determining whether custom ought not to be recognized as such by a judgment rendered on debate. The question was decided in diverse ways, although the majority of the writers on the subject asserted the uselessness of judicial recognition.

We have just seen that in the field of public law custom has preserved its importance in a number of countries. As far as relates to the law of nations, and from the very beginning thereof, are to be found indications analogous to those which we have met in discussing private law. It was the conception of the risk of punishment falling upon the transgressor which at first constituted the safeguard of heralds and ambassadors. The Book of Laws of Manou contains the following maxim: "He who strikes an ambassador rushes on to his own loss and destruction." Even in the heroic era Greece recognized the sacred character of hostile heralds. At Rome the greatest respect was shown to ambassadors; according to Denys of Halicarnussus, they were regarded with the same veneration which was accorded to the priesthood. A maxim of the Koran states that an envoy should receive nothing but good and open treatment. The celebrated canonical compilation of the twelfth century, the Decree of Gratian, protects ambassadors under the threat of excommunication. When the jurists of the Middle Ages began to study questions concerning the intercourse of nations and their dealings with one another they were unanimous in reaching the conclusion that ambassadors had the right to the safety of the road" securitas viæ." The text called attention to the fact that should any person throw obstacles in the path of the mission of the envoy, either of a friendly or of a hostile power, he would be subject to excommunication under the canonical law, whereas under the civil law he would be delivered to the enemy to be sold into slavery. It said that an injury done to an ambassador was an injury done to the prince who sent him. Alphonse X, following the Roman law, formally declared in the Siete Partidas that every ambassador coming to Castile, whether Christian or Mahommedan, was to come in safety; that no one might do him harm either in person or property. In one text of the canonical law selected from a compilation made by Saint-Isidore de Seville,

who himself had borrowed from Ulpian, mention was made of the religious obligation not to do violence to envoys, and that this obligation constituted a part of the law of nations: "Jus gentium est legatorum non violandorum religio." Citing, with some slight modification, the words of the Roman lawyer Pomponius, Angelus de Ubaldis maintained that ambassadors were held to be sacred"legati dicuntur sancti." So insistently did the authorities attribute the religious character to ambassadors, that those who offered them injury were held guilty of sacrilege: "Legati appellantur sancti, infarentes eis injurias incidunt sacrilegio." Thus did inviolability, one of the two great prerogatives of public ministers, become affirmed; and this, according to one writer, means the most absolute and complete exemption, the right to the most vigilant and effective protection. At the commencement of the seventeenh century, Jean Hotman, the author of the treatise The Duty and the Dignity of Ambassadors, said:

With regard to his person, it is common knowledge that by law both human and divine, even amongst barbarous nations and in the midst of arms and enemies in arms, the person of the ambassador has been at all times held sacred and inviolable. The penalty inflicted upon those who injure them has been at all times most severe. This law has come to be proverbial, namely, that an ambassador is always exempt from any outrage and harm. any And when men have not inflicted punishment it has been seen from century to century that God has not allowed this crime to go unpunished; and in witness hereof, observe the destruction of Carthage, of Tyre, of Thebes, of Corinth, and of so many other states, and even entire provinces and kingdoms.

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The sea has played a prominent part in the history of humanity. Three-fourths of the area of the globe are covered by its waves. Not only does the ocean exercise a beneficent influence on the genera! economy of the planet, but as a field of action it guarantees to enterprising nations supremacy and preponderant influence. It would be possible to write a history of the sea, or rather of that which has occurred upon the sea, and to call particular attention to the juridical institutions which have to do particularly with matters oceanic. Maritime law includes in its broadest conception all relations which arise by virtue of the sea. It constitutes a branch of general com

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mercial law, and at the same time is based upon the law of nations. While many of the institutions of maritime law are relatively recent, some, on the contrary, are of great age; and almost all are peculiar in that they constitute in effect the application to naval transactions of rules originating or put into practice on land. They are in a sense a continuation of "terrestrial" institutions. This is admitted in private maritime law. Uniformity, which is a characteristic of this law, owes this feature to its field of action, to wit, the ocean, which is everywhere the same. A French jurist, Fremery, has said that those who navigate the sea constitute an individual people just as do those who deal in trade and barter upon the land. Says he: They occupy this vast heritage in common, and they glean in freedom its fertile yield." He calls them "a nation" which gathers within its bosom classes drawn from all the people of the world. By virtue of its origin maritime law is based on custom. The great international conventions dealing with this law are of recent date. For centuries there was no law-giver, and when legislative acts came into existence they were simply declaratory of customs regularly observed. Some of these provisions have a curious origin. James Lorimer cites the custom of the desert in connection with this subject. From time immemorial groups of merchants have crossed deserts. Usages grew up regarding the respective rights and duties of those who formed a portion of these caravans, and amongst these usages is to be found the custom of determining the liability of those whose effects have been preserved in order to indemnify those whose goods had been sacrificed by way of jettison. A like rule is to be found with regard to mercantile operations by sea. "The lex Rhodia de jactu," says the author we have just mentioned, "which the Romans borrowed from the Phoenicians, is now in general observance amongst the tribes of the Sahara, as the customary mode of distributing the losses incurred by caravans crossing the desert, between the company owning the camels, or what in railway language would be called the plant, and the passengers or owners of goods. The Khodja or scribe acts as a supercargo and is said to be quite conversant with the distinctions between general and special average." The Sahara

that is the Desert in a pre-eminent sense has been described, in 1895, by A. H. Keane. The strictly desert zone is 2,386,000 square miles, with a sporadic population of 1,400,000. Says Keane:

In the whole of the Sahara proper there is not a single carriage road, not a mile of navigable water, not a wheeled vehicle, canoe or boat of any kind. There are scarcely even any beaten tracks, for most of the routes though followed for ages without divergence to right or left, are temporarily effaced with every sandstorm, and recovered only by means of the permanent landmarks- wells, prominent dunes, a solitary eminence crowned with a solitary bust, or else a line of bleached human and animal bones, the remains of travelers, slaves, or camels that may have perished of thirst or exhaustion between the stations. Few venture to travel alone, or even in small parties which could offer little resistance to the bands of marauders hovering about all the main lines of traffic. Hence the caravans usually comprise hundreds or even thousands of men or animals all under a Kebir or guide, whose word is law, like that of the skipper at sea. Under him are assistants, armed escorts and scouts, to spy out the land in dangerous neighbourhoods, besides notaries to record contracts and agreements, sometimes even public criers and an imân, to recite the prescribed prayers to the faithful.

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The French writer, Raymond Thomassy, holding that both in the case of caravans and merchant ships, journeys are made in but one bottom, sillage," whether across the desert or across the sea, says that in either case, the conditions arising from isolation or protection. from hostile attack are identical. As a matter of fact the organization of the land journeys of the caravans was like that of the seavoyage of the merchant ship before the great changes brought about in ocean traffic at the time of the crusades. During the period of antiquity and the first half of the Middle Ages, traders embarked with their wares and sailed from port to port in the company of the owner of the vessel. Operations by caravan were carried on along analogous lines.

Regarding the development of juridical institutions of the sea through custom, a striking example is afforded by the case of the Mediterranean. Carl Ritter, the famous geographer, designates the following as the triple period of civilization: the three epochs of fluvial, Mediterranean and oceanic civilization. The Mediterranean era lasted for nearly twenty-three centuries. Beginning about the

year 800 before our era, when the Phoenicians, already long established on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, succeeded in founding their factories on the shores and in the islands of the great interior sea. The era came to an end when at the end of the fifteenth century the geographical discoveries of that period changed the center of activity, and inaugurated the beginning of the Oceanic epoch. In the last centuries of the Middle Ages, that beautiful and progressive civilization at the head of which were the Italian states, Norman Sicily, the states of the French Mediterranean, and Spanish towns such as Barcelona, declined. In the principle ports maritime law appeared in the form of juridical rules which arose from marine and commercial usages, solidifying first through force of oral tradition, then taking on the form of digests of judicial decisions, or even regulations, stating generally that their text was no more than a simple codification of rules which existed already in fact.

In the formation of these juridical rules of the sea the maritime guilds of the different cities played an important part. The guild of maritime commerce was an association of all those interested in commercial maritime dealings. In various cities the guild takes the name of ordo maris, in others that of curia maritima, in documents drawn up in Latin. Men became members of the ordo or of the curia maritima; the members entered under oath; and magistrates were appointed by the guild, who were known by the historical name of consuls. They watched over the security of property on the sea; and insisted that the commanders of armed vessels pledge themselves under oath to do no injury to friends of the city, and give a guaranty against the commission of transgressions. If an injury were committed against friends the consul took up the question of punishing the offenders. Consular decisions were soon compiled, and those works, known as the Book of the Consulates, appeared; in other words collections of the judgments rendered by the Consular Tribunals. The Consulates appear to have been Italian in origin. It seems that in the controversy between Pisa and Barcelona with regard to the precedence of their guild and consular court, a decision in favor of Pisa was rendered. However that may be, the real document par