Much might be gained on this head by a reference to the opinion of chancellor Kent, in the case of Prince v. Hazelton, in 20 Johns. Rep. 502; of rendering an account; and on the effect of a just account in discharging the principal or sureties in the probate bond, a discussion might be usefully had. The feebill provided for a quietus; whether such a discharge has fallen into disuse, and the cause of it, should be ascertained. Some of the decisions have apparently added nothing to the authority of res judicate; it appears that a technical waste is not purged by accounting for the article wasted, although the account may be allowed after due notice to all parties.(a)

If this work be destined for the profession, these and other topics should be enlarged on, and resort had to the civil law writers for illustrations, particularly in respect to the rules of descent as modified by the 118th novel of Justinian; if not, we should give a decided preference to the second work at the head of this article, for the 'lay gents.' That gives minute. instructions for the performance of the office of administrator, executor, guardian, and trustee, at each successive stage of their duty. Local peculiarities are discernible in this work, nor is it free of error. We doubt the propriety of appraising choses in action, referred to at page 44; certainly such a practice in Massachusetts is growing out of use; these rights are usually entered on a list appended to the inventory. The object is to place in the registry a schedule of them with their amounts; and whether sperate or desperate cannot be known, till efforts have been made for their collection; it must be an idle ceremony for men to undertake to value on oath what is hardly the subject of valuation. The recommendation (in page 70,) to place at interest the money collected from time to time in the course of executing these trusts, and of seeing to the assignment of dower (page 218,) is not warranted by law, and may be productive of much inconvenience. Both of these works contain various forms which it will be unnecessary to examine. We notice the inaccuracy of the one relative to conveyances of real estate, in which personal covenants are introduced, in order to put the unwary on their guard. In the appendix of the former, page 239, is found a covenant against all persons claiming as heirs; and at page 196, of the latter,

(a) 16 Mass. Rep. 291, Dawes, judge, v. Winship. 5 Pick. Rep. 97, Brazier v. Clarke.

covenants against incumbrances, and for quiet enjoyment, which involve liabilities that ought never to be assumed in these trust capacities.

The value to the students of the law, of compilations of the kind we have been remarking on, depends altogether upon the completeness and accuracy with which they are formed. We are inclined to concur with Coke however, that they are most profitable to them that make them.' For general use the aid they furnish is doubtful. A treatise upon these subjects is much to be desired; and we despair of seeing one adapted to the institutions of New England and to the wants of the profession, unless the author of the 'View' we have already referred to, should resume his pen and fill up the outlines of the lucid sketch he gave to the public eight years since.

ART. IV. ATHENIAN MARITIME LAWS.

[The following is the best account of the Greek laws on bottomry and respondentia, that has hitherto been published. It is from the translation published in London, 1828, of the PUBLIC ECONOMY OF ATHENS, published at Berlin by Augustus Boekh, (a) in 1817, and will be found equally interesting, both by the lawyer and classical scholar.]

A still higher profit [than the usual rate of interest] was obtained by capitalists, allowance being made for accidents, by sea-security (Toxos væutixos, exdoris) or bottomry, in which, according to the Grecian custom, the ship, the cargo, and the money received for passengers and freightage, were answerable for the principal. The loan appears to have been most frequently made upon the goods, (επι τοις φορτίοις, επί τοις κρημασιν, επι τη εμπορία) more rarely upon the vessel (επι τη νηι, επι τω πλοίω)

(a) The author is noticed in the Encyclopædia Americana under the name of Bökh, as one of the most distinguished philologists of the age, and his learning has not, like that of Parr, been sterile and of no utility beyond the personal acquaintance of its possessor, or after his decease. Professor Boekh is a public Greek lecturer and professor at the University of Berlin, and has published an admirable work on the odes of Pindar; and his Public Economy of Athens, from which the above extract is made, is the beginning of a new era in Attic antiquities. He is a genuine specimen of the indefatigable, neversleeping German literati. In the most active period of his studious life, he sat with his feet in cold water, during the night, to prevent his falling asleep. His intense application has been injurious to him, his sight being now much im

and the money received for passengers and freightage (T vævλ)(α) In a case mentioned by Demosthenes(b) in which a trierarch borrowed money upon a ship that belonged to the state, and to the command of which he expected a successor, it is probable that the only security given was the ship's furniture, which was the private property of the trierarch. This species of interest, which was so odious at Rome, does not appear to have given offence in Greece, and at Athens, in particular, as being a commercial town; it was, however, exposed to much risk, as the loss of the security brought with it the loss of both the principal and interest; agreements of bottomry, in which the creditor did not undergo the risk, were prohibited by the laws of Rhodes, that is, nobody could take such high interest as was customary in bottomry, without exposing himself to the danger of the loss; but since by the Athenian law, every person could take as high interest as he could obtain, this restriction was not met with at Athens; and such contracts as the Rhodian law prohibited, have no connexion with agreements of bottomry, as there would, in those cases, be either

paired, though he still devotes many hours of the day to study, and retains his memory in all its vigor, insomuch that he makes all his numerous quotations and references, in the course of his lectures, without recurring to any written notes; and the accuracy of his references is considered so important, that each one is given twice by the lecturer, with great distinctness, that every pupil may note it correctly, and not be misled or at fault, in recurring to the authors cited, as it is the practice of the pupils to do after the lecture. While Mr. Niebuhr remained at Berlin, before his appointment as Prussian minister near the Papal Court at Rome, he and professor Buttman, (the author of the Greek Grammar, a translation of which has been used in some of our colleges,) Schleiermacher and professor Boekh, read together once or twice a week, some Greek author, each one making remarks and criticisms, and references, in relation to the passages read. In this way each revived and fixed in his memory his own reading, and at the same time possessed himself of the learning of the others. A richer treasure of Greek erudition has never, probably, been collected. Mr. Niebuhr has since remarked that he considered the hours spent at these meetings, those of the most rapid, easy, and satisfactory acquisition, of his whole life, and that all the seeds of Greek learning which had before been sown in his memory, were thus fertilized, and expanded into mature knowledge. The effect was no doubt the same in respect to the others. Professor Boekh made an address in Greek to the present emperor Nicholas, of Russia, at the time of his visiting Berlin.

(a) Concerning the expressions in use, see Schneider ad Xenoph. de Vectig. p. 180. An instance of money being borrowed upon freightage and the vessel, occurs in Demosthenes in Lacrit. p. 933, 22, and upon the freightage, as appears from Diphilus; and of money lent upon the vessel, Demosth. ib. and in Dyonysod. p. 1283, 18. What proof Hudtwalcker (von den Diateten p. 140) can bring in favor of his assertion, that at Athens, in cases of foenus nauticum, the ship was always pledged, I am unable to guess. The contrary is indeed evident from the passages quoted by Schneider and myself.

(b) In Polycl. p. 1212,

VOL. III.-NO. VI.

32

no security, or one which was not at sea. (a) Agreements of bottomry were rendered binding by means of an instrument styled a nautical contract, (avrin uyygaon) (b) which was deposited in the hands of a banker. (c) A document of this kind is preserved entire in the speech of Demosthenes against the Paragraphe of Lacritus, and part of another in the speech against Dionysodorus. The money was lent for a fixed time, and for a voyage to a particular place or country, and the debtor was bound to go to the place pointed out in the agreement, subject to a heavy punishment for the violation.(d) If it was only lent for the voyage outwards (ersgorλovs) the principal and interest were to be paid at the place of destination, either to the creditor himself, if he went the voyage, or to some other person commissioned to receive it; of this latter description was the cermacoluthus, who was frequently sent with the ship;(e) if the contract was for the voyage, both inwards and outwards, (uporsgonλous) the payment was made after the return. In these agreements there was generally a double security, the debtor being bound in goods to twice the amount of the loan, without being able to raise other money upon them;(f) and in agreements for voyages both inwards and outwards, if the goods given in security were sold, fresh commodities of equal value were to be reladen.(g) The severity of the laws against those who withdrew the security from a creditor, has already been remarked; but it was usual for a fine to be also fixed in the agreements, if the debtor should not surrender the whole security, or act otherwise contrary to the conditions, for example, of twice the amount of the principal, or of five thousand drachmas in a loan of two thousand.(h) Until the time of the repayment, the creditor was bound to leave the security untouched, if it was saved; and sometimes, for greater security, even the whole property of the debtor was made answerable by a particular stipulation.(¿) The money of orphans could not, according to law, be vested in bottomry, although this regulation was often violated.

As

(a) Concerning the meaning of the Rhodian law, which Salmasius had not perceived, see Hudtwalcker de Foenore Nautico Romano, p. 7.

(b) Demosth. in Lacrit. p. 932, 3. (c) Demosth. in Phorm. p. (d) Demosth. in Dionysod. p. 1286.

(e) Demosth. in Phorm. p. 909, 24. p. 914, 28.

(f) Demosth. in Phorm. p. 908, et seq. in Lacrit. p. 925-928.

(g) Demosth. in Phorm. p. 909, 26.

908. 20.

(h) Demosth. in Dionysod. p. 1294, 12, in Phorm. p. 915, 1, p. 916, 27. (i) Deed in the oration against Lacritus.

the hazard varied materially, according to the length of the time, the distance of the voyage, the danger to which the vessel was exposed from storms, rocks, hostile fleets, pirates, or licensed privateers, it is less easy to conceive that there should have been an usual rate of interest in Greece for bottomry, than for the mortgage of land'; and the assertion of Salmasius, (a) that the rate of interest of the fifth part (twenty per cent.) was the most common at Athens, is entirely void of foundation. The interest upon the money lent only for the voyage outwards, must moreover have been less than that for the two voyages inwards and outwards, particularly since passengers, who accompanied the master of the vessel, carrying at the same time sums of money with them, would naturally be more ready to lend it to the captain, as they must have still incurred nearly the same risk that arose from bottomry, if they took it with them without interest. The ten or twelve per cent. interest upon money lent in bottomry mentioned by Diphilus,(b) must undoubtedly be understood only of the passage outwards; as also the interest of the eighth part (twelve and a half per cent.) in Demosthenes, (c) which the trierarch Apollodorus lent to the ship-captain Nicippus, for the passage from Sestos to Athens, but upon the condition that the trireme should first go to Hierum to convey vessels laden with corn, and that the principal and interest should be paid at Athens, in case the ship returned safely to port. The amount of this interest of the eighth part, Harpocration correctly estimates at three oboli to the tetradrachm. Higher interest in loans upon bottomry frequently occurs. Xenophon, in his treatise upon the revenues, (d) proposes to erect public buildings for the convenience. of merchants, as a means of procuring a profitable return to the citizens, and he supposes that the necessary sum could be collected by contributions of different magnitude, but that each subscriber would get a return of three oboli daily; he then proceeds to remark, that those who put in ten minas, would receive nearly the interest of a fifth part, the rate which was commonly given in bottomry, (ναυτικον σκεδὸν ἐπιπεμπτον) and those who put in five minas, more than the interest of the

(a) De M. U. T. p. 10. Vide p. 209, where his reference to Xenophon proves nothing.

(b) In the passage which Salmasius quotes, p. 35:

εις δεκ' επι τη μια γενονεναι και δώδεκα

λάβων τα ναυλα και δαυει εξυγγάνων.

(c) Demosth. in Polycl. p. 1211.

(d) 3. 7-14.