to determine what may be presumed to be known, and what should be explained by an instructer who undertakes to teach an art or science. One obvious rule in this case is, not to introduce any thing which may not explain, illustrate, or in some way throw light upon, or facilitate the understanding of, the general subject in hand. In the flood of works with which the press inundates the world in the present times, this rule is of great importance. In the old times, readers were supposed to be more at leisure, and it was thought to be an essential part of a finished treatise, that it should be introduced by some elegantly written discussion, which had little or no connexion with the subject. Thus Cicero's Treatise de Republica is prefaced by a comparison of active and contemplative life, and Sallust introduces his account of the war of Jugurtha with an essay upon the comparative glory of carrying on a war or writing a history of it. These preludes were written in the most finished style, being a sort of ceremonious introduction of the author to his readers, whose attention was thus to be conciliated to what was to be said upon the actual subject. Modern works in law, and on all other subjects, abound in introductions sufficiently remote from the subject. Molloy commences his book on maritime law with the remarks upon the great kindness of Providence in furnishing man with wisdom,' &c. so that he could build a ship, raise a fort, and make bread or cloth.' And even Mr. Park, who is a rigid practical lawyer, begins his treatise on Insurance by an introductory discourse on marine commerce.

Something in the nature of an introduction is indeed very proper, and often no less useful than ornamental, not only in every written treatise or public discourse, but even in an ordinary conversation. We always begin at some distance, greater or less from the main subject, but it is esteemed a mark of good taste and good sense to begin with something directly connected with and leading to it. A great part of this volume of Professor Hoffman is preliminary to his real subject, the law; and the first question that presents itself, in opening the volume, is, as to the connexion of these various subjects, which fill so large a space, with the great subject to be explained and illustrated. In regard to this question, we cannot but think that he has taken too wide a range. That he himself is of this opinion we infer from what he says in his introduction, where he gives us a reason for publishing the volume sepa

rately from the two others, which are to complete his entire work, that it has been induced by the consideration that most of its topics are a little too metaphysical to make their due impression through mere oral delivery; besides which the remaining titles are gradually becoming sufficiently extensive to occupy all the time which can at present be allotted to the duties of the chair.' We hardly think that the subjects themselves of this volume are liable to the first of these objections, since, notwithstanding the metaphysical character of some of them, they are certainly as capable of being made the subjects of lectures, which might engage the attention of young students, as any part of the municipal law. That they are not very directly connected with the study of the law seems to be thus taken for granted by the author, as he proposes to omit this part in delivering his lectures to his classes. It is true he proposes that the students shall read this part, but they are no more likely to read his volume, perhaps, than they would have been to read the other numerous works upon the same subjects.

6

But our readers will form a more just opinion of the volume if we follow the author through the various topics with which it is filled, the first of which are the origin and nature of man, and his physical and moral constitution.' We regret that this lecture was introduced, for the world has been flooded with general disquisitions on mind, matter organised and unorganised, life, instinct, sensation, intelligence, animals, vegetables;' and if an author should think he could enter these wandering mazes without perplexing himself and his readers, one of the last places of making such an experiment, it seems to us, would be in a practical treatise on the law. When the student enters upon his career of legal studies, panting and on fire to train and equip himself for the actual bona fide conflicts of the forum, it is really discouraging to him to be conducted to some cavity of a rock, to study the properties of the sea-anemone, or be thrown into an abstraction on the subject of Des Cartes's theory that there is no mutual action and reaction between the mind and the body, or to be confounded with the old question of the moral liberty and free-agency of man, with which he has already been severely exercised by his tutors in moral philosophy and metaphysics.

The next lecture, which treats 'of man in a state of nature,' has a more direct bearing upon the subject of law. A very

useful inquiry to the student is here instituted, namely, what is a 'state of nature?' Though we do not often meet with this phrase in municipal law, yet even there it is sometimes used, and in the treatises on natural and national law, is often repeated. It is therefore well worth while for the student to attach some definite meaning to it, and to settle in his mind its different uses, from which will result one considerable advantage at least, for he will readily perceive that in a great many pages where writers are talking of a state of nature, they use words without any precise ideas, and so he saves himself the trouble of puzzling himself about their meaning. Now the state of nature and individual independence, as distinguished from a state of society, mutual dependence, and contracted obligations, is one in which the whole human race never has been, and never can be, placed, as Mr. Hoffman very justly remarks, for these social bonds fix themselves upon men from the time of their birth, and would do so to the first offspring of the solitary couple who constituted all the inhabitants of the earth. But still nations, not bound to each other by treaties or compacts, are in a state of nature, and so thousands of individuals have met, since time was, who were, in respect to each other, in a state of nature, being beyond all civil jurisdiction and bound by no obligations in their conduct towards each other, except those arising out of the moral constitution of man, or what is strictly the law of nature. Though nations, in respect to each other, are therefore in a state of nature as far as laws are concerned, and though individuals have often found themselves in this state in respect to each other, yet when we speak of all men as having at some time been in this state, it is so far entirely an imaginary one.

This lecture includes the consideration of Hobbes's theory of the natural hostility of the human race to each other, which Mr. Hoffman combats, as might be expected, for it attacks the foundation of all morals and laws. It resolves all rights into that of the strongest. The foundation upon which that philosopher builds his theory, is certainly a very flimsy one, nor can we perceive that the opposite one is more satisfactory. Hobbes says men are naturally at war; the opposite theory assumes them to be at peace. Now it is evident that they would be naturally at war or peace, according to their dispositions and motives, and to suppose a uniformity in this respect, all the world over, if government should be at once abolished, all

laws abrogated, and all contracted obligations dissolved, would certainly be quite a gratuitous and unsupported assumption. It would appear at once that the natural state of man is both one of war and peace, at the same time between different individuals, and successively between the same individuals. And whatever result may be supposed to follow such an experiment, it would prove nothing either for or against the right of the strongest. The idea that power confers right, is one of the most repulsive and abhorrent to the moral sense or perceptions, that can be stated; and yet we feel abstractedly and also practically, in every day's experience, that power is the only sure guaranty of right, so that we naturally associate the two, and the first thing a man seeks in a state of nature or any other state, is, to possess himself of the power to vindicate his rights, and this is one of the first and strongest motives to the formation of communities, and to entering into the thousand and ten thousand associations which checker civil society.

Having, then, settled what is to be understood by the state of nature, the author proceeds, in his third lecture, to consider 'the rights of nature.' Right is defined, and the different divisions of perfect and imperfect, distinguished, though we do not perceive clearly and definitely, what Mr. Hoffman understands to be an imperfect right. He says that a right of one man, is in all cases, attended by a corresponding obligation in others; and an imperfect right is attended, of course, by an imperfect obligation on others to submit to it. The distinction of Barbeyrac that a perfect right is one that may be asserted by force, and an imperfect one such as may not be so asserted, has been questioned, and the various casuistry upon the subject is recapitulated by Mr. Hoffinan, who proposes, in the end, to cut the knot by substituting primary and secondary, for perfect and imperfect. But this does not, that we can see, clear up the subject, which is certainly a very intricate one. Has a person in distress a right to alms? Have the people of one nation a right to drink of a river within the limits of the territory of another, when no possible injury can result? If a man be fallen into a slough, has he a right to another's assistance to extricate him? We will not stop to settle these inquiries. There is obviously some distinction between these rights or claims, and the right which a man has to cook a fish for himself in spite of all the world, when he has caught it, but what the distinction is, in principle, is a matter of some subtlety

of investigation, which does not seem as yet to have been very satisfactorily made.

The fifth lecture is occupied with the subjects of primary society, and the original impulses to the formation of civil associations, and here are considered, the domestic relations, patriarchal government, and Hobbes's theory of a natural state of

war.

We observe in this lecture what we remember to have remarked in Vattel and other writers on the law of nature and nations, instances of propositions stated as a part of that law, without any train of reasoning in support of them.

'The marriage contract is said to differ from all others in this, that it is necessarily of perpetual obligation, and cannot, like all other contracts, be dissolved by the mutual consent of the parties by whom it was made. This point has been argued by the commentator on Grotius, with his usual ingenuity, though perhaps with occasional sophistry. The objects of marriage, and the obligations it imposes in regard to the offspring, render it indissoluble by the mere act of the parties. Nay, the consent of the offspring, when of full age, added to the sanction of the community, would not justify the parties in dissolving the contract. Divorces, therefore, are against the law of nature. They were indeed permitted by the Mosaic law; but the God of Nature ordained this through the Jewish legislator, for special reasons; and as the laws of nature are of his institution, he alone was competent to allow the dissolution of a contract, otherwise perpetual in its obligation. This view of the subject appears to be confirmed by Christ, who, when he repealed the Mosaic law on this subject, expressly says, that though Moses (as the minister of God) allowed the Israelites to put away their wives, yet “from the beginning it was not so." pp. 148, 149.

Now this is evidently an imperfect and unsatisfactory way of expounding the law of nature and nations, which the author must support upon such arguments as he can adduce in favor of his position, and few, if any of its precepts, are so clear and intuitively evident, as not to require an exposition of their grounds. There are, however, very few instances, in this volume, of hasty declarations of precepts unaccompanied by the premises from which they are deduced.

Domestic relations, patriarchal government, and the motives that first combine men in civil associations being disposed of, the author is led by the natural order of subjects to the consideration of the rights and obligations of government. We are here seeking for the deep moral foundation upon which the