MERCANTILE LAW. This is the only branch of municipal law which, front the necessity of the case, is similar, and in many respects identical, in all the civilized and trading countries of the world. In determining the relations of the family, the church, and the state, each nation is guided by its own peculiarities of.race. of historical tradi tion, of climate, and numberless other circumstances, which are almost wholly unaffected by the conditions of society in the neighboring states. But when the arrangements for buying, selling, and transmitting commodities from state to state alone are in question. all men are very much in the same position. The single object of all is that the trans action may be effected in such it manner as to avoid what in every case, must be sources of loss to somebody, and by Which no one ulthriately is a gainer—viz.,"disinttes and delay .A.t a very early period in the trading history of modern Europe, it was found that the only method by which these objects could be attained was by establishing a common understanding on all the leading points of tnercantile, and more particularly of maritime law. This was effected by the establishment of those maritime codes, of which the most famous, though not the earliest, was the Consoktto del Mare. it is sometimes spoken of as a collection of the maritime laws of I3arcelona, but it would seem rather to have been a compilation of the laws and trading. customs of various Italian cities—Venice, Pisa, Genoa, and Amalfi, together with those of the cities with which they chiefly traded- Barcelona, Marseilles, and the like. That it was published at Barcelona towards the end of the 13th c., or the beginning of the 14th, in the Catalonian dialect, is no proof that it originated in Spain, and the probability is that it is of Italian origin. As commerce extended itself to the north-western coasts of Europe, similar codes appeared. There wa.s the Guidon de la Ater, the R4les d' Ol4ron, the Usages de Damme, and, most important of all, the ordinances of the great Hanseatic league. As the central people of Europe, the French early became distinguished as cultivators of maritime law, and one of the most important contributions that ever was naade to it was the famous ordonuance of 1681, which formed part of the ambitious and in many respects successful legislation and codification of Louis XIV. See CODE. All these earlier attempts at general mer
cantile legislation were founded, a.s a matter of course, on the Rbman civil law, or rather on what that system had borrowed from the laws which regulated the intercourse of the tradinc, communities of Greece, perhaps of Phenicia and Carthage, and which had been reduce% to a system by the Rhodians.
Front the intimate relation which subsisted between Scotland and the continent of Europe, the lawyers of Scotland became early acquainted with the commercial arran,te inents of the continental states; and to this cause is to be ascribed the fact that dowlito the period when the affairs of Scotland were thrown into confusion by the rebellions of 1715 and 1745, mercantile law was cultivated in Scotland with much care and success. The work of lord Stair, the greatest of all the legal writers of Scotland, is particularly valuable in this department.
In England the case was very different. After the loss of her French provinces the legal system of England became wholly insular, and there was no branch in which it -suffered more in consequence of being thus cut off from the general stream of European progress than the law-merchant. It was lord Mansfield who, whether guided by the wider traditions of his original country, or deriving his views from the source from which these traditions sprung, viz. the Roman law, as modified and developed by continental jurisprudence, introduced thOse doctrines of modern commercial law -which English law yers have since developed with so much acuteness and logical consistency. Many -attempts have recently been made to assimilate the commercial laws of England and Scotland, and a commission of lawyers of both countries was recently appointed for the 'purpose. One of the most important results of their deliberations was the mercantile law amendment act, 19 and 20 Viet. c. 60.