752 V. BENCH AND BAR still the only law; and little popular as they were at the moment among Americans, who often suffered by them, they have since been accepted by our courts as authoritative. Fortified by a store of knowledge at once profound and ex- tensive, combining all the materials that indefatigable re- search, close and minute observation and intense study could provide, the judgments of Lord Stowell in international law have passed into precedents equal, if not superior, to those of the venerable authors of the science, Puffendorf, Grotius and Vattel. His work, like theirs, was animated by the spirit of universal justice. " I trust," he said in the celebrated case of the Swedish Convoy, 1 C. Rob. 349, " that it has not es- caped my anxious recollection for one moment what it is that the duty of my station calls for from me ; namely, to consider myself stationed here, not to deliver occasional and shifting opinions to serve present purposes of particular national in- terest, but to administer with indifference that justice which the law of nature holds out, without distinction, to independ- ent states, some happening to be neutral, and some to be belligerent. The seat of judicial authority is, indeed, locally here in the belligerent country, according to the known law and practice of nations ; but the law itself has no locality. It is the duty of the person who sits here to determine this question exactly as he would determine the same question if sitting in Stockholm ; to assert no pretensions on the part of Great Britain which he would not allow to Sweden in the same circumstances, and to impose no duties on Sweden, as a neutral country, which he would not admit to belong to Great Britain in the same character. If therefore, I mistake the law in this matter, I mistake that which I consider, and which I mean should be considered, as the universal law upon the question." " If ever the praise of being luminous could be bestowed upon human compositions," says Brougham, " It was upon his judgments." Aware of the value of his productions he bestowed extreme care in their preparation. In a few In- stances his language may seem somewhat stilted; the atten- tion to diction may occasionally degenerate Into purism ; but the symmetry and elegance of the whole confirm Lord Lynd-
