It is a serious thing to
have a connection with a people who live only under positive, arbitrary,
and changeable institutions,--and those not perfected nor supplied nor
explained by any common, acknowledged rule of moral science. I remember,
that, in one of my last conversations with the late Lord Camden, we were
struck much in the same manner with the abolition in France of the law
as a science of methodized and artificial equity. France, since her
Revolution, is under the sway of a sect whose leaders have deliberately,
at one stroke, demolished the whole body of that jurisprudence which
France had pretty nearly in common with other civilized countries. In
that jurisprudence were contained the elements and principles of the law
of nations, the great ligament of mankind. With the law they have of
course destroyed all seminaries in which jurisprudence was taught, as
well as all the corporations established for its conservation. I have
not heard of any country, whether in Europe or Asia, or even in Africa
on this side of Mount Atlas, which is wholly without some such colleges
and such corporations, except France. No man, in a public or private
concern, can divine by what rule or principle her judgments are to be
directed: nor is there to be found a professor in any university, or a
practitioner in any court, who will hazard an opinion of what is or is
not law in France, in any case whatever. They have not only annulled all
their old treaties, but they have renounced the law of nations, from
whence treaties have their force.
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