to the North Sea. And the Dutch did not attain any extensive commercial prosperity till the sea had opened the passage of the Marsdiep, towards the close of the fourteenth century, so as to admit the large vessels of the west to Amsterdam, and till the wars between France and Flanders, and the northern nations, and the long struggle between Austria and Flanders, had given the Dutch all the advantages of neutral trade, and proved so ruinous to that of their neighbours. Accordingly, it seems only to have been at this time that the Dutch felt it requisite to commit to writing, and adapt to their localities, the maritime usages with which their intercourse with foreigners, particularly the Flemings and Zealanders, and the traders of Lubeck and Hamburgh, had made them acquainted.

But the question still remains, whether the articles we are now considering were originally compiled in the maritime cities of Holland, or belong to a more ancient foreign legislation; and whether, instead of being originals, they are not simply translations? Now, besides several of these articles being literal copies of the Judgments of Damme and the Laws of West Capelle, a superficial perusal shews these maritime usages to be identically the same with the compilation of Wisby, from article thirty-seven to article seventy. And although, in the law of maritime commerce, for the reasons already explained, a mere general resemblance in substance of the regulations would by no means afford a decisive proof of one country having borrowed from another, yet, when a body of maritime laws, containing both general rules and also special arrangements exclusively applicable to one country, is found to have been established in another country, to which these local arrangements are not applicable, there arises a very strong presumption that this body of laws and usages

belongs to the country of which the special articles in-dicate the localities.

The circumstance of the title of Amsterdam, or Enchuysen, being prefixed to the articles, may be equally the result of these articles having been really composed in Holland, or of its maritime towns having borrowed and appropriated them; and, as the articles before specified exist in both compilations, and as in such a parity of conditions the antiquity of possession is naturally a pretty decisive authority, the commercial importance of Wisby being anterior by several centuries to that of Holland, appears to give the preference, in point of originality, to the former. At the same time, without here questioning the very high antiquity hitherto almost universally ascribed, particularly by the northern jurists and historians, to the laws of Wisby, it may be observed that these articles do not (as M. Schlegel supposes) mention Amsterdam and the other ports of Holland as foreign places, but have for their object the special interests of Amsterdam, in providing against accidents which may happen in the harbour of that city, or in the course of navigation to vessels departing from that port; while it is the localities of Norway, and other parts adjacent to Wisby, which receive that designation, since vessels are there spoken of as coming from these countries to Amsterdam. Nay, one of the articles provides that, if the master shall have set sail from the place where he loaded, outward into the Vlie or the Marsdiep, the sailor shall have the whole of his wages -a provision totally inapplicable to Wisby.

M. Schlegel is, no doubt, right in objecting to Verwer that the indication of the localities of Holland is not a completely decisive proof; because, in the middle ages, the countries which borrowed the laws or usages of another substituted in them the names which its own

localities required. This kind of argument was employed when it was shewn that the Roles d'Oleron had been borrowed from France by the cities of Damme and West Capelle; but, in the present case, this reasoning would be valid only if in the manuscripts or editions of the compilation of Wisby there should be found, instead of the names of the ports and localities of Holland, names peculiar to Wisby and the Isle of Gothland, of which it was the capital. On that supposition, reasoning by analogy, and taking into consideration that Wisby was a very important commercial entrepôt long before the rise of Holland, we might have some ground for ascribing to Wisby the articles in question. But, in fact, these articles bear solely the names of Amsterdam, Amelande, Vlie, and Marsdiep, not only in the Dutch text, but even in the manuscripts. and texts of the compilation of Wisby, and particularly in the most ancient edition, of 1505.

Again, various articles in the compilation of Wisby make provision for vessels entering the Vlie or Marsdiep drawing too much water, (a provision which could never occur to the magistrates of Wisby,) and refer to Amsterdam as the centre city to which the regulations applied.

On the other hand, there was a sort of general assent of the lawyers and writers of Holland in not raising any claim to the articles under consideration, till Verwer did so in 1711; and there is a declaration of the magistrates of Amsterdam, in 1570, that part of the law observed by them was the maritime law of Wisby. But this declaration probably referred to the other articles contained in the compilation of Wisby, viz., to the thirty-six articles which precede, and the two last which follow, those contained in the Dutch compilation.

CHAPTER V.

OF THE MARITIME AND COMMERCIAL LAWS OF WISBY.

THE Compilation known under the title Hogheste Water-Recht de Wisby, (the Supreme Maritime Law of Wisby,) has been represented, by the greatest part of the jurisconsults and historians of the north, as the most ancient monument of maritime law of the middle ages, and as the source of the primitive or earliest part of the Roles d'Oleron. But M. Pardessus has shewn, by a very learned and elaborate train of critical argument, that this long and generally entertained opinion has but a very slender foundation in historical fact: and it may be worth while shortly to notice his argu

ment.

He begins with shewing that the maritime laws of Wisby, to which Leibnitz refers and erroneously ascribes an old date, the reign of the Emperor Lotharius, about the twelfth century, is not the Hogheste Water-Recht we are now considering, but a compilation entitled Wisby Stadt-Lag pa Gotland, (the Laws of the City of Wisby, in Gothland,) published by Hadorph in 1676-1687; which appears to have been compiled and promulgated under the authority of Magnus, the son of Erick, in the early part of the fourteenth century, and which contains, in the third part of Book III., a considerable number of regulations in maritime law. And having established this point, M. Pardessus proceeds to inquire whether, prior or subsequent to the code just described, the city of Wisby had any maritime legislation, the same as we possess under the title of Hogheste Water-Recht.

In the priority, in point of antiquity, claimed for the

laws of Wisby over all the other maritime laws which have succeeded the Roman law in Europe, Grotius, Kuricke, Loccenius, Arpe, Bynkershoek, Langenbeck, all concurred; Westerveen alone raised any doubts, until Verwer appeared, who maintains that all the articles, except the first twelve, are nothing but the Judgments of Damme and the maritime usages of Holland. The later writers, Fischer, in his History of German Commerce, and Benecke, in his Treatise on Insurance, likewise recognise the high antiquity of the laws of Wisby as an incontestible fact: nay, even royal and legislative documents, such as the charter to the town of Husum, and the maritime code of Sweden, of 1667, sanction the same opinion. But the framers of laws are not, in matters of historical fact, and in assertions upon a point of literary antiquity, more exempt from error than private individual writers. Whatever be the number of authorities, they must yield to the evidence of facts; and M. Pardessus ventures to affirm that no historical monument, no manuscript, no print of the compilation, either by its own date or by connection with or reference to more ancient manuscripts, furnishes the slightest indication which can (proof being out of the question) even afford a presumption of the antiquity which the writers before mentioned assume and take for granted in short, all those writers who maintain this high antiquity confine themselves to allegations successively copied, so that each avails himself of, and founds his assertion upon, that of his predecessor; and the first, who is thus the source of the subsequent opinions, has no other authority than his own.

The very existence of the code entitled Wisby StadtLag, which, we have seen, was promulgated under sovereign authority in the course of the fourteenth century, and which proves the existence of previous legislation, affords a strong argument against the great