praise, but it ceased to be put in execution after his death. Pillage had become an inveterate moral pestilence. It required something more effectual than papal bulls, and the excommunication of the church, to stop the evil. The revival of commerce, and with it a sense of the value of order, commercial ordinances, and particular conventions and treaties between sovereigns, contributed gradually to suppress this criminal practice, by rendering the regulations to supon that subject a branch of the public law of nations. Valin says, it was reserved to the ordinances of Lewis XIV. to put the finishing stroke towards the extinction of this species of piracy, by declaring that shipwrecked persons and property were placed under the special protection and safe-guard of the crown; and the punishment of death, without hope of pardon, was pronounced against the guilty.
The progress of moderation and humanity in the treatment of prisoners, is to be imputed to the influence of conventional law, establishing a general and indiscriminate exchange of prisoners, rank for rank, and giving protection to cartel ships for that purpose. It is a practice of no very ancient introduction among the states of Europe, and it was not of very familiar use in the age of Grotius, and it succeeded the elder practice of ransom. From the extracts which Dr. Robinson[1] gives from Bellus, who was a judge or assessor in the armies of Charles V. and Philip II., he concludes, that no practice so general, and so favourable to the conduct of prisoners, as a public exchange in time of war, was known in the 16th century. The private interest of the captor in his prisoner, continued through that period; and the practice of ransom, founded on the right of property claimed by the captor, succeeded to the Greek and Roman practice of killing prisoners, or selling them as slaves.
The custom of admitting resident ministers at each sovereign’s court, was another important improvement in the security and facility of national intercourse; and this led to
- ↑ 3 Rob. Rep. Appendix A.
