496 INTERNATIONAL LAW 



worthy of the great American Republic, the economical instrument- 

 ality of which tends to render the use of natural and physical forces 

 as sparing as possible, to apply the same principles to its legal in- 

 strumentality, and to make of American law what it has made of 

 American industry. 



Even now, besides, humanity is proceeding, too slowly, as we think, 

 toward the unification of private law. This movement, begun by 

 the Paris International Convention of March 20, 1883, on industrial 

 property (patents and trademarks) has been continued by the inter- 

 national convention of September 9, 1886, entered into at Berne 

 regarding authors' rights (copyright). It is strange to see that it is 

 precisely in that part of the law which has been codified most recently 

 by the various nations, that of intellectual rights, that the need of 

 legislation by international convention made itself felt first, and with 

 the greatest intensity. This legal phenomenon appears, in a way, 

 as the symbol of the nearing evolution of law. 



A movement which is not less powerful has taken shape on the 

 other side, in the course of the last quarter of the last century, in that 

 part of the law which relates to the economical relations between 

 nations. It will suffice that I recall the congresses which took up 

 the bill of exchange, and the organization in 1896 of the Interna- 

 tional Maritime Committee, and its successive resolutions regarding 

 collisions at sea, the liability of ship-owners, salvage and life-saving, 

 all being the work of the conferences of Brussels (1897), Antwerp 

 (1898), London (1899), Paris (1900), and Hamburg (1902). Here 

 again it may be said that this phenomenon is symbolic of the human 

 legal state of mind. 



But while the intellectual life of the world and its economic life 

 tend toward the unification of law, it is certain that as regards rights 

 in rem, on the one side, and rights in personam on the other, unifica- 

 tion will be realized only with the greatest effort. 



Rights in rem have their origin in the nature of cultivation and 

 development (of the soil), and often belong also to the manner in 

 which the family is constituted. It will be sufficient to allude to 

 the common ownership of pastures and woods, so frequent still in 

 Switzerland and Belgium, to the parceling of lands in France, to the 

 right of primogeniture in England, to the freedom of the home from 

 seizure or attachment, proclaimed by various legislations, in order 

 to realize how difficult it would be to secure at this time any unifica- 

 tion in this matter. 



As for rights in personam, which relate to guardianship, to major- 

 ity, to marriage, divorce, to the rights between husband and wife, 

 and between them and their children, to the matrimonial status, 

 it is certain that difficulties, which are not less great than the diffi- 

 culties relating to the rights in rem, are opposed to a near unification. 



