WHEATON, HENRY, American jurist and diplomatist, was b. at Providence, R. I., Nov. 27, 1785, educated at Brown university; admitted to the bar in which he spent several years in France, and six months in London, engaged in legal and literary studies. On his return to America, he resided in New York, where he contributed papers on international law to the National Advocate, a daily newspaper, and was appointed a justice of the marine court. In 1815 he published a Digest of The Law ct' Maritime Captures or Prizes, which has been commended as one of the best works in English on the subject. About the same time he published an Essay on the Means of maintaining the Commercial and Naval Interests of the United States. In 1816 he was appointed reporter of the proceedings of the supreme court of the United States, a post he filled until 1827. His reports, filling twelve volumes, a distinguished German has called "the golden book of American law;' and it is considered by the legal. profession as a work of extraordinary ability and value. He also made frequent contributions to the North American and American Quarterly Reviews, and delivered addresses before literary societies. In 1825 he was engaged in revising the statute laws of New York; in
1826 he wrote his Life of William Pinckney, of which he furnished an abridgment for Sparks's American Biographies. In 1827 lie was appointed charge d'affaires to Denmark, and resided at Copenhagen till 1835, when he was appointed resident minister at Berlin, and in 1837, minister plenipotentiary, which post he occupied with distinguished credit until 1846. In 1831 his History of the _Northman appeared at Philadelphia, London, and Paris; in 1836, his Elements of International Law; in 1841 his Essay, for which he received the prize of the French institute, entitled L'Ilistoire du Droit des Glens en Europe, depuis in Pair de Westphal& jusgurtu Congras de Vienne, which, in 1846, was published, greatly enlarged, in Leipsic and Paris, and an English translation in New York. This work is a standard authority, and its author received the highest honors from the learned societies of Europe, and his own countrymen. Having retired from political life, he died at his residence at Dorchester, Mass., Mar. 11, 1848.