preserved with great care, whence it has acquired the name of the Florentine Pandects. The knowledge of the Justinian legislation, which the people of Amalfi had thus acquired, has perhaps given rise to the tradition repeated by Giannone, and so many other authors, of a code of maritime laws compiled by them, called the Amalfitan table. Every trace of this code has been long since lost, and it therefore seems probable that this name has been given to the code of some other maritime people, less famous in history, but better entitled to the credit of having established such an institution. The Amalfitan table, if it ever in fact existed, has perished; but the Consulato del Mare survives to attest the early cultivation of maritime legislation among the various communities bordering the Mediterranean Sea. The honour of making this famous compilation has been claimed for Pisa by Azuni and other Italian writers. This claim rests upon the naked assertion of the abbate Costantino Gaétan (who wrote in the beginning of the seventeenth century), in his Notes upon the Life of Pope Gelasius II., who states that the Consulato was presented by the Pisans for confirmation to Pope Gregory VII. in 1075. If it were true that this code was compiled by the Pisans in the latter part of the eleventh century, it must have been written in Latin or Italian. How happens it then that no Latin MS. of the Consulato exists either in the archives of Pisa or elsewhere? How happens it that the Italian editions, the earliest of which is that of Venice, in 1544, are all confessedly translations from the original, in whatever language that was written?

The jurists in every part of Europe have been so constantly in the habit of citing the Consulato from some one of the Italian editions, that it is no wonder the tradition which attributes it to an Italian origin should have met with such universal faith. But no tradition or authority can repel the stubborn fact, that the Consulato exists in manuscripts and in printed editions in a language which is neither Italian nor Latin, but a dialect of the Romanz, from which the modern French, Italian, and Spanish languages have been derived, and which is still preserved in several districts of Southern Europe, and with the least alteration in the Spanish province of Catalonia. The language in which the Consulato was originally published points irresistibly to one of two great commercial cities, as being the place where this collection of laws was first compiled. These are Marseilles and Barcelona. If the decision of the controversy depended upon superior commercial antiquity, Marseilles would unquestionably carry off the palm from her rival sister. But all the oldest manuscripts of the Consulato are written in that dialect of the Romanz which was spoken in Catalonia in the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries, and which is still spoken in that province almost without any modification of its original structure; whilst the Romanz Provençal, spoken at Marseilles, before the alterations it experienced under the rule of the princes of the house of Anjou, has much less resemblance to the idiom of the Consulato. To this almost decisive circumstance must be added the facts, that the general opinion of all those who have not attributed this compilation to an Italian origin (a supposition entirely unsupported by proofs), concurs in referring it to Barcelona, where the first known editions were confessedly published; that the manuscript existing in the royal library at Paris (more ancient than any of these editions), was probably written there; and that no historical circumstance, or opinion of any author whatever, points to Marseilles or Provence as the place where the Consulato was first promulgated, whilst all the authors by whom it was cited soon after it was first printed concur in attributing it to Barcelona.

As to the time when this compilation was made, it must have been previously to the year 1400, since there is no reference in it to the contract of insurance, although every other maritime contract is distinctly treated. Now it is a well-authenticated fact, that the first written laws on the subject of maritime insurance in the south of Europe appeared in the beginning of the fifteenth century, and that the most ancient of these laws is that published by the magistrates of Barcelona in 1435. Had this contract been sufficiently known when the Consulato was compiled to have become the subject of legislative regulation, it would certainly have been distinctly mentioned. On the other hand, those writers who carry the antiquity of this compilation so far back as the time of St. Louis appear to have been led into error by the fabulous documents annexed to all the editions respecting the adoption of the Consulato by different sovereigus and republics, beginning with Rome in 1075. The conclusion adopted by M. Pardessus, which refers its compilation, at least in its present form, to some period between the year 1340 and 1400, seems to be founded upon grounds as probable as can be attained in a matter so very uncertain as the formation of a work which ought to be considered as a collection of maxims and usages relative to maritime affairs, rather than a code of positive laws or ordinances. The Consulato, properly so called, must not be confounded with the Ordonnances of Barcelona, which are subjoined, and by many considered as forming parts of one entire code promulgated by the magistrates of that city. It is evident, indeed, that the Consulato, in its present form, is not the result of a single compilation made at one and the same time. Some of the chapters must be referred to a compilation

anterior in date to others, which appear to serve as a commentary or development of the primitive work. In perusing the latter part, beginning with chapter ccxliii., we recognize the work of another hand, which frequently repeats in substance, and sometimes in the same identical terms, the provisions of preceding chapters.

If the Consulato ought not to be considered as a code of maritime laws, promulgated by legislative authority in the kingdom of Aragon, or even as a collection of customs and usages reduced to a written text, and published by order of the magistrates of Barcelona, it may perhaps be conjectured to form such a collection, drawn up for the use of some maritime tribunal, and augmented from time to time by the more recent judicial decisions of the same court of justice. The name of Consulado seems to point to this origin, that being the appellation by which the commercial and maritime tribunals in the south of Europe were designated at this period. Whoever was the author of the Consulato del Mare, whether it is to be attributed to private or public authority, its compilation must doubtless be referred to the same causes which produced the famous Jugemens or Rôles d'Oléron, which were also a collection of maritime customs or usages; and it may be said that circumstances were even more favourable to the compilers of the Consulato, since Barcelona, Marseilles, Valencia, and other commercial cities of the Langue d'Oc already possessed, in the fourteenth century, a great body of maritime legislation under the name of statutes or customs. These written codes, besides a certain number of local ordinances embracing positive regulations, contained many general rules and principles which time had gradually consecrated in the practice of Mediterranean commerce. These statutes were generally written in Latin, a language which, though still familiar to jurists, had already become a dead language to the great mass of society, and consequently to the class of merchants and navigators. This class was therefore deeply interested in possessing a concise manual of maritime jurisprudence like the Consulato, written in the vulgar tongue, and in a style of the most perfect simplicity, though its author or authors were evidently men of extensive learning, deeply versed in the principles of the Roman law, the Basilics, and the legislation of those cities of France and Spain which carried on trade and navigation with the Levant. These qualities soon acquired for this collection a wide-spread reputation, whilst the general wisdom and equity of its decisions caused it to be adopted by all the maritime states on the borders of the Mediterranean Sea, as supplementary to their own local usages, customs, and ordinances. Its value in these respects is still acknowledged, after the lapse of four cen

turies, by all the maritime nations of Europe and America. With some of these nations, its principles have been incorporated into their written statutes and ordinances; with others, they are adopted as authoritative rules of judicial decision; and with all, they possess great weight as embodying the collected wisdom and experience of the most renowned commercial states of the middle age. This remarkable monument of maritime jurisprudence is constructed of materials coeval with the earliest dawn of European commerce. It embraces not only the elementary rules for the decision of controversies growing out of civil contracts relating to trade and navigation in time of peace, but expounds the leading principles then recognized as to the rights of maritime war and neutrality. Among others, it explicitly recognizes the right of visitation and search of neutral vessels on the high seas in time of war by the belligerent cruizers; of carrying these vessels into port for adjudication in a tribunal of the belligerent state; and prescribes the rules to be observed for the payment of freight to the neutral master on goods condemned as prize of war. It furnishes, therefore, a most conclusive authority as to the so-much contested question, whether free ships make free goods, a rule which, however just, equitable, and convenient in itself, and whatever efforts may have been made at different periods to incorporate it into the international code by means of special compacts, certainly formed no part of the primitive law of nations, as evidenced in the constant usage of maritime states, except so far as that usage has been affected by these compacts.

All the editions of the Consulato del Mare now extant commence with a series of forty-two chapters relative to the election of the judge-consul of Valencia, and the proceedings before that jurisdiction. This series of chapters may be properly considered as a code of procedure or practice in maritime causes, drawn up for the use of the city of Valencia, to which King Pedro III. had granted a special maritime judicature in 1283. This code was certainly compiled subsequently to that date, as the grant is frequently referred to in the course of its provisions. After these forty-two chapters follows No. xliii., being a statute made for the island of Majorca by King Jayme I. (who died in 1275), relative to the oath to be taken by the advocates entitled to plead causes in the tribunals of that island. This chapter is followed by another, numbered xliv., relative to the measurement of the tonnage of vessels trading to Alexandria in Egypt. Then comes the true Consulato, the first chapter of which is numbered xlvi. The printed editions contain no chapter xlv.; but the MS. in the royal library at Paris contains two chapters on the measurement of vessels, which exactly supply this chasm.

The printed editions indicate the termination of the proper Consulato with chapter ccxcvii. in these terms,-Fins aci avem parlat de les leys é ordinaçions de octes maritims mercantivols, &c.; and the MS. already referred to, in the following equally expressive terms,-Finit es lo libre è acabat, gloria laor sia dada à Jesu Christ. Amen. But the work is further continued in a regular series of chapters upon maritime captures, commencing with No. ccxcviii. and ending with No. cccxxxiv. This is again followed by a document of the pretended confirmation of the Consulato by various sovereigns and commercial republics, and various local ordinances having no proper connexion with the principal work.

The Consulato was translated from the Catalan into the Castilian language, and published at Valencia in 1529, by Francisco Dias Romano. A second Spanish translation was made by Cayetano de Paleja, and printed at Barcelona in 1732, in one folio volume. A third was published by the learned Capmany at Madrid in 1791, accompanied with the original text, forming the first volume of his collection, entitled Codigo de las Costumbres Maritimas. The earliest Italian translation was that published at Venice in 1544 by Pedrozano, and which he dedicated to Thomas Zamona, then consul of the Emperor Charles V. in that city. The original edition of this translation has become very rare, but it has been frequently reprinted. It is full of errors and obscurities, arising either from the defects of the text from which the translation was made, or from the translator's imperfect knowledge of the original language. Casaregis has endeavoured to correct these errors in his edition, published with a commentary or gloss, in the third volume of the works of this author, printed at Venice, in four volumes folio. Three translations exist in the French language, the first made from the Italian version by Mayssoni, an advocate at Marseilles, and published in that city in 1576. The second was published by Boucher at Paris in 1808. Both these translations are full of errors, and the notes appended to the latter work have contributed to diffuse the most absurd notions respecting the origin and history of the Consulato. The best translation of this famous work which exists in any language is that of M. Pardessus, published in his great collection of the maritime and commercial ordinances of Europe. It contains the original text of the edition published in 1494 in folio, at Barcelona, placed opposite to the French version drawn up by M. Pardessus, from a literal translation made by M. Llobet, a Barcelona merchant established at Marseilles. The editor has cited under each chapter the works of Clairac, Targa, Casaregis, Valin, Encérigon, and other authors, who have commented upon the Con