Review of Periodicals merit the highest commendation. What ever might be the grievances of the Nether lands, the embargo of the Venezuelan navy was not the ideal way to set them right. . . . It appears to have been designed to cripple an independent government in its main tenance of a coastguard service, merely because Holland (very likely rightly) thought that it was not treating her commerce fairly." Blockade. "Pacific Blockade." By Pro fessor John Westlake, K. C. 25 Law Quarterly Review 13 (Jan.). The learned Professor of International Law in the University of Cambridge here traces the growth of the comparatively recent doc trine of "Pacific Blockade" and points out the principles on which the leading nations, with the exception of France, have come to concur. The article was suggested by the recently published work on "Pacific Block ade," by Albert E. Hogan. The author sums up as follows:— "Having now before us the declared policies of the four greatest naval powers of Europe and America, we can sum up. Blockade interfering with third parties, and unaccom panied by a state of war, is admitted by France alone, and is not a part of the law of nations. Blockade not interfering with third parties, and unaccompanied by a state of war, is admitted by all four—for its admission by France is included in her assertion of her own institution, as the less in the greater— and is a part of the law of nations. For this alone the name of Pacific Blockade should henceforth be reserved. Lastly, blockade interfering with third parties, accompanied by a state of war but unaccompanied by a declaration of war, has emerged once from the Land of Shadows, we may hope never to reappear; but one can never feel sure. Discussion on the expediency of admitting pacific blockade has become out of date; discussion on the expediency of admitting blockade against third parties without war may perhaps be postponed until, if ever, another attempt shall be made to establish such a blockade in the teeth of the forces now arrayed against it." Codification. In a review of the late James C. Carter's "Law, Its Origin, Growth and Function," the Law Quarterly Review (v. 25, p. 84, Jan.), while it praises Mr. Carter's acute and profitable observations and skill in presentation, fails to agree with his funda mental proposition, saying:— "He does not appear to appreciate the distinction between the progressive and the non-progressive societies, but treats all as if they were equally progressive, and of Seeley's distinction between the organic and the inorganic states he knows nothing. Equally inadequate is his conception of the extremely formal character of early law. So, also, he
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fails to recognize the fixity of law in all the earlier ages, and the fact that, from the close connection between law and religion amongst other causes, it was most difficult to change; that in progressive societies the moral sense of the better part of the community was usually in advance of the existing law, and the great problem was to bring the law into harmony with the altered feelings of the people—a state of things that could not have existed if law had simply been existing cus tom." The reviewer also says that Mr. Carter's opposition to codification reveals a one-sided attitude, as if he had never heard of the Negotiable Instruments Act now adopted by more than half of the states of the Union, or of such English experiments in codification as the Bills of Exchange, Partnership, and Sale of Goods Acts, and more remarkable still, the recent German Civil Code. A recent private attempt at codification is that of George Spencer Bower, K.C., in his "Code of the Law of Actionable Defamation." The Law Magazine and Review (34 L. Mag. and Rev. 231) says that Mr. Bower's Code "shows throughout great care, acuteness, and labor, and the notes legal learning, literary knowl edge, and analytical power." The German Civil Code should have re ceived the attention of Mr. Dicey in "Digest of the Law of England with Reference to the Conflict of Laws," says the Law Quarterly Review in reviewing that work (p. 91) :— "Mr. Dicey does not appear to take any notice whatever of the German Civil Code, although various provisions, both of the Code itself and of the Einfuhrungs-Gesetz, attempt more or less successfully to settle vexed questions in the conflict of laws." In this connection, it is interesting to note that the French translation of the German Civil Code undertaken with the assistance of the French government has now been com pleted. Codification (England). See 25 Law Quarterly Review 81 (Jan.). In the review of Book II, Part III of "A Digest of English Civil Law," a writer whose initials A. V. D. can be taken for those of Professor Dicey pleads eloquently for encouragement for those engaged on this work:— "They have undertaken a task of immense difficulty; they are trying, as is the way with Englishmen, to accomplish by private effort an end—in this instance the codification of the law of the land—which in most countries has been accomplished, if at all, by experts employed by the state and supported by all the help which the Government can place at
