Page:Elements of International Law - Wheaton - Dana (1866).djvu/9

Rh On his return to the United States, he entered on the practice of the law in the city of New York. Continuing his interest in international questions, he published, in 1815, his small work on the Law of Maritime Captures, which gained him an early and lasting reputation. From 1816 to 1827, he was the reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, during what no one can be offended by hearing called the great period of the Federal Bench and Bar. The reporter was the friend and associate of the judges and the most eminent counsel; and, in respect to learning on foreign and international questions, and general culture, he held an enviable reputation throughout the country. In 1820, he delivered the annual address before the Historical Society of New York, taking for his. subject the science of Public and International Law. This address, with his treatise on Captures, was the germ of his great work. For some time, he was engaged on a commission to revise the statute law of New York, during which he was a diligent student of the subject of codification, and of legislation generally. In 1827, he was appointed, by President Adams, Chargé d'Affaires at the court of Denmark, and resided at Copenhagen until 1835, when he was transferred to Berlin, first as Minister Resident; but the office was afterwards raised to the rank of Plenipotentiary. This post he held until 1846, when his diplomatic career was closed by one of the most unfortunate sacrifices our government ever made to mere party routine.

Notwithstanding his long residence abroad, and at the courts of Europe, his patriotism suffered no diminution: but distance and absence seemed to present his country more as a unit, and with stronger hold on his imagination