her revolted colonies. Such
a succession of events, fruitful in international controversies, created
a demand for the study of the law of nations such as is always sure to
be supplied. The state papers of Mr. Madison and Mr. John Quincy Adams
are a permanent monument to their familiarity with this subject.
Contemporaneous with them were the unrivalled decisions of the Supreme
Court when presided over by Chief Justice Marshall, and later have been
published the works of Kent, Wheaton, Story, and other writers. All of
these together comprise a treasure of learning of which we may well be
proud.

Mr. Wheaton, by general consent, occupies the first place among our
commentators. Inferior as a jurist to Chancellor Kent, he is not so high
an authority upon any question which the latter carefully and thoroughly
examined; but long study and training, first before the Supreme Court,
when he was not only the reporter of its decisions during the
international era, but was of counsel in most of the important cases
involving international law, and afterwards in an extended and useful
diplomatic career in Europe, gave him an unequalled familiarity with the
whole subject; and he treated it in a much more elaborate manner than
did Kent, who only discussed it as a branch of the more general science
covered by his Commentaries. No better evidence of the value of Mr.
Wheaton's book is needed than the high estimation in which it is held in
Europe, and particularly in England, where, as the production of a
common-law lawyer, it has a greater value than the works of Continental
scholars, and for reasons of which we shall speak presently. Lord
Lyndhurst early bore testimony to its great merits, and during the last
few years it has been universally regarded as an authority of the
highest standard. No other publicist has been so frequently cited in the
controversies which have grown out of our late civil war. The
translation of the book into Chinese is a most interesting fact,
flattering to the author, and a proof of the progress which Western
thought and civilization are making in the extreme East.

It is of Mr. Dana's edition of this valuable work that we are now called
upon particularly to speak. As a new edition of the book was demanded,
it was of the greatest importance that it should be placed in the hands
of an editor competent to discuss, in a manner worthy of the
distinguished commentator, those numerous and perplexing questions which