ACCOUNT OF BOOKS. 
* One thing however was wanting 
to the perfection which, had they 
possessed it, they would probably 
have acquired; and that was the 
knowledge of the doctrines of a re- 
ligion which, whatever may be its 
points of controversy, has had the 
uniform effect, wherever it has taken 
root, of producing a more equitable 
notion of things, and a milder system 
of manners. 
‘Accordingly, from the want of 
this great advantage, we may ob- 
serve that the people in question, 
while they were in the first scale of 
eminence in almost all other respects, 
fell far short of their posterity in 
their ideas of the law we treat of. 
The want of a principle sufficiently 
binding in their schemes of morality, 
had a palpable effect upon their 
_characters in private life ; and, as 
might be expected, it transferred 
itself into the spirit of their law of 
nations. However, therefore,” we 
may be accustomed to hear ‘of their 
politeness, their arts, their refine- 
ments in elegance, or their know- 
ledge of laws, we find, upon inquiry, 
that their politeness, while it shar- 
pened their understandings, had no 
effect upon their hearts; that their 
refinements were for the most part 
sensual; and when we comé to con- 
template the general scope of their 
laws of war and pease they will be 
found too often to resemble the bar- 
barians they despised. 
The author then comes to the 
period at which Rome, 
“With heaviest sound, a giant statue 
fell; Couns. 
and he draws an interesting, but 
frightful, picture of that calamitous 
time. After having given a suc- 
cinct account of the maxims and 
morals of the northern nations, he 
l¢ 
[*173 
observes that, with such morals and 
maxims, their law of nations must 
have been far different from that 
comparatively regular one of the 
Romans. These rules of right, far 
from checking their dreadful and 
murderobs inclinations, were them- 
selves so warped and adapted to 
them, that they gave them fresh 
force. 
He then gives the history of the 
law of nations in Europe, from the 
above period down to the eleventh 
century ; and he afterwards pursues 
ittothe 15th. He shews the in- 
fluence of the feudal law, and after- 
wards that of chivalry, on the law of 
nations; and he points out the re+ 
gularity and improvements which it 
received from the institutions of 
chivalry: institutions, (he says,) 
which have long gone by, and faded 
before the general improvement of 
manners which time had brought on. 
In the ages however when they 
flourished, they were of essential 
consequence to the well being of 
the world, and as faras they went 
supplied the place of philosophy 
itself,’ 
A considerable portion of the 
work is employed in shewing the ins 
fluence of Christianity, and the ec- 
clesiastical establishments, on the 
law of nations. 
- Mr. Ward then proceeds to dis- 
cuss the influence of treaties and 
conventions ; and this we consider 
asthe most useful part of his work, 
It is followed by an entertaining 
account of the rank and claims of 
the nations of Europe: but we do 
not find that he takes any notice of 
one of the most curious events in 
the history of the rank and prece- 
dence of the English nation, viz. the 
dispute for precedence between" 
the French and English, at the: 
council 
