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Exchequer, Liber niger parvus,65 it is in the writings of Arthur Agard (1540-1615) that we first find attention paid to the treaties of England. Agard was a deputy in the chamber of receipt of the Exchequer and made many compilations for the use of the courts. These are bound up in more than sixty volumes, of which several relate to treaties. The Repertorie of Records remaining in the 4. Treasuries on the Receipt Side at Westminster, published in 1631 by Thomas Powell, contains Agard's "A calender of all the leagues and treaties betweene the kings of England and other states, as they are placed in the 4.th treasury at Westminster," 1278-1586.66 Agard's compilation of treaties between England and Scotland was published by Sir Joseph Ayloffe (1709–81) in his Calendars of the Ancient Charters and of the Welch and Scottish Rolls, now remaining in the Tower of London, in 1774.67 A manuscript entitled "Compendium Recordorum Regiorum in Archivis Domini Regis Jacobi, &c., repositorum in ordinem digest. per Arthurum Agard," was finished in December, 1610.68 Lansdowne Ms. 137 is "An account and catalogue of the Records in the King's Treasury at Westminster," dedicated to Sir Julius Caesar by Agard in 1610. Lansdowne Ms. 799 is an "abbreviacio sive brevis recapitulacio tractatuum" between 1286 and 1551, drawn up in 1612.69 This is the "Book of Abbreviations of Leagues by Arthur Agarde" intrusted to Rymer at the outset of his researches for his Foedera.TO A royal warrant of March 5, 1669, directed the Master of the Rolls to permit Joseph Williamson to peruse and copy all treaties, leagues, or public grants which he should deem fit for the king's service. The result was a "Collection of copies of treaties from the reign of Henry VIII. to that of Charles II.," which is still preserved in the Public Record Office. This unpublished collection, Hardy suggests, was intended as a repertory of precedents.71

The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle of 1668 was printed "par ordre de messieurs les ministres" 72 by Léonard, who gave a new impulse to the publication of treaty collections. Frédéric Léonard (1624-1711) is perhaps the most famous of the French printers to the king, not only because of the collection of treaties which he issued, but because he ranked high above the printers of his own day both as a patron of letters in the Delphin classics and as a most aggressive publisher. Born at Brussels on August 6, 1624, the son of Jean, a bookseller, he was apprenticed in 1638 in the Plantin establishment at Antwerp, then directed by the first Balthasar Moretus. In May, 1643, he went to Paris under the patronage of the Duchesse d'Orléans, a client of his father. There he worked in the shop of Jean Billaine, whose imprint appears on some books containing treaties. From February 27, 65 Scargill-Bird, op. cit., pp. 222-223.

66 No. 1093b, supra. An imperfect copy is nos. 6-7, Harleian Ms. 94.

67 No. 1094, supra.

68 No. 1092b, supra.

69 Nos. 1092a, 1093a, supra.

70 Anthony Wood, Athenae, i, p. 444, cited in Hardy, op. cit., i, p. xxviii. 71 Hardy, op. cit., i, p. iii. Vide Scargill-Bird, op. cit., p. 401.

72 Recueil (1683), avertissement.

1653, he kept a shop in the Rue Saint-Jacques, "in Collegio regio." In 1656 his sign became "ad insigne scuti Veneti," which he retained until he retired in favor of his son of the same name in 1696. Léonard was appointed printer to the king in 1667, and was received by Parlement as such on June 7 of that year. He was a publisher rather than a printer, though he owned presses.73 Léonard was probably the first publisher to exert himself to issue a collection of treaties. In 1683 he published a Recueil de tous les traites modernes conclus entre les potentats de l'Europe. This book brought together under one cover numerous documents which he had issued separately. It begins with the declaration of war against the United Provinces on April 6, 1672, and ends with the "articles accordés aux Preteur, Bourguemaistres, Bourgeois, & Habitans de la Ville de Strasbourg, à la Reduction d'icelle Ville à l'obeissance du Roy de 30 Septembre 1681." That it was issued with a view to its commercial value and was highly priced are facts strongly suggested by the preface:

Ainsi, Lecteur, vous devez juger du prix de ce Recueil par la quantité des Mémoires et des Traités qu'il contient, et par la grosseur même du Volume, puisqu'au dire du Jeune Pline, plus un bon Livre est gros, et plus il est excellent. Bonus Liber melior est quisque, quo major. (Epist. 20, lib. 1.)

The best evidence of the commercial character of the volume is, however, the privilege under which it was published. This license appears not only in the front of the book, but precedes several of its separately paged documents, as well as the same documents when printed in the six-volume work of 1693. For our purposes the privilege reads:

Par privilège du Roy, signé, Arnauld, donné à Saint Germain en Laye le deuxième jour de juillet 1678. en consequence du Brevet de Sa Majesté du dernier May 1673, il est permis aux Srs. Pachau, Paraire, et de Tourmont principaux Commis de' Monsieur de Pomponne Secretaire et Ministre d'Etat, de faire imprimer par tels Imprimeurs qu'ils voudront choisir, tous les Actes et Traités qui sont ou seront conclus & arrestés à Nimegue par les Ambassadeurs & Plenipotentiaires du Roy, & les Ambassadeurs & Plenipotentiaires des autres Rois & Princes qui y sont assemblés pour la negociation de la Paix... Lesdits Sieurs ont cedé leur Privilege à Federic Leonard Imprimeur ordinaire du Roy, & de Monseigneur le Dauphin, pour en joüir suivant l'accord fait entre eux sous seing privé, le vingt-cinquième Juin mil six cens soixante-dix-huit.75

The numerous title pages in the book bear testimony that Léonard exercised the rights thus acquired with the diligence in business which characterized his career. That his strong commercial sense was not disappointed in the venture is shown by the appearance in 1693 of his more famous collection, Recueil des traitez de paix, de trêve, de neutralité, de confédération, d'alliance, et de commerce, faits par les rois de France, avec tous les princes et potentats de l'Europe et autres, depuis

73 For the life of Léonard, vide Lepreux, op. cit., i, 1, pp. 307–320.

74 Cf. No. 79, supra.

75 Recueil (1683), p. [viii].

près de trois siècles.76 This work, in six volumes, covered the period from 1435 to 1690, and did much to establish treaty collections among the regular offerings of publishers. It was prefaced with a historical introduction, which had been separately published in 1692, by Abraham Nicolas Amelot de la Houssaye," who for fifteen years at least had used Léonard's library.

The year 1693 is an important date in the history of treaty publication. Léonard's French collection is, for practical purposes, the first of the state collections. In the same year Leibniz issued his Codex Juris Gentium Diplomaticus and Rymer in England was authorized to begin his monumental Foedera. Three years before Daniel von Nessel (1644-99), librarian to the emperor of Austria, had projected a chronological index from 400 to 1685.78 Leibniz was encouraged by the success of his Codex 79 of 1693 to add a second volume in 1700. The two volumes included some material hitherto unprinted, but the texts were not always accurate. The work was republished in 1747, but has since then been more valued for its preface than for its contents, which are largely available in subsequent works.

Léonard and Leibniz gave a strong impetus to the public appetite for the literature of treaties. Through the efforts of a succession of printers and booksellers, of whom the leader was Adriaan Moetjens, 80 The Hague became the headquarters on the Continent for the printing of works of this sort, and so remained for fully half a century. These business men saw the opportunity to consolidate Léonard's and Leibniz's works, with additions from elsewhere, and in 1700 brought out the Recueil edited by Jacques Bernard (1658-1718). Its four volumes were successful enough to warrant the issuance of a popular one-volume summary in 1707, which has no other interest than that Jean Dumont edited it. Diplomatic memoirs and compilations on recent and current peace settlements supplemented the treaty collections.

Jean Dumont 81 (1666-1727) remains the chief compiler of treaty collections. His Corps universel diplomatique covers a longer period than any similar work; it set new standards of accuracy; and it had the additional advantage of being conceived and executed as

76 Cf. No. 888, supra.

77 "Observations historiques et politiques sur les traitez des princes." Also reprinted in Jacques Bernard's Recueil des traitez de paix, ii, pp. i-lx, and in Dumont's Corps universel diplomatique, ii, 1, pp. i-lxxxiv.

78 Cf. No. 80, supra; Leibniz, Mantissa Codicis Juris Gentium, p. [xii]. 79 Cf. No. 81, supra. Vide Ernest Nys, "Leibnitz et son 'Codex juris gentium diplomaticus,"" in the Revue de droit international, xxvii, pp. 404-407.

80 Moetjens seems to have flourished from 1682 to 1741. Arie Cornelis Kruseman, Aanteekingen betreffende den Boekhandel van Noord-Nederland, p. 538. No memoir of him seems to have been published, but the extent of his activity is indicated by the fact that in 1732 he held a sale from February 11 to March 5 in the Groote Zaal at The Hague in which 9336 items were offered. Cf. Bibliotheca exquisitissima insignium et praestantissimorum librorum, in omnibus Facultatibus & Linguis (Hagae Comitum, 1732).

81 On his life vide Georg Friedrich von Martens, “Recherches sur la vie et les écrits de Jean du Mont," in Supplément au Recueil des principaux traités, i, pp. lxiv-xciv.

a whole. Dumont was an expatriate Frenchman who, after following a military career for some time, settled abroad and became known for his hostility to Louis XIV. His literary career began with the publication of a volume entitled Nouveau Voyage au Levant (La Haye, 1694), which was reprinted with additions in four volumes in 1699 under the title of Voyages en France, en Italie, en Allemagne, à Malta, et en Turquie. In the same year he published the Mémoires politiques pour servir à la parfaite intelligence de l'histoire de la paix de Ryswick, which, as its title accurately enough indicates, dealt with the antecedents of the peace rather than with the negotiation of the treaty itself. He was appointed historiographer to the Holy Roman Emperor with the title of Baron Carelscroon. It was perhaps in this capacity that he prepared his book on the peace of Ryswick and its successor, Mémoires sur la guerre présente, published at The Hague in 1703. More closely connected with the duties of his office was the publication in 1710 of a Nouveau recueil de traitéz d'alliance, de trêve, de paix, de garantie, et de commerce, faits et conclus entre les rois, princes, et etats souverains de l'Europe, depuis la paix de Munster. But since 1699 he had been collecting material relative to treaties, and the publication of the Recueil of 1710 had only served to prove to him how greatly needed was a collection which should be as complete as possible. This project became practicable when a second edition of Bernard's Recueil of 1700 seemed needed. Martens thinks that his arrangements with the booksellers were made about 1716. At any rate, he had great difficulty in making them agree to publish the work which he was preparing. 82 This was none other than the presentation of the documents of international law from the beginning of the records down to the present, including related material. The booksellers finally capitulated to the author, assenting to the publication of the whole, but dividing the work so as to make the main part an enlarged second edition of Bernard, completed by a series of supplements. Dumont, who took all pains to secure correct texts, was not simply a compiler. He contemplated a work which should do for the facts of international relations what Grotius ninety years before had done for the philosophical theory. Yet, as the first of the effective advocates of positive international law, he saw no conflict between himself and the natural school:

83

International law, in my opinion, may and should be defined as the law respecting peoples one toward another, and also among themselves, and

82 "The fact is that the booksellers with whom I had treated in advance for a second edition of the great collection of 1700 did not like the new plan which I had formed. They wrote that they absolutely could not load themselves with so large a work; that it would take too long to print it; that the price of it would be too high for most purchasers; and that it was proper to have regard to the convenience of everybody; that, moreover, I had promised them an edition of the great collection; that they had engaged with their correspondents to furnish that to them; that they wanted to keep their word, and hoped I would also keep mine; that, if I wished, the book might well be given the title of Corps universel diplomatique des droit des gens; etc."

83 Cf. No. 86, supra.

this law is either natural or contractual. Natural international law reduces itself simply to this excellent precept, Do nothing to another which you would consider unjust and unreasonable if done to you; and contractual international law, which derives and takes all its force from that, consists in the contracts, agreements, pacts, concessions, donations, and renunciations which princes and peoples make among themselves, either as guaranty from an evil feared or to procure a benefit desired, or for both together."

Dumont saw only four volumes of his projected work through the press, but at his death the manuscript for four more was with the booksellers. Jean Rousset de Missy (1686-1762) succeeded him as editor and completed the publication, with the exception of the Histoire des anciens traitez, the first volume of the supplements, which was prepared by Jean Barbeyrac (1674-1744).

Rousset had started his Recueil historique d'actes, negociations, memoires, et traitez in 1728 and Guillaume de Lamberty his Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du XVIII siècle in 1724. Both of these were semi-diplomatic collections on topics substantially current. Lamberty's work ended in 1740, while Rousset's continued till 1758. These and the preceding collections called forth the inevitable academic handbook in the form of the Corpus Juris Gentium of Johann Jacob Schmauss (1690-1757), which was standard from its publication in 1730 until Wenck issued a supplement in 1781-95. They paved the way for the next great continuator of Dumont, Georg Friedrich Martens, who at the age of thirty-five began at Göttingen his Recueil des principaux traités. This work, in several series,85 has been continued down to the present day under various editors.

Until the World War broke out it had a single rival as a general collection of treaties. "In 1825, [Lewis Hertslet] originated, compiled, and edited, during his leisure hours at home, a work now universally well known and appreciated, entitled British and Foreign State Papers. The object of the work was to collect together, in a convenient form, the principal Treaties between foreign Powers, and documents, which had been made public, relating to the political and commercial affairs of nations, and to their relations with each other, from the termination of the war in 1815 to the latest period. The work was originally printed exclusively for the use of H. M.'s Government and H. M.'s Diplomatic Agents abroad, but the general interest which was attached to the collection, after the issue of the first few volumes, led to its being published and placed on sale. . . . About the same time Lewis Hertslet further undertook, with official sanction, also during his leisure hours at home, another work on treaties, to which he gave the title of Hertslet's Commercial and Slave Trade Treaties." 86

We have seen that the publication of treaty collections got its first real impetus from popular interest in the great events of the seventeenth century, and that the development of these collections oc84 Corps universel diplomatique, i, p. 1.

85 Cf. No. 92, supra.

86 Sir Edward Hertslet, Recollections of the Old Foreign Office, pp. 145-146; cf. No. 94, supra.

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