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law of nations, led to a minute investigation of the rights of belligerents and of neutrals, and his arguments, printed for the Commission, supplied valuable material for his annotations on the Elements of International Law. These spoliation claims must not be confounded with those which have so long figured in our Congressional annals. At this time he delivered a course of lectures on Political Economy to the Senior Class of Columbia College, which, after having been repeated before the Mercantile Library Association, were published in 1832. These lectures were intended to demonstrate the Ricardian theory and to sustain those doctrines of free trade of which he was ever a consistent advocate. He also pronounced the anniversary discourse, in 1832, before the New York Historical Society, which was published under the expressive title of The Origin and Nature of the Representative and Federative Institutions of the United States; the object of which was the defence of our system of government as it existed before the late civil war the complete autonomy of the States for the regulation of their internal affairs, and the national Government for the management of foreign affairs. Several articles from his pen appeared in the various prominent periodicals, many of which were subsequently reprinted. To the volumes of the American Annual Register, from 1829 to 1834, he contributed important papers on the different countries of Europe. For the North American Review (1831), he wrote an article on the Bank of the United States, sustaining its Constitutionality and necessity as the financial agent of the Government, and, for the American Quarterly Review (1834), An Inquiry into the Causes of the Public Distress, due to the failure to recharter the bank by the Government. For the New York Review (1841), he prepared a History of the Negotiations in Reference to the Eastern and North-eastern Boundaries of the United States, a subject with which he was perfectly familiar from his diplomatic experience in London. In 1843, the Democratic Review published his memoir of his old chief, Albert Gallatin, and the same year he delivered, by request, before the young men of New Brunswick, a discourse on the Colonization and History of New Jersey. At Mr. Wheaton's solicitation, he prepared for the North American Review (1845.) a notice of the History of the Law of Nations, while to an earlier volume (1843.) he contributed one on Folsom's Translations of Cortez Dispatches. To this era belongs

one of his few great forensic efforts made before the Court for the Correction of Errors of the State of New York, in the case of the German Reformed Church, (Miller vs. Gable 4, Denio, 570,) when his argument, (1845, 8vo, pp. 80,) exhaustively examining the doctrine of charitable uses in its relation to religious societies, was successful in reversing, by a vote of fourteen to three, the decision of the Chancellor, which had given to a small minority of a congregation the church property, on the ground of a deviation of the majority from the doctrines of the founders. For fear of misapprehension, it may be as well to state that, while the law of New York on this important question is as here decided by the Court of Appeals, the law of Pennsylvania, following the English doctrine on the same subject, is as decreed by the Chancellor, whose decision the Court of Appeals reversed.

Mr. Lawrence ever took an active interest in the public improvements of his native city. He had a prominent part in the projection of the Erie Railroad, and was one of its first directors. To his efforts, with other far-sighted New Yorkers, is due the construction of High Bridge and the consequent preservation of the navigability of the Harlem River. In 1850, Mr. Lawrence removed from New York to his estate known as Ochre Point, on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, near Newport, R. I., where he already had had for several years his summer residence, and which was now destined to become his home for the remainder of his days. As an evidence of his far-sightedness, I may state that for this site, the most beautiful on the island, he paid the sum of $12,000, which, a third of a century later, was appraised for purposes of taxation at three-quarters of a million of dollars. Soon after his settlement in Rhode Island, Mr. Lawrence was elected, on the Democratic ticket, Lieutenant-Governor of the State, and subsequently became, under a provision of the State Constitution, Governor. In the exercise of his office, he pointed out the abuses to which imprisonment for debt, which Rhode Island was the last State to abolish, had given rise, and was instrumental in having an act for its abolition enacted by one House; but it was not until 1870 that this relic of barbarism was wiped from the statute book. During the period he held office, the Maine Liquor Law excitement was at its height, and he was strenuous in his opposition to the measure on Constitutional grounds, a speech of his to the Senate of Rhode Island on the subject being preserved in print.

Mr. Wheaton, the early friend and mentor of Governor Lawrence, having died in March, 1848, leaving his family in impoverished circumstances, he undertook, at their request, a preparation of an edition of the Elements of International Law, which was published in 1855. This work was preceded by an appreciative notice of the life of Mr. Wheaton, and more than two-thirds of the matter consisted of the emendations of the editor, bringing it down to the period of its publication. This was wholly a labor of love on the part of the editor, and the entire proceeds of this and the subsequent edition of 1863, as well as of the French Commentaire, were voluntarily given to the family of the deceased publicist. In 1858 appeared his treatise on Visitation and Search in Time of Peace, occasioned by the revival, in the Gulf of Mexico, of the British pretensions to visit merchant vessels of other nations, under the pretext of suppressing the African slave trade. This same year

Governor Lawrence visited Europe again, after an absence of some thirty years, remaining until 1860, travelling on the Continent and making the acquaintance of all the prominent writers on the law. of nations there and in England. At Rome he was presented to the Holy Father, at a special audience given to him and Mr. William B. Reed, then just returned from his mission to China. Before his return to this country, he published in Paris a pamphlet in French, entitled L'Industrie Français et l'Esclavage des Nègres aux Etats Unis, which attracted considerable attention and was translated and published in the London Morning Chronicle, from which it was reprinted, with the English title, French Commerce and Manufactures, and Negro Slavery in the United States. It explained the connection which existed between the manufactures of Europe and the system of labor then prevalent in the Southern States.

Upon becoming settled at home, he applied himself to the preparation of a revised and enlarged edition of the Elements of International Law, which was published in 1863 as Lawrence's Wheaton. The appearance of this publication induced Brockhaus, the well-known publisher of Leipsic, who had brought out the French edition of Mr. Wheaton's two works, to request Governor Lawrence to prepare an original commentary in that language. The order of Wheaton's Elements was followed and the first volume of the Commentaire sur les Elements de Droit International was

issued in 1868; the second in 1869, the third in 1873, and the fourth only recently appeared, leaving the work unfortunately unfinished, as it was planned to extend to at least six, and probably eight, volumes. The publication of Lawrence's Wheaton occurred, as it will be seen, when the people of this land were in the midst of the bitter throes of the fratricidal contest between the North and the South, and the pronounced views of Governor Lawrence upon the questions of State rights and allied subjects were unacceptable to the narrow-mindedness which could look at such inquiries only from one stand-point, unable to view them from the broad platform of statesmanship. Such being the case, Lawrence's Wheaton was called disloyal, and Mr. Richard Henry Dana, Jr., a gentleman of high literary attainments, apparently especially qualified for the task by his position in Harvard University, as lecturer on International Law, was engaged to edit a new or loyal edition of Wheaton's Elements, which was issued, in 1866, by the same house as had published three years before Lawrence's Whcaton. This led to a sharp litigation for infringement of copyright between Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Dana in the Circuit Court of the United States for Massachsetts, which, I believe, although the bill was filed October 24, 1866, has not yet been finally settled.

I do not propose to go into an investigation of this highly important case, the printed papers in which cover upwards of sixteen hundred octavo pages; but it is only proper to say that the judicial investigation resulted in an opinion by Judges Clifford and Lowell, delivered September 20, 1869, finding that all the defences raised to Governor Lawrence's claim were bad, and deciding that "the complainant [Lawrence], in the view of a court of equity, is the equitable owner of the notes, including the arrangement of the same, and the mode in which they are therein combined and connected with the text, and of the copyrights taken out by the proprietor. of the book for the protection of the property;" and decreeing" that many of the notes presented in the edition edited by the respondent [Dana,] do infringe the corresponding notes in the two editions edited and annotated by the complainant, and that the respondent borrowed very largely the arrangement of the antecedent edition, as well as the mode in which the notes in that edition are combined and connected with the text." Then, owing to the extensive and complex character of the matter infringed, the cause was referred to a

Master to report the details to the Court. In the course of the opinion, which is very elaborate, and occupies forty-seven printed pages, the Court says:-" Evidence to show that the notes in the two annotated editions of Wheaton's Elements of International Law, as prepared by the complainant, involved great research and labor beyond what appears in those two works, is unnecessary, especially as the allegations in the brief of complainant to that effect are not directly denied in the answer; and it is equally obvious and clear that the results of the research and labor there exhibited could not well have been accomplished by any person other than one of great learning, reading and experience in such studies and investigations. Such a comprehensive collection of authorities, explanations and well-considered suggestions, is nowhere, in the judgment of the Court, to be found in our language, unless it be in the text and notes of the author of the original work." This certainly is as high commendation as any author could hope to receive.

This copyright controversy became of national importance on the occasion of President Grant's sending to the Senate, in March, 1876, the name of Mr. Dana, as Minister to England, to succeed General Schenck, as it caused his rejection by a very decisive vote. I could not entirely approve of Mr. Lawrence's course in bringing forward this private matter to defeat great public ends; for certainly, after the way the country had been misrepresented by General Schenck, a gentleman of Mr. Dana's social position and cultivation would have done much to redeem our credit. Especially did I deprecate the association of so notorious a person as "the Essex statesman "in presenting the case to the Senate. After the rejection, Governor Lawrence wrote to me from Washington, under date of April 19, 1876:

"I am sorry that my course in reference to Dana does not meet your approbation. You can scarcely imagine the provocation; for his hostility antedates long the piratical edition. I can't, however, take to myself the result of the Senate's action; and, as it was entirely on the record that the decision was made, I can hardly imagine that that eminent body decided wrongfully." Further on, referring to a biographical notice which he had desired me to prepare for M. Rolin Jacquemyns, Secretary-General of L'Institut de Droit International, he writes:-"I hope that, unless my Dana affair has lost me your good opinion, you will take care of me after I am gone." It is in fulfilment of this request, often repeated, that this