'91^1 BALCH— SOME FORMER MEMBERS. 585 



Another man to make his mark as a jurist and at the same time 

 in the world of letters, who filled the presidential chair of this so- 

 ciety, was Peter Stephen Du Ponceau. His picture by Sully hangs 

 there on the northern wall. Born in the Isle de Re ofif the western 

 coast of France, June 3, 1760, Pierre Etienne Du Ponceau came to 

 America in 1777 as secretary to Baron Steuben.^ After the war 

 was over, Du Ponceau studied law and was admitted to the Phila- 

 delphia bar in 1785 and made his mark in that profession. In the 

 year 1810 he published in this city a translation under the title of 

 " A Treatise on the Law of War," of the first book of Cornelius van 

 Bynkershoek's " Ousestiones Juris Publici," prefixing to it a preface 

 and introduction distinguished alike for style and learning.^" Du 



" Robley Dunglison, M.D., " A Public Discourse in Commemoration of 

 Peter S. Du Ponceau, LL.D., late President of the American Philosophical 

 Society, delivered before the Society pursuant to appointment, on the 2Sth of 

 October, 1844," Philadelphia, 1844; Ernest Nys, " Les fitats-Unis et le Droit 

 des Gens," Brussels, 1909, page 147. 



"He translated into English two other books treating of two phases of 

 international law. Neither has even been printed and the manuscript transla- 

 tions are now in the possession of the society. One, entitled the " Law of 

 Neutrality," was translated from the German translation of the original work 

 of the Abbe Galiani that was published in Italian at Naples in 1782: " De' . 

 doveri de' principi neutrali verso i principi guerreggianti, e di questi verso i 

 neutrali libri due." The other, " On the Freedom of the Seas," is a transla- 

 tion of Gerard de Raneval's " De la liberte des Mers," published at Paris in 

 181 1. To Du Ponceau the society is also indebted for the possession of a 

 copy of John Selden's " Mare Clausum," London, 1635-36. From him also it 

 received a copy of Richard Zouche's small book that first appeared in 1650, 

 entitled "Juris et judicii fecialis, sive, Juris Inter Gentes, et Quasstionum de 

 Eodem Explicatio, qua, quse ad pacem et bellum inter deversos principes, aut 

 populos spectant, ex prrecipuis historico-jure-peritis, exhibentur." This little 

 book is very likely the first manual of the positive Law of Nations and is 

 rare. 



Zouche was probably the first writer who deliberately used the name 

 Jus Inter Gentes to designate a science which until that time had been name- 

 less. "This collection of words," Dr. Holland says, "had, indeed, occurred, 

 as it were accidentally, here and there in the pages of earlier writers, such as 

 Victoria, Vasquez, Saurez and Grotius." In 1716, the Chancellor d'Aguesseau 

 advised his son to study " ce qu'on appelle le Droit des Gens, ou, pour parler 

 plus correctement, parceque le nom de Droit des Gens a un autre sens, le 

 Droit entre les Nations." In 1789, Jeremy Bentham in his " Principles of 

 Morals and Legislation " coined the term " International Law " as " calculated 

 to express, in a more significant way, the branch of the law which goes 



