being the author of the first attack in book-form on the Mare Liberum of Grotius. His place in the history of the controversy has been unduly dwarfed by the much more elaborate, learned and solid, and unquestionably eminent, work of Selden. The rank of his contribution in 1613 to the literature of the subject has been still further depressed by its appearing merely as a chapter, even although it was the most substantial and most distinguished chapter, in a highly composite book on Sea Laws.[1] But Grotius himself was so far impressed with the
- ↑ Alexander Justice, a very industrious compiler, notes, as a defect in Welwod's book in relation to its title, that it 'contains only a few general Maxims and Customs of different Nations, with so little Method, that it is a very hard matter to distinguish when he speaks of one Nation and when of another', p. 196 of A General Treatise of the Dominion and Laws of the Sea containing, What is most Valuable upon that Subject, in Ancient and Modern Authors, &c. London, 1705: a work of 660 pages (exclusive of 'An Additional Discourse of the Law of Insurances, and Bottomry', 40 pp.), each page containing about six times as many words as a page of Welwod's Abridgement (253 pp.). Justice, in alluding, p. 196, to the Abridgement, says 'there has lately appear'd an Abridgment of that in a small Octavo, in four sheets and a half, which the Publisher is pleased to intitle, An Abstract of the Sea-Laws, as establish'd in most Kingdoms of Europe: but more particularly in England and Scotland'. In spite of his not too complimentary allusion to Welwod's 'little Book', Justice was of opinion that the author in chapter xxvii 'very plainly and very judiciously confutes the Arguments which the ingenious Hugo Grotius proposes in his Book …; and to him an excellent Author Mr. Selden freely insinuates himself to have been oblig'd for some of the Arguments which he has made use of in his Answer to the aforesaid Book'. Much in Justice's book is merely a reproduction of parts of Selden's Mare Clausum. On the literary origins of his work see Twiss, Black Book of the Admiralty, iv. pp. lv–viii, and lxiv–xv. Sir Travers Twiss says the book is 'very rare'. For an allusion to Welwod, see Black Book, iv. lix.
in London in 1536. The book is very rare. See Travers Twiss, The Black Book of the Admiralty, i. (1871), p. lxxii. There was an earlier translation by Robert Copland (London, 1528). Ibid.; see also i, p. lxiv and p. 89.
