) from the laws of Oleron, and of Wisbuy, and establish a second and larger Hanseatic ordinance, under the title of the Jus Hanseaticum Maritimum. This digest of nautical usages and regulations, was founded evidently on those of Wisbuy and Oleron, and from the great influence and character of the confederacy, it has always been deemed a compilation of authority.”

(3.) Of the maritime legislation of the moderns.

But all the former ordinances and compilations on maritime law, were in a great degree superseded in public estimation, their authority diminished, and their lustre eclipsed by the French ordinance upon commerce in 1673, which treated largely of negotiable paper; and more especially by the celebrated marine ordinance of 1681. This monument of the wisdom of the reign of Louis XIV., far more durable and more glorious than all the military trophies won by the valour of his arms, was erected under the in

a Les Us et Coutumes de la Mer, p. 157-165. Ward in his History of the Law of Nations, vol. ii. 276-290. adduces proofs, that the Hanseatic league exercised the rights of sovereignty as a federal republic, and with considerable strength and vigour, until the fifteenth century. No less than four commercial treaties were concluded between England and the Hanse Towns in the space of three years, from the year 1472 to 1474. But the league was dissolved as soon as the great powers of Europe withdrew their cities from the association; and the members of this confederacy are now reduced to the cities of Lubec, Hamburgh, and Bremen. Rym. Fœd. tom. 9. cited in Henry's Hist. of Great Britain, b. 5. ch. 6. Putler's Constitutional History of Germany, vol. ii. p. 208.