Distinction of criminal law useful only for practical purposes. Yet so much consequence has often been attributed by legal writers to the means or method of protecting the person and property against the more violent offences and misdeeds, that they are singled out as a class by themselves and called crimes, chiefly because the mode of procedure and the mode of punishment are different; while as regards the lowest and most trivial of those assaults, they are called merely civil injuries, and are redressed by an action at law. The distinction between civil and criminal law is thus founded merely on the procedure by which the violation of the right is redressed, and on nothing else. It is true some rules of that procedure lie so deep and are so interwoven with the most tender of all the liberties of the subject, that though the division is altogether subordinate, and not primary, yet the incidents surrounding the course of procedure are of the first importance. The law shows its sense of the distinction between the degrees of misconduct involved in the criminal and the civil acts respectively by attaching a severe and degrading punishment to the former, and entrusting the prosecution, at

gradually changes into a civil code in many of its parts.-2 Guizot, Civ. Fr. Lect. 9.

BLACKSTONE admitted that the criminal law in his time was in a more crude state than the civil law.

It may be said that all law is at first civil law, that is to say, all offences and wrongs are mere matters of money between the two parties. The notion of singling out some offences and saying that they are too serious to be bargained over and left to the sole disposal of the two parties affected, and of insisting on a fine in respect of these being paid to the king, or some bodily punishment separately inflicted on the wrongdoer as an example or deterrent, is of later origin, and arises, after long experience, when the power of drawing nice distinctions and when habits of reflection have been acquired. The criminal law is thus a product of a civilisation considerably more advanced than the civil law, and is merely a selection or classification of the wrongs for a separate treatment and more strictly personal punishment. In the Chinese code the distinction between civil and criminal law was said to be unknown, and all wrongs and causes of action were treated criminally.-Staunton's Chin. Code, 360. It was the same in the kingdom of Siam.—3 Univ. Mod. Hist., 345. In the laws of Zoroaster all violations of law were treated as crimes, and there was nothing corresponding to civil law; a refusal to pay a debt was equivalent to larceny, and punished accordingly.D'Anquet. Zend Avesta.

least nominally, to the crown; while as regards a civil injury, it is entirely an affair of money between the parties, and if they choose to settle or compromise their differences, no other person can interfere to prevent them. It is, indeed, a common, though incorrect, expression that the one kind of injury concerns the public and the other merely concerns the individual. The correct view is that both concern the public, and both concern the individual, though in different degrees. The distinction is not sufficiently broad and clear to found a separate division of the law in any methodical treatise, though it is a conspicuous part of practice relating to the defence of nearly all rights.

To

Distinction of commercial law.-Sometimes the name of commercial law is used to denote a division of the law which, as the name imports, includes those portions of law specially affecting merchants and traders. But this is nothing but a fanciful and arbitrary distinction. select a few chapters of the law of contracts may be convenient and useful, but cannot offer more or less than a fragment of a complete subject, and that is best considered in its own place under the more general title of "The security of contract and business," or such other divisions as include what most interests those engaged in commerce. Such a distinction as commercial law requires no further notice here.

Distinction of the law of nations. While municipal law is the law which binds the citizens of one nation together and governs their conduct inter se, there is a branch of law, called the law of nations, which has been used to denote the body of rules observed between two independent nations to regulate their conduct and mutual relations, when the citizens of one country come to be mixed up with the business or concerns of another. at this stage some distinctions require to be made.

And

It is found by experience, that there are always members of one nation impelled by business or pleasure to enter the territory of another nation, and settle more or less permanently within its borders, and as the municipal laws of no two nations are the same, some conflict or uncertainty may result as to when and where the line is to be drawn, and under which government these wanderers must range

themselves. By their transition from one country to another the rights and duties of citizenship cannot be wholly escaped, though to determine which is which at any particular moment may often be a question of nicety, but to the solution of which, nevertheless, all municipal communities must address themselves. It is on this account that one of the great divisions of municipal law already noticed is called "The security of foreigners."

Relations between nation and nation in peace and war. -When a nation has its own municipal laws, its own government and legislature, and owes no allegiance as an inferior to any other nation or government, there are two sets of conditions under which it may be brought into contact with the citizens of other nations. There may be war or peace. The two nations may deal with each other collectively, where the government of each is represented by an ambassador, and all that passes is official and of national importance. Or the citizen of one nation may deal with the citizen of the other nation individually and without the intervention on either side of any national or official organ.

Thus as between nation and nation there are certain rules more or less definite, which each observes towards the other in time of war. Such are the forms of giving a preliminary notice of war, and the manner of declaring it, the degree of protection to enemy's property, or its confiscation if found within the other country-the circumstances which lead to the imposing of embargoes and the issuing of letters of marque and reprisal, and the encouragement of privateering—the mode of dealing with the enemy's property if found on the high seas, and of dealing with neutrals sailing under the flag and pass of an enemy-the mode of carrying on war, and the use of fair and lawful weapons and stratagems in its prosecution-the treatment of prisoners taken in war-the mode of ascertaining the rights of capture of prizes at sea of dealing with interference from neutral nations, and the rights and duties affecting passports, truces, and treaties of peace. These and numerous other details form the subjects of attention and cognisance on the part of governments representing nations, and have been reduced to a system or code somewhat resembling the municipal law of the nation

itself, though necessarily confined to a limited range of subjects.

Then again in time of peace there are certain rules of courtesy and business which require to be observed between nation and nation, for no nation can now be so wholly isolated from the others, that relations of some peaceable kind do not spring up and assume a settled condition between the citizens of both. Thus the rights and privileges of ambassadors and consuls, the rights arising out of commercial intercourse, out of the mutual disposition to arrest and deliver over to trial and punishment fugitive criminals, the rights of passage across navigable rivers and seas, or across land, require to be adjusted according to certain notions of justice and courtesy, such as distinguish the relations of individuals equally independent and equally ready to appreciate the independence of others.

Relations between individuals of different nations.-But though the general conditions of peace and war suggest an obvious foundation for broad distinctions in regulating the intercourse between nations when each is represented by its own government respectively, and every act is more or less official, there are many personal circumstances of a less public character which vitally affect the status and relations of individual subjects of one nation while living temporarily or permanently within the territory of another nation. These do not attain the dignity of involving consequences yielding the alternative of peace or war, and yet hundreds and thousands of individuals may be vitally affected in their rights and liberties, in their persons and property, according to the view which one nation or its courts and legislature may take of their legal rights at a particular conjuncture. Thus an individual acting under the irrepressible instincts of business or pleasure may, when in a foreign state, come into collision in many points with the law of that state. He may have been married or divorced in his own country and have children born there; he may have property in either country, or both; he may have entered into contracts and covenants binding in the country where made, but to be performed, if at all, in another country, not then contemplated by either of the parties affected. He may die in the foreign country, leaving property in all parts of the world. His wife or

wives may have been divorced in one country, and he may have married again in another: his children may be left unprotected, his will may be formal according to the law of one country, and informal according to the law of another; his rights may be complicated by every conceivable variety of time and place. In these circumstances, as the law of one or other country must be held to afford the appropriate solution for each emergency, it is of consequence that each nation, legislature, or court should arrive at some leading principles, and these, if possible, of general application, so as to avoid the uncertainty, loss, or confiscation that might otherwise befall innocent individuals. These rules, whatever they be, form a part of international law, which has been by Foucher and others termed Private International Law. The questions that arise and must be solved are not of sufficient national importance to attract the notice of the executive government or to engage the offices of diplomacy. They are part of the usual business of the world, and fall to be solved by each municipal court, which for that purpose supplies from its own ordinary machinery the appropriate remedy. The municipal law merely suffers such variations as the extended views and reasonings founded on the comity of nations suggest. It thus necessarily contains, as part and parcel of its own procedure, sufficient rules to govern the rights of all those persons, who, by birth or otherwise, could never be deemed in any view parties to the mysterious original contract which binds the governed and the governor.

Private international law. Thus private international law is in reality not at all different from the municipal law, and is enforced in the same way; it forms, in effect, part of the municipal law, the only difference being, that, in all questions that arise, one of the parties, or it may be both, were, or are, citizens of another country. This circumstance is, however, sufficiently frequent and important to pervade nearly all the departments of substantive law in every municipal code, and on that account, as it forms a variation running through all the other divisions, it is in the previous systematic arrangement treated as of itself a separate division of the law. This is, however, merely because different principles and rules require to be applied