may have the privilege of exterritoriality denied to it. Will the British interpreters of international law hold that this is a true principle, or will they adhere to their old doctrine that a commissioned vessel must be dealt with through its sovereign, and only through him-even when that sovereign has no recognized authority,-that it may, with impunity, enter the harbors of the injured nation on equal terms with innocent vessels? The new foreign enlistment act, good in other respects, seems to fail at this point. Nothing in the act, it is said, subjects any commissioned vessel to forfeiture, or gives to a British court any jurisdiction which it would not have had before. And a foreign State is defined to include "any person or persons exercising, or assuming to exercise, the powers of government in, or over, any foreign country, colony, province, or part of any province, or people." It is true that captures effected by a vessel breaking the neutrality laws of England are pronounced illegal; and a vessel so captured, and afterward brought within the British dominions by the captor, or his agent, or his government, or by any other person, with knowledge that the capture was made under such circumstances, may be restored by act of court to the original owner; and this, as we understand the law, would be the case, although the court of the guilty vessel's nation may have decreed it to be a lawful prize. But this would go no farther than to teach the captor, and those to whom a title was passed, to avoid British waters in such cases. The fact still remains that in future wars, if an order in council and the royal prerogative are not adequate to prevent the admission of such vessels into British ports, the same complaints will arise which the United States made, and which helped their cause so materially before the arbitration. Mr. Vernon Harcourt endeavored to provide a partial prevention of this source of evil. Being a member of the commission on the foreign enlistment act, of which we have already spoken, he dissented from their report so far as to be unwilling. to extend the penalties of the law and the preventive authority of the executive to the building of ships, apart from the question of their arming and dispatch from the realm. It was fortunate, we think, that the majority of the members of the committee differed from him. But he makes one valuable sugges

tion against "the recognition of belligerent commissions to vessels on the high seas, by which such vessels become at once raised to the position of lawful belligerent cruisers, though they start from no port, "and, in fact, derive no support from the natural and legitimate naval resources of those on whose behalf they wage war." "It seems to me," he continues, "that for all reasons it is wise to discourage such a practice. As there is no rule of international law which forbids such delivering of commissions on the high seas, we cannot, of course, refuse to recognize the title of such a cruiser to all the legitimate rights of war, in places beyond our jurisdiction. But we are masters of our own actions and our own hospitality within the realm. Though, therefore, we cannot dispute the validity of such a commission on the high seas, or the legality of captures made by such a vessel, we may refuse to admit into our ports any vessel which has not received its commission in a port of its country." Such a rule, if made six years before it was proposed, would have driven the Alabama, the Florida, and the Susquehanna, from all British ports, and very materially diminished the grievances of the United States against Great Britain. But why such a law, and not a law visiting breaches of neutrality upon vessels built in, and escaping from, neutral harbors, even though they should have received their commissions within the territory of their own sovereign, especially when they pertain to a community which is not a State in the international sense? If you concede full belligerency to a community that has no standing but that of fact, with no right, as yet, to exist, why stickle about commissions given even by acknowledged sovereigns, because they are given on the water?

But does it not become the United States to bear in mind that the three rules, and our doctrine of international law, impose an obligation upon us which it will not always be easy to fulfill, and will often be easy to break. The relations between the States and the United States are such that the former may sin against the rights of other nations, while only the latter are responsible for the sin, or known as belonging to the community of nations. In such a Union it is easy for the country to be brought into most embarrassing relations toward foreign

States, and we are debarred, henceforth, from pleading want of power. So, also, while the repressive force is weak, the impulsive force, in particular places or sections, may be at times very great. It is one thing to take measures to keep a ship from being built illegally, and quite another to prevent a warlike gathering on our borders. But we must prevent it or pay our fifteen or fifty millions of dollars. Already we have had an experience in this line. McLeod, the leader of the party that burnt the Caroline, was caught and tried in the State of New York for murder. Great Britain demanded him, as acting under public order, but the New York authorities, when the case thus became political, refused for some time to surrender him into the custody of the nation. A law was then passed by Congress authorizing the national courts to issue the writ of habeas corpus, in order to inquire into the cause of the restraint of any alien, when restrained for an act done by him under the authority of his own government.* Such a law, however, would not reach cases which more than once occurred in South Carolina, during the palmy days of slavery, when colored British seamen were locked up under the police laws, until the vessel to which they belonged was ready to proceed to sea. And if we remember aright, the general government was unwilling to come to the rescue, and even pleaded want of power, so that a private compact, relating to this matter, had to be made between British authorities and that sovereign State. No such shameful thing, we trust, will ever again disgrace our annals. But we need to feel now that we have made strict rules for others, that the spirit of these rules applies to expeditions on land, although their letter relates to the sea, and that with our growth we are in danger of making light of the consequence of wrong doing.

Such acts of violence, perhaps, nothing can prevent; but the example of this arbitration at Geneva, renewing a policy of nations that had long since fallen into comparative neglect; the

*See Pomeroy's Constit. Law, p. 453, § 680.

See the law in Greeley's Amer. Confl., i, 179, where the treatment of Judge Hoar, of Massachusetts, charged with a mission relative to blacks of that State, imprisoned at Charleston, is described at large.

hope of gaining, by peaceful ways, what could only be gained by war at a vast loss; the conviction that most wars have been unnecessary, if only some amicable settlement and impartial judge could have been found;-these influences, which are worth many fifteen and a half millions of dollars, will, as we. with many others hope, help the spread of peace over the world. At all events, the world will honor the two great and proud nations for the course which they have taken.

ARTICLE V.-ON THE LAW OF MORTALITY THAT HAS PREVAILED AMONG THE FORMER MEMBERS OF THE DIVINITY SCHOOL OF YALE COLLEGE.

A CATALOGUE and biographical record of the persons who have been members of the Divinity School of Yale College, during the fifty years of its existence, from 1822 to 1872, has just been prepared and published by Prof. George E. Day.* The materials for the record have been collected with very unusual care, being in almost every case from autograph letters, or other authentic documents. This fact, as well as various other peculiarities of these statistics, make it worth while to look at them with special reference to the vital experience of the persons named in the catalogue.

By the law of mortality of a community, or of a large selected group of persons, is usually understood the varying probability of death in that community, or group, for the different ages of the members. Thus out of a thousand persons aged thirty, we find that in one year there will be in the mean 8 or 10 deaths; of a thousand aged fifty there will be from 14 to 19 deaths; of a thousand aged seventy, there will be 60 to 70 deaths. These numbers of deaths for each age of life, accurately found for a community and put in a table, express the law of mortality for that community.

The law of mortality is not the same for all groups of men. It varies with residence, with occupation, with sex, and with other causes. The law for assured lives is different from that of annuitants; that of scholars differs from that of laborers; that of the clergy from that of lawyers, or doctors. The law deduced from observation in one year, might be expected to vary from that of another year, if the prevailing diseases differ. The law for American lives must differ to some extent from that for English lives, and both differ from that for Ger

* A general catalogue of the Divinity School of Yale College; a brief biographical record of its members in the first half century of its existence as a distinct department. Published by the Alumni. 8vo, 164 pp. New Haven, 1873.