difficulties by law (ɛgavinoi voμor), and lawsuits (egavixar dıxaı), where a very rapid course of justice was prescribed.1

On the subject of contracts among the Athenians, relating to mercantile transactions not maritime, there is nothing worthy of particular attention, or that will bear comparison with the doctrines laid down in the books of the Roman law on the same subject; but I would linger a few moments to speak of the Athenian rules on the subject of maritime contracts-viz., those relating to bottomry, both because of the importance of the subject, as evinced from the number of lawsuits relating to it, and because of the opportunity it gives us of contrasting the spirit of the ancient law with that of the modern; for in another part of my lecture I shall have occasion to discuss the leading features of our own law on the same subject. Moreover, the difference of the Athenian notions on the subject of interest on loans, from those of the Rhodian and Roman law, is strongly marked in this particular contract; for as Boeckh says, not only does this species of interest, which was so odious at Rome, not appear to have given offence at Athens nor in Greece generally; but such a class of agreements, which were protected by the Athenian law (under which every person could take as high interest as he pleased), were prohibited by the laws of Rhodes. Not only, then, were rendered binding by

these contracts allowable, but they were means of an instrument styled ναυτικη συγγραφη, which was deposited in the hands of a rgαTEZITNs, or banker. A document of this kind exists entire in a speech of Demosthenes against the Paragraphe of Lacritus, by which it would appear that the money was lent upon Mendæan wine, for a voyage from Athens to Mende, and thence to the Bosphorus, at the rate of 225 for 1000 drachmas for the whole time of absence, with a further condition, that a higher rate (30 per cent.) was to be paid if the voyage back should be undertaken after the rising of Arcturus. Some other conditions were also added in turn, together with a term

'Mem. For excellent illustrations of Athenian every-day life, especially in their common affairs of buying and selling, and their bankers' systems, see Bekker's Charicles.

for the payment of interest and principal in twenty days after the vessel returned to Athens. These loans, though generally made upon the goods, were sometimes made upon the ship, the cargo, or the money received for passenger and freight. With such favourable disposition on the part of the people to commerce and trade, and such a readiness on that of the government to encourage them therein, it was natural that every effort should be made, not only to simplify the forms of process by which disputes arising out of mercantile transactions were to be decided, but to establish particular tribunals to which those disputes might be referred; and although Xenophon complains of the slowness with which mercantile causes were heard and settled, yet, had he lived in later times, he might have found cause to congratulate the foreign merchants, in whose interest he is speaking, on their having, after all, their suits heard in the city of Athens. Of the two sets of judges whose jurisdiction extended to the suits of merchants and others, one class, siraywyers, met several times a month to try causes that were either of minor importance, or where the pressing nature of the business. required an immediate hearing; whilst the other, vaurodınaı, held their sittings only one day in each month-viz., the 26th-for the purpose of hearing suits of a weightier nature, where the pleadings having been opened before the μonra, the decision was referred to them. I might pursue this topic farther, and dwell upon sundry other features of Athenian law in the matter of commercial regulations. I might dilate upon their customhouse regulations, upon their restrictions on the exportation of agricultural produce, upon their regulations against forestallers and false carriers, and upon those affecting their markets and mines; but to do so thoroughly would swell my lecture into too. large a volume; nor should I, as I conceive, promote the main object of my design, which is rather to draw attention to the existence of separate and distinct legal rules in the matter of mercantile transactions from all time, than to set them out and comment on them.

I advance, therefore, now to the notice of the Roman law on

the same subject, and here at the outset the striking difference between Greek and Roman habits and turn of mind is exemplified. In the one country the restless love of change, and the desire for novelty, prompted the people to pursuits which, like those of commerce, are so alluring, from the spirit of adventure they foster, and from the opportunities of gain they offer: the natural advantages, too, which some of the great cities of Greece derived from their contiguity to the sea, were further inducements to the inhabitants to brave the dangers of the main in the search after wealth; and, therefore, it is not surprising that commercial enterprise was carried to its highest pitch, and that commercial regulations and commercial courts existed in full vigour in Greece and its cities. In Rome, on the other hand, the sterner and more unpolished spirit of the people, the early difficulties of the settlement of their city, and its inland situation, their long isolation from other states, joined to the haughty feeling of superiority for which they were so long distinguished, seemed for years to render them averse to any intermixture with other people, and careless or ignorant of the advantages which an extended commerce always brings with it. Hence it is that, for a lengthened period, we find the inhabitants of Rome, when not engaged in war, occupied only with agricultural pursuits, and those of the rudest form, leaving industrial occupations to their slaves, without the possession of a silver currency, punishing debtors with the most barbarous forms of law, and exercising so inhospitable a spirit towards strangers who might come among them, as to make their name synonymous with that of enemy— "adversus hostem æterna auctoritas." It is true that in later times the spirit of commerce, in spite of the difficulties it had to encounter, forced its way into the charmed circle of Roman prejudices; but it required many years of extended conquests, and a large experience of foreign intercourse, ere Scipio's dictum was laughed at or was forgotten :-"God forbid that the sovereign people of the world should condescend to the merchant's craft ;' but in process of time commerce asserted its privileges in Rome as elsewhere; and as its influence was felt, and as those who

carried it on swelled the ranks of the inhabitants of Rome, so did the spirit of their law become ameliorated under the influence of the Prætorian courts, and the equitable doctrines which they promulgated.

I need not dwell now upon the vast influence which the Roman law has exerted, ever since its perfection, on later times and younger systems of law; nor need I stop to speak of its eternal wisdom, because the pages of our law, and some of the best judgments of our legal sages, bear witness to that influence and that wisdom. I hope, too, in the course of my future lectures in the consideration of our English doctrines, to draw your attention to the aid that the Roman lawyers have lent our judges in the decisions they have made. But it is sufficient to say that the choicest specimens of Roman wisdom in the matter of law, the best examples of the learning and good sense of Roman lawyers, are not to be looked for in the pages of Cicero, or in the writings of the Augustan age of Roman literature; but the real golden æra of that law dates from a much later period, when such men as Ulpian, Paulus, Modestinus, Gaius, and others flourished, and when the value of foreign intercourse and extended commerce was making itself to be felt.

Here, too, as in the remarks I made upon Greek law, I shall pass by all the other features of law developed in the Digest-the regulations on the subject of citizenship, of property, and possession of contracts and of actions, and shall consider only one very small portion of that codified system, viz., the vestiges of the Rhodian law, on account of the remarkable tribute paid to the supremacy of commerce, from the fact of the appearance of foreign rules of law in the code of the Romans, a people no less imbued with exaggerated notions of selfimportance, than confident in the superiority of their own legal maxims. In the fourteenth book of the Digest and in the second title, such slight remains as we have of this ancient maritime code are to be found. Of the remarkable influence of the Rhodian laws on later legal systems, we have two noteworthy proofs; first in the number of writers who, from the days

of Balduin, 1559, down to our own time, have discussed their history; and next the efforts that have been made to settle the difficult question of the authenticity of that compilation which has come down to us under the title of "Rhodian Laws." At the risk of wearying you with the narrative, I venture to run very rapidly over the heads of that controversy; for in a sketch of the progressive changes of commercial law, to pass by in silence so important a collection if authentic, or so audacious an attempt at legal forgery, if not authentic, would be an act of negligence on my part. The first query then is, "Whether the maritime laws of the Rhodians were really written laws?"

Now, on this point, writers of high note and celebrity have not hesitated to adopt the negative side of the question, among whom Bynkershoek, about the end of the 17th century, and Boucher, the editor of the Consolato del Mare, have strenuously defended the authenticity of the fragments, nor has Mr. Justice Story hesitated to subscribe his assent to their views. Boucher's arguments mainly rest on the ground, that in the Greek preface these laws are spoken of as customary usages, not written rules; but in opposition to this, an acute and learned Frenchman, Mons. Isambert, has argued that Boucher's, or rather Terrasson's, translation of the word pass (usages) is altogether wrong; that it should be rather rules, institutions; and that, although the Greek commentator has not employed the expression vos (as though he had intended to indicate the absence of writing), yet it is scarcely credible that, if these rules had been mere customary observances, variable and uncertain, they should have maintained the reputation they had acquired in the days of imperial Rome. What that reputation was, is evidenced by the language of Roman authors, of Cicero (pro Lege Manilia), who says the fame and glory of the maritime code of the Rhodians' (disciplinæ navalis) collection of rules has survived to our day; and of Strabo, who, in terms that clearly indicate his knowledge of their existence (xiv. p. 652), describes them as ευνομια θαυμαστη, that admirable system of legis lation. Undoubtedly, like all efforts at law-making in the infancy and early condition of a people, the Rhodian laws must have been