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، On that high bench where Kenyon holds his seat,
England may boast that Truth and Justice meet;

But in a northern court, where Pride commands the chair, Oppression holds the scales, and judgment's lost in Ayr." On reading Moore's Anacreon he improvised

"Oh, mourn not for Anacreon dead;

Oh, weep not for Anacreon fled;

The lyre still breathes he touched before,

For we have one Anacreon Moore."

With all his gaiety, Henry Erskine was unaffectedly religious, and lived in strict accordance to his faith. A strong devotional feeling distinguished the three brothers, tinged in Lord Buchan by an addiction to Methodism, and in Lord Erskine by a tendency to superstition. In addition to the ghost story scouted by Sir Walter Scott, the Chancellor told the following story, in a large company, to the Duchess of Gordon, which proves either his credulity, or love of mystifi

cation.1

"I also," said Lord Erskine, after one of her grace's marvellous anecdotes, “believe in second sight, because I have been its subject. When I was a very young man, I had been for some time absent from Scotland. On the morning of my arrival in Edinburgh, as I was descending the steps of a close, on coming out from a bookseller's shop, I met our old family butler. He looked greatly changed, pale, wan, and shadowy as a ghost. Eh! old boy,' I said, 'what brings you here?' He replied, 'To meet your honour, and solicit your interference with my lord, to recover a sum due to me, which the steward at our last settlement did not pay.' Struck by his looks and manner, I bade him follow me to the bookseller's, and into whose shop I stepped back; but when I turned round to him he had vanished. I remembered that his wife carried on some

1 A singular instance of his easy good faith was shown on occasion of the Ireland forgery, when, together with Parr, Boswell, and other credulous dupes, he signed an attestation of belief that the Shakespeare papers so impudently forged by young Ireland were genuine. "All I can say is," writes Erskine, "that I am glad I am not the man who has undertaken to prove Mr. Malone's proposition that the new Shakespeare was a forgery; for I think I never saw such a body of evidence in my life to support the authenticity of any matter which rests upon such high authority. I am quite sure a man would be laughed out of an English court of justice, who attempted to maintain Malone's opinion in the teeth of every rule of probability acknowledged for ages as the standard for investigating truth."

little trade in the old town; I remembered even the house and flat she occupied, which I had often visited in my boyhood. Having made it out, I found the old woman in widow's mourning. Her husband had been dead for some months, and had told her, on his death-bed, that my father's steward had wronged him of some money, but that when Master Tom returned he would see her righted. This I promised to do, and shortly after fulfilled my promise. The impression was indelible; and I am extremely cautious how I deny the possibility of such 'supernatural visitings' as those which your grace has just instanced in your own family."

A concentrated spirit of devotion was inherited in the Erskine family. Their great-grandfather was a Presbyterian sufferer in the days of Charles II. The names of Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine have received a stamp of especial reverence in what is called par excellence the religious world. Erskine's aunt, Lady Frances, was the wife of that brave and pious soldier Colonel James Gardner. His sister, Lady Anne Agnes, of whom Erskine is reported to have said, that he considered it his highest honor to have such a woman for his sister, was appointed treasurer of Lady Huntingdon's charities, and continued to superintend her chapel after her decease. At this chapel their father, towards the close of life, was a regular attendant. The solemn service which took place at Bath on his death, and produced a great sensation there, was of a character to make a deep impression on the mind of the future Chancellor. "All hath been awful," writes Whitfield in his strange but striking language, "and more than awful. On Saturday evening, before the corpse was taken from Buchan House a word of exhortation was given and a hymn sung in the room where the corpse lay. The young earl with his hand on the head of the coffin, the countess dowager on his right, Lady Anne and Lady Isabella on his left, and their brother Thomas next to their mother, with a few friends. On Sunday morning, all attending in mourning at early sacrament, they were seated by themselves at the foot of the corpse, and with their servants received first, and a particular address was made to them."

At eleven public service began, and Whitfield preached a funeral sermon. "The coffin being placed within a place. railed in for the purpose, the bereaved relations sat in order

within, and their domestics outside the rail. Three hundred tickets of admission, signed by the present earl, were given to the nobility and gentry. Ever since there hath been public service and preaching twice a day. This is to be continued till Friday morning, then all is to be removed to Bristol in order to be shipped for Scotland.”

The inscription on the Earl of Buchan's coffin runs thus :-
"His life was honourable-His death blessed,
He sought earnestly peace with God,
He found it

Alone in the merits of our Saviour."

On the head stone of his son must be graven the confession that he was a sincere Christian, too easily led away by temptation. The votive urn of friendship will record the social merits of the festive companion, ready patron, thorough gentleman,-full of generous impulses and honourable feelings, on whose genial character not a shade of pride, or envy, malice could rest, and in whose courtesy to all ranks of the profession there was no alloy. Rightly do the bar adore his memory, for generations of lawyers may pass away, ere they see his like again. The statue raised to his honour in Lincoln's Inn Hall, the bust dedicated in Holland House, with a just inscription "nostræ eloquentiæ facile princeps," will perish, sooner than the tradition of their fondness and his supremacy. But more enduring still, and lasting as the language in which they are printed, will be the monuments of his eloquence and relics of his power as an advocate. Long as the trial by jury shall exist, will the spells of the great magician be studied with care and admiration, but with little hope of rivalry, for his wand is broken, and its fragments lie scattered on his grave. Jurors might say to Erskine, as his admirers said to Sir Philip Sydney, "we listen, it is true, to others, but give up our hearts to thee."

T.

ART. III.-THE INTERNATIONAL LAW OF EMBARGO AND

REPRISAL.

HOSTILE Embargo is imposed by a nation upon such vessels within her ports, or in foreign ports,1 as belong to states, against whom she has declared or is about to declare war.2 The effect of this embargo is to prohibit the departure of ships or goods from those ports until further order. But Embargo has a much more extensive signification, as ships are not only stopped from the before-mentioned motives, but are frequently detained to serve a prince in an expedition, and for this purpose often have their lading taken out, if a sufficient number of empty vessels be not procurable to supply the state's necessity, and this without any regard to the colours they bear, or whose property they are. Thus it frequently happens that many European nations may be forcibly united in the same service at a juncture, when most of the sovereigns are at peace with the nation against which they are obliged to serve.3

The confiscation of vessels detained by a hostile embargo seems at first sight to militate entirely with the modern principle of the law of nations, laid down by Vattel, that the property of an enemy within a sovereign's dominions at the time. of the declaration of war cannot be detained. But a nation may receive injuries, for which an embargo upon the wrongdoer's vessels is the only means of enforcing redress. When such an injury is committed, the sovereign has a right to seize the offender's property provisionally, in order to force him to justice; and the act of seizure is equivocal, and liable to be varied by his subsequent conduct. Should that conduct be such as to establish the relations of peace, then the seizure would prove in the event a mere civil embargo or temporary sequestration, and the property would be restored, as is usual at the conclusion of those embargoes, which are often resorted to for various causes not immediately connected with any expectations of hostility. On the contrary, if the transactions end in hostility, the declaration of war has a retroactive effect,

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12 Robinson, 211.

2 Grot. c. ii. s. 10; 1 Black. Com. 270; 4 Mod. 177, 179; Delmada v. Motteux, Park's Ins. 6th ed. 311.

3 Beawes, Lex Mercat. Chitty's ed. 392; Molloy, b. i. c. 6, ss. 1, 2. Vat. lib. ii. c. 18, ss. 340, 342.

and impresses the direct hostile character upon the original seizure, which is declared to be no embargo, but an act of hostility done hostili animo ab initio ; and the property taken is liable to be used as that of persons trespassers ab initio and guilty of injuries which they have refused to redeem by any amicable alteration of their measures.1

The confiscation under a hostile embargo of enemy's property which comes to a sovereign's hands after the injury received, is not therefore the case of detaining such property being in the sovereign's dominions at the declaration of war, which is the act pronounced illegal by Vattel, but it is the case of a fair act of hostility after war begun,-wrongfully by the enemy, if his aggression amounted to an act of hostility, from the retro-active effect of the declaration of war; and justly by the confiscating sovereign if the embargo is to be considered, from the same retro-action, as the first act of hostility. There may be cases, in which the extent of this confiscation of property is very disproportionate to that of the aggression which caused the embargo; but it was in the enemy's power to redeem it by repairing the original injury, and it is for him afterwards to punish that over-measure of retaliation if he can; but the general right, as above stated, of confiscation after embargo, is consistent with the law of nations, and expressly sanctioned by Vattel.

In the event of hostile embargo, the English law holds that the expense of wages and provisions falls upon the owner only, and the freight must bear it.3 In the case of an empty ship therefore, detained under the Dutch embargo of 1832, the judge of the Vice Admiralty Court of Gibraltar made the necessary food of the crew a lien upon the ship.

A capture may also be made previously to the formal declaration of hostilities under letters of marque and reprisal.

Reprisals are either general or special. A commission of general reprisals is stronger than even a declaration of war, authorizing the seizure of the goods of the foreign subjects everywhere and immediately, whereas by treaty in case of a declaration of war there are six months allowed to remove

1 Per Lord Stowell, 5 Robin. 245, 246; see also 1 Robin. 117.

2 Vat. lib. ii. c. 18, s. 342.

2 Term Rep. 413, 4 East, 43, 546.

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