, or secondary.

"In considering, therefore, whether a certain rule should or should not
be adopted, the test is not its capacity to be carried through a
circuitous and artificial course, beginning in a supposed natural
independence of the human being, and ending in another supposed entity
compounded of all civilized states, but various elements enter into the
solution of international questions, and in various degrees, as fitness
to conduce to the highest and most permanent interests of nations as a
whole, of nations taken separately, differing as nations do in power and
pursuits and interests, and of the human beings that compose those
societies. If the question involves high ethics, it must be met in the
faith that the highest justice is the best interest of all. If it be a
question chiefly of national advantage, and of means to an admitted end,
it must be met by corresponding methods of reasoning."

M. Hautefeuille, particularly, finds little favor with Mr. Dana.
Repeatedly rules laid down by him are dismissed with the bare remark,
that "he is without support either by judicial decisions, treaties, the
opinions of commentators of received authority, or diplomatic positions
taken by nations"; or, as in another place, that the principle broached
"is merely a suggestion of the learned commentator as a possible policy,
and has no support either in the practice of nations or the works of
publicists";--but the editor never condescends to meet the French writer
upon his own field of casuistry and speculation. And in this we think
he is right. The discussion of rules existing only in a text-writer's
belief in their abstract justice, would be entirely useless labor in any
writer in the English language; for whatever may be the system of
Continental Europe, neither the United States, nor Great Britain, nor
any one of the future kindred nations that will grow out of the English
colonies, will ever pay much regard to a doctrine so foreign to that
noble system of law which, like their common tongue, will be a permanent
proof of their common origin.

Two of the most admirable of Mr. Dana's notes are those on the
"relations of the United States judiciary to the Constitution and
statutes," and on "the United States a supreme government"; and they
deserve careful perusal from all desirous of fully understanding our
system of government. From the first we cannot refrain from making one
extract, which may help to explain to our non-