writers, on the other hand,--living under municipal systems in which
judicial decisions hold no such place, and are neither precedents,
authoritative declarations, nor authentic evidence of the law,--are led
by their education to look to but one authoritative source of law,--the
decrees of legislators; and, in the absence of these, naturally put the
scientific treatises of learned men, systematic, and enriched with
illustrations, above the special decisions of tribunals on single cases,
which, by their systems, do no more than settle the particular
controversy, without settling the principles evoked for its decision."

The editor then sums up the respective merits of these two methods of
deducing the principles of international law at a length which prevents
our quoting the whole for the benefit of our readers. In conclusion he
says:--

"As an offset to this [the supposed impartiality of commentators], it is
to be remembered that the commentator will often be a man of books and
speculations, rather than of affairs; and that the judicial habit of
determining actual controversies, in full view of both their nature and
consequences, is most likely to evoke such rules of law as will be able
to hold their place among the interests, policies, passions, and
necessities of life.

"Attempts to deduce international law from a theory that each individual
is by nature independent, and has, by an implied contract, surrendered
some of his natural rights and assumed some artificial obligations, for
the purpose of establishing society for the common advantage,--and that
each state is, in like manner, independent, and has made like
concessions for a like purpose of international advantages,--such
attempts fall with the theories on which they rested. As no such state
of things ever existed, and no such arrangements or compacts have ever
been made, it is safer to draw principles of law from what is actual.
Later writers, since philosophy has dropped the theory of the social
compact, go upon the assumption, that men and communities are by nature
what they have always been found to be; that the rights and duties of
each man are, by Divine ordination, originally and necessarily, those at
once of an individual and a member of society; and that the rights and
duties of a state are, in like manner, those at once of an individual
state and one among a number of states; and that neither class of these
rights or duties is artificial, voluntary