An International Bill of the Rights of Man Hersch

Lauterpacht - PDF Download (2025)

https://ebookultra.com/download/an-international-bill-of-the-
rights-of-man-hersch-lauterpacht/

Visit ebookultra.com today to download the complete set of

ebooks or textbooks
Here are some recommended products for you. Click the link to
download, or explore more at ebookultra.com

Misreading the Bill of Rights Top Ten Myths Concerning

Your Rights and Liberties Kirby Goidel

https://ebookultra.com/download/misreading-the-bill-of-rights-top-ten-
myths-concerning-your-rights-and-liberties-kirby-goidel/

The Academic Bill of Rights Debate A Handbook Stephen H.

Aby

https://ebookultra.com/download/the-academic-bill-of-rights-debate-a-
handbook-stephen-h-aby/

The Security Council and the Protection of Human Rights

International Studies in Human Rights International
Studies in Human Rights 1st Edition B. Ramcharan
https://ebookultra.com/download/the-security-council-and-the-
protection-of-human-rights-international-studies-in-human-rights-
international-studies-in-human-rights-1st-edition-b-ramcharan/

Confessions of an Advertising Man David Ogilvy

https://ebookultra.com/download/confessions-of-an-advertising-man-
david-ogilvy/
International Investment Law The Sources of Rights and
Obligations 1st Edition Tarcisio Gazzini

https://ebookultra.com/download/international-investment-law-the-
sources-of-rights-and-obligations-1st-edition-tarcisio-gazzini/

The Evolution of International Human Rights Visions Seen

3rd Edition Paul Gordon Lauren

https://ebookultra.com/download/the-evolution-of-international-human-
rights-visions-seen-3rd-edition-paul-gordon-lauren/

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man 1st Edition John

Perkins

https://ebookultra.com/download/confessions-of-an-economic-hit-
man-1st-edition-john-perkins/

The Dignity of Man An Islamic Perspective 2nd Edition

Prof. Mohammad Hashim Kamali

https://ebookultra.com/download/the-dignity-of-man-an-islamic-
perspective-2nd-edition-prof-mohammad-hashim-kamali/

The International Politics of Human Rights Rallying to the

R2P Cause 1st Edition Monica Serrano

https://ebookultra.com/download/the-international-politics-of-human-
rights-rallying-to-the-r2p-cause-1st-edition-monica-serrano/
An International Bill of the Rights of Man Hersch
Lauterpacht Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Hersch Lauterpacht
ISBN(s): 9780199667826, 0199667829
Edition: Updated
File Details: PDF, 1.08 MB
Year: 2013
Language: english
 A N I N T E R N A T I O N A L BI L L
OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN

by H. LAUTERPACHT, m.a., ll.d.

whewell professor of international law in
the university of cambridge; of gray’s inn,
barrister-at-law

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PHILIPPE SANDS

This page intentionally left blank
 An International
Bill of the
Rights of Man
by H. LAUTERPACHT, m.a., ll.d.
whewell professor of international law in
the university of cambridge; of gray’s inn,
barrister-at-law

With an Introduction by
PHILIPPE SANDS

1
 3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
# Sir Hersch Lauterpacht, 1945; Introduction: Philippe Sands, 2013
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 1945
This Edition published in 2013
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Crown copyright material is reproduced under Class Licence
Number C01P0000148 with the permission of OPSI
and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013938188
ISBN 978–0–19–966782–6
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 Contents

Introduction by Philippe Sands vii

Preface xxvii

PART I: THE LAW OF NATURE, THE LAW OF

NATIONS, AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN
I. Introduction 3
II. The Idea of Natural Rights in Legal and
Political Thought 16
III. The Law of Nature and the Inherent Rights of Man 26
IV. The Law of Nations, The Law of Nature, and the
Inalienable Rights of Man 41
V. Natural Rights in British Constitutional Law and
Political Theory 54

PART II: THE INTERNATIONAL BILL

O F T H E R I GH T S OF M A N
VI. The Text of the Bill 69
Preamble 69
Part I 70
Part II 71
Part III 72
VII. The Legal Nature of the Bill 75
VIII. The Bases of the Bill 83
Preamble 83
IX. The Substance of the Bill 92
Personal Freedom 93
Prohibition of Slavery and of Forced Labour 100
Freedom of Religion 104
Freedom of Speech and of Opinion 107
Freedom of Association and of Assembly 110
Sanctity of the Home and Secrecy of Correspondence 113
vi Contents

Equality before the Law 115

The Right to Nationality 126
The Right of Emigration and Expatriation 129
X. The Substance of Part Two of the Bill 134
The Right to Political Independence 144
The Right to Preservation of Cultural Entity 151
The Economic and Social Rights 155
Subjects not Included in the Bill of Rights 163

PART III: THE E NFORCEMENT OF THE

INTERNATIONAL BILL OF THE
RIGHTS O F MAN
XI. The Enforcement of the Bill 169
XII. Enforcement within the State 179
XIII. International Enforcement 194
The Functions of the High Commission 198
The Procedure of the High Commission 202
The Organization of the High Commission 204
The Secretariat of the High Commission 205
Note on the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals 213
XIV. Minorities Treaties in Relation to the Bill 215

Index 225
 Introduction
(on the occasion of its republication)

Philippe Sands1

Hersch Lauterpacht’s An International Bill of the Rights of Man

was published in the spring of 1945, and is one of the transformative
legal works of the twentieth century. It posited a new international
legal order, adopting Winston Churchill’s commitment to ‘the en-
thronement of the rights of man’ and placing the protection of the
individual human being at the centre of the international legal land-
scape, a means to bring an end to ‘the omnipotence of the State’.2 The
book was immediately recognized as ambitious and revolutionary, a
text that was well ahead of its time. Its significance lay in the melding
of ideas and action: Lauterpacht’s model for an International Bill
that was legally binding and constrained what States could do to
those within their jurisdiction—whether citizen or foreigner. It was
amongst the first of such studies to go to print. It provided inspiration
for the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
adopted four years after Lauterpacht completed his book, and the
legally binding European Convention on Human Rights that followed
two years later, in 1950. A revised edition was published in 1950,
which took account of those later developments but largely adopted
the arguments put forward in the original.
Subsequent developments that seek to protect the individual on
the basis of irreducible, universal, and enforceable rights available to
all—human rights instruments, international criminal tribunals, the
gradual demise of absolute immunity for individuals alleged to have

1
Professor of Law, University College London. I wish to thank Remi Reichhold
and David Schweitzer for their assistance in preparing this Introduction.
2
Hersch Lauterpacht, An International Bill of Rights of Man (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1945), Preface, p. v.
viii Introduction

been involved in grave violations of human rights—are all directly

connected to the ideas expressed by Hersch Lauterpacht in the
original edition, and it is for that reason that the choice has been
taken to re-issue the original.
***
Lauterpacht was forty-five years old when, in April 1942, he received
an invitation from the American Jewish Committee to write a
book on the International Law of Human Rights. Five years earlier
he had been elected as Whewell Professor of International Law at the
University of Cambridge, a position attained following an improbable
path that began in a small town on the eastern outskirts of the Austro-
Hungarian empire.
Lauterpacht was born in 1897 in Zolkiew, the second of three
children. His father was a timber merchant, and in 1911 the family
moved to nearby Lemberg (now Lviv, in the Ukraine, and before that
Lwów in Poland). At the age of eighteen he enrolled at the Jan Casimir
University in Lemberg to study law, where he remained until 1919. In
that period of study, when he was first taught international law by
Professor Josef Buzek (grandfather of Jerzy Buzek, who was Prime
Minister of Poland from 1997–2001), he experienced first-hand the
consequences of war, strife, and discrimination on grounds of his
Jewish religion: in September 1914 the Russian army occupied the
city, and were thrown out the following year by the Austro-Hungarian
army which remained in control until November 1918. That month
saw Lauterpacht on the barricades in the streets of central Lemberg,
protecting his family and home from the violent struggle that erupted
between Polish and Ukrainian communities and which left many Jews
caught in the middle. By the time Lauterpacht left the city in the
autumn of 1919 to continue studies in Vienna, Lwów was part of
newly independent Poland; the conflict in which Lauterpacht was
caught up catalysed US President Woodrow Wilson to insist that the
price of an independent Poland was a commitment to the protection of
minorities, as reflected in Article 93 of the Treaty of Versailles.
Lauterpacht arrived in Vienna in the autumn of 1919, where he
enrolled at the university to study with Professor Hans Kelsen.
 Introduction ix

Kelsen’s work on the Austrian government committee drafting a new

constitution—to include rights of judicial review for individual citi-
zens—would have a deep influence on the young student’s thinking.
Lauterpacht left Vienna in 1923, married and with a PhD, to continue
research at the London School of Economics, under the guidance of
Arnold McNair, a lecturer in international law. There he remained for
fourteen years, producing a string of works that attracted significant
attention and touched on themes and ideas that would come to the
fore in An International Bill of Rights. His first book, Private Law
Sources and Analogies of International Law, was published in 1927,
and followed in 1933 by The Function of Law in the International
Community, probably his most significant work. A year later came
The Development of International Law by the Permanent Court of
International Justice. During this time too he published a great
number of reviews, articles, and lectures, took on the editorship of
the Annual Digest and Reports of Public International Law Cases
(now the International Law Reports), and, from 1935, became the
editor of Oppenheim’s International Law, Volume I and later of
Volume 2 (the fifth edition was published in 1935, and the sixth
edition in 1940).
Lauterpacht also had a practical bent. Beyond editing the Annual
Digest with McNair, he qualified as a barrister in 1935 and began
providing advice on a range of issues, including the treatment of Jews
in Europe following the Nazi accession to power in Germany in 1933.
Throughout this period his family remained in Lwów and the sur-
rounding areas: his last visit to the city was in 1928, although his
parents were able to make occasional visits to London before the
move to Cambridge, in 1937. Two years later, in September 1939, the
Soviets took control of Lwów under the Stalin-Ribbentrop Pact. As
the war progressed, Lauterpacht gave various advices to the British
government, and from 1942 he assisted in the preparation of memo-
randa on the prosecution of war criminals. He also came to know the
then United States Attorney-General Robert Jackson (and later Just-
ice of the US Supreme Court), with whom he would work closely at
the Nuremberg Trials (in July 1945, when Jackson came to visit him
in Cambridge, Lauterpacht developed the formulation of ‘Crimes
x Introduction

against Humanity’ and the suggestion that it be introduced into the

Nuremberg Statute, with a lasting and significant impact).
In May 1942 he signed a contract with the American Jewish
Committee (the AJC) to write An International Bill of Rights.
By then, the Nazis had occupied Lwów and he knew his parents
and family to be in great danger, although communications had
come to an end (it was only much later, in the course of the Nurem-
berg Trial in which he was participating as a member of the British
prosecution team, that he learnt that his parents, brother, and sister
had been murdered by the Nazis in August 1942). By then, his
wife Rachel and son Eli had been evacuated to the United States,
and although he made occasional visits, he was living a solitary life
in Cambridge, England. The contract with the AJC offered a generous
fee of US$2500, with a further US$800 towards secretarial and
other expenses.3 The preparation of the text was expected to take a
year, but Lauterpacht was urged to proceed expeditiously, since the
subject of individual rights under international law was already being
examined by the American Law Institute and the American Bar
Association.
Lauterpacht began his work in July 1942, hoping to complete it by
the end of the year. This proved to be overly optimistic. In September
he wrote to Rachel that he was ‘doing quiet reading—but not yet
writing—on the International Bill of Rights’, noting that he had let
himself in ‘for a difficult thing’, although he didn’t regret taking on
the commission. ‘The “dough” will be useful in due course’, he told
his wife. By December 1942 he had made sufficient progress on the
underlying ideas to be able to deliver a paper to the Grotius Society
in London, entitled ‘The Law of Nations, the Law of Nature and
the Rights of Man’.4 The lecture addressed ‘the bewildering and
seemingly insoluble problems of an international Charter of Human
Rights’, as well as the political challenge of imposing upon States the
obligation to abandon the right to treat their own citizens entirely as
they wished. Statesmen ‘may recoil from the revolutionary immensity

3
Elihu Lauterpacht, The Life of Hersch Lauterpacht (2010) (‘Life’), p. 251.
4
29 Transactions of the Grotius Society (1944), pp. 1–33.
 Introduction xi

of the task’, Lauterpacht noted.5 He recognized the complexities of

proposing ‘innovation in the constitutional law of states and of
mankind’, although he hoped to show that any departures in the
law would not break from ‘what is truly permanent in the legal
tradition of Western civilisation’, and would be ‘in accordance with
the proper purpose of the law of nations’.
The hope expressed in the lecture would come to be reflected in the
early sections of Part I of the book, which deal at length with ‘natural
rights’ in legal and political thought and in the British Constitution, as
well as Lauterpacht’s perception of ‘the inherent rights of man’ and
their connection to the ‘law of nature’. The Grotius Society Lecture
articulated a belief that the entire international legal order needed to
be shifted on its axis, away from the protection of States and towards
the recognition that ‘the individual human being—his welfare and the
freedom of his personality in its manifold manifestations—is the
ultimate unit of all law’.6 This theme underpins An International
Bill: it was revolutionary when he evoked it, and has gradually
moved into the mainstream of international legal consciousness,
even if its full effects in theory and practice are yet to be felt.
The slow progress on the book was reflected in his correspondence
with Rachel and Eli during the darkest days of the war. In December
1942, he worried about progress and the ‘dull business’ of writing the
book. To expedite matters, and ‘to prompt myself to produce some-
thing tangible’, he undertook to offer three public lectures at Cam-
bridge University in February 1943 (the lectures were postponed for a
few months due to his being unwell).7 In April 1943 he expressed
regret to his son, who must by now be getting ‘rather tired’ of hearing
of ‘the progress (or lack of progress) of the famous Rights of Man’.8 In
May 1943 Rachel was back in England, and she attended a delayed
lecture, ‘a great occasion’ in front of a large audience. ‘Daddy was in
good form’, Rachel wrote, ‘and the lecture was a most enlightening

5 6
Ibid. Ibid.
7
Letter from Hersch Lauterpacht to Eli Lauterpacht, 15 April 1943, in Life (n. 3),
p. 228.
8
Letter from Hersch Lauterpacht to Eli Lauterpacht, 2 April 1943, in Life (n. 3),
p. 227.
xii Introduction

exposition’, although it seemed to have been ‘slightly above the heads

of the younger audience’.9 After the final lecture, at which Lauter-
pacht ‘read out solemnly the draft of the International Bill of Rights of
Man’, he wrote to his son that ‘people thought that it was a historic
occasion’.10
For Lauterpacht the key to his project was a desire that it should
lead to something that was legally binding and not merely an exhort-
ation that was declaratory of principle, a proposition that made the
project ‘a difficult subject’. ‘If that Bill of Rights were merely a
declaration of principle like the Atlantic Charter, then there would
be no difficulty’, he wrote.

We could cram into that Bill of Rights all kind of things including the so-
called social and economic rights like the right to work, to social security,
to equal opportunity in education, and so on. But the Bill of Rights, if it is
to be effective, must be enforced not only by the authorities of the State,
but also by international actors if necessary. How shall we do that? Shall
we allow any individual whose rights, as guaranteed in the international
Bill, have been violated to go to an international court and appeal against
his own state and its courts? This would mean an international court
flooded with thousands of cases on matters of which a tribunal of foreign
judges has little knowledge. And would states agree to entrust to a foreign
tribunal such questions touching the most essential aspects of their
sovereignty? However, I must deal with the matter somehow.11

The questions he put to his son continue to resonate today. By August

1943, as the completion of the ‘silly book’ approached, he complained
that it had ‘exhausted’ him.12 A draft was sent off to the AJC at the
end of September 1943, just before a holiday on Lake Windermere. Of
all his many obligations, Lauterpacht complained, ‘none I think will

9
Letter from Rachel Lauterpacht to Eli Lauterpacht, 4 May 1943, in Life (n. 3),
p. 229.
10
Letter from Hersch Lauterpacht to Eli Lauterpacht, 26 May 1943, in Life (n. 3),
p. 229.
11
Letter from Hersch Lauterpacht to Eli Lauterpacht, 26 May 1943 (n. 11).
12
Letter from Hersch Lauterpacht to Eli Lauterpacht, 26 August 1943, in Life
(n. 3), p. 233.
 Introduction xiii

give me as much of a headache as the Rights of Man’.13 In November

1943, as an early draft was reaching New York by sea, he complained
about the quality of US proofreading, which tended to be done ‘rather
negligently’, and noted that he would ‘try to have the major part of it
published here separately’.14 These complaints continued into 1944, by
which time Columbia University Press had agreed to publish the work.15
Early in 1944 he submitted a revised text to the publisher, and in the
spring of 1944 the full manuscript was delivered. That draft included a
lengthy appendix setting out extracts of various national Bills of Rights,
but a few months later he withdrew the appendix as it was ‘not in keeping
with the character of the book and is, to a substantial extent, misleading’.
In December 1944, when the book was at the page-proof stage, the AJC’s
Director of the Overseas Department (Max Gottschalk) offered several
pages of detailed suggestions, some of which Lauterpacht accepted. The
book was finally published in June 1945, after the end of the war and
around the same time that the United Nations Charter was adopted. By
then, Lauterpacht had spent considerable time ‘restoring many passages
of the book to their original wording’, a reflection of the changes intro-
duced by the Columbia Press with which he was not happy. His deter-
mined character was reflected in the instruction that ‘I should make it
clear that it is a condition of the publication of the book that all the
corrections which I have made in the galley proof should be rigidly
adhered to’.16
The time of publication was a difficult one for Lauterpacht, as the
war had come to an end without information about the fate of
his family in Lwów, and he feared the worst (it was only in early
1946, as he contributed to the work of the British prosecution team at
the Nuremberg trial, that he learned that almost all his family per-
ished in Lwów and Zolkiew). Nevertheless, his attention to detail
remained undimmed, and he expressed unhappiness with a sen-
tence on the dust jacket for the US edition that claimed that his

13
Letter from Hersch Lauterpacht to Eli Lauterpacht, 14 September 1943, in Life
(n. 3), p. 234.
14
Letter from Hersch Lauterpacht to Eli Lauterpacht, 23 November 1943, in Life
(n. 3), p. 239.
15
Letter from Hersch Lauterpacht to Eli Lauterpacht, 20 April 1944 and 1 May
1944, in Life (n. 3) pp. 246–247.
16
Life (n. 3), p. 254, citing a letter from Lauterpacht to Dr Gottschalk, 12 December
1944.
xiv Introduction

book ‘leaves no stone unturned in stating the case for establishing’ an

International Bill of Rights. Lauterpacht was unhappy with the sen-
tence because it suggested that the book was ‘propaganda and not an
impartial enquiry’. He offered to meet the cost of a new cover when
the book came out in England.
***
The book is not propaganda. Nevertheless, Lauterpacht’s carefully
constructed argument—set out in three distinct parts—reflects the
mind of an advocate who recognizes that the brief pushes to the very
limits of acceptable argument. He hoped that his approach might pre-
empt the inevitable criticisms that would flow from the deeply
conservative world of international law and its lawyers.
In this way the opening part of the book seeks to lay the intellectual
and historical foundation for the very idea of an International Bill of
Rights, drawing on the connections between the law of nature, the law
of nations, and the rights of man. Lauterpacht constructs his proposal
on two foundations of fact: the first is the ‘antiquity of the notion of
the innate rights of man appertaining to him as a human being’, and
the second is ‘the close association of these rights with the doctrine
of the law of nature’.17 He understands that in order to gain traction
he must situate his project firmly in the traditions of Western civil-
ization, as he sees them, that the ‘law of nature’ is a means to that end,
even if somewhat of an intellectual stretch, but it becomes ‘the
bulwark and the lever of the idea of the natural rights of man’.
Lauterpacht anchors himself firmly to the belief that the original
connection between ‘natural law’ and ‘the rights of man’ (which must
include the claim to ‘indestructible human rights’) persists and has
‘never disappeared’.18 He claims to have identified an early-twentieth-
century renaissance in the ideas of the law of nature, a means to find a
‘spiritual counterpart’ to the power of the modern State that itself
constitutes a threat to the rights of man. Without referring to the
Nazis or Hitler he invokes the ‘pagan absolutism’ perfected in ‘the

17
An International Bill of Rights of Man (n. 2), p. 25.
18
An International Bill of Rights of Man (n. 2), pp. 39–40.
 Introduction xv

German State’ after the First World War as a great threat to the rights
of man and one countered by other countries that invoked the law of
nature to affirm the sanctity of the individual.19
Lauterpacht’s relationship with the law of nature is ambiguous. He
recognizes a place for it—not ‘consigned to the province of historical
research’—but not its dominance, and it is treated as a means to an
end, not an end in itself. The law of nature offers a ‘spiritual basis’ and
‘political inspiration’ to elevate the rights of man to ‘a legal plane
superior to the will of sovereign States’,20 recognizing that positive
law alone is insufficient to ‘supply the solution of the problem of the
rights of man’ . . . The law of nature offers an ‘ever-present impulse
and a fertile source of vitality and improvement’, allowing the innov-
ation that is an International Bill to be ‘connected’ with the perman-
ent legal traditions of Western civilization.21
This is a hopeful argument, and not one that will convince all his
readers. He knows too that he must engage with the peculiarities of
the British legal tradition, and the absence of a written constitution
that allows the doctrine of the absolute supremacy of Parliament to
burn undimmed. These are ‘factors to be considered’, Lauterpacht
appreciates, in the design of any International Bill, but they will not
allow him to be put off, any more than the absence of judicial review
of legislation of the Westminster Parliament. He goes no further than
hope that these factors ‘may be deliberately made to yield to the
significant innovation’ implied by an International Bill of Rights,
recognizing that ‘the notion of natural and inalienable rights human
rights’ is nothing less than ‘a denial of the absolute supremacy of any
earthly legislative power’.22 These considerations strongly influenced
the mechanisms of enforcement that Lauterpacht conjured up, and
they continue to have strong currency seven decades later, as elem-
ents of British society continue to deplore the impact of judgments of
the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on the suprem-
acy of the Westminster Parliament.

19
An International Bill of Rights of Man (n. 2), p. 40.
20
An International Bill of Rights of Man (n. 2), p. 52.
21
An International Bill of Rights of Man (n. 2), p. 55.
22
An International Bill of Rights of Man (n. 2), p. 65.
xvi Introduction

Buttressed on a foundation of antiquity and hope, the Second Part

of the book offers a text for an International Bill, with a commentary
for each of the twenty Articles. The preparation of draft Articles was
innovative, as Lauterpacht had little to go on by way of precedent
beyond an effort in 1929 by the Institut de Droit International. Some
reference is made to the ideas of H.G. Wells and various international
committees during the war, although no mention is made of the
parallel efforts of the American Law Institute, presumably because
of difficulties in transatlantic communication.23
Lauterpacht’s draft Bill is in three sections. A first section of nine
Articles protects what have come to be known by some as civil rights:
liberty, freedom from slavery, religion, expression, assembly and
association, privacy, equality, nationality, and emigration. By more
contemporary standards, notable omissions on his part include any
reference to a prohibition on torture or cruel treatment, or any
obligation not to discriminate against women. Equally striking is his
approach to the situation of non-whites in South Africa and ‘the
thorny problem of actual disenfranchisement of large sections of
the Negro population in some States of the United States’, both a
brutal recognition of the realpolitik necessary to allow those two
countries to engage with an International Bill.24 The second section,
in five Articles, covers other political rights (elections, self-govern-
ment, minority rights) and, to a limited extent, economic and social
rights relating to work, education, and public assistance in case of
‘undeserved want’. As will later become clear, Lauterpacht believed
that such rights are not to be justiciable. He also chose not to include
any protection of property rights, a nod perhaps to the political wind
coming from the east, and to domestic political considerations in the
United Kingdom, where nationalization was very much on the
agenda in the coming General Election. Nevertheless, Lauterpacht
knew that his Articles represented a ‘radical innovation in inter-
national law’, imposing obligations upon States that would require

23
American law Institute, Statement of Essential Human Rights, 89 Proceedings of
the American Philosophical Society 489 (1945).
24
An International Bill of Rights of Man (n. 2), pp. 140–141.
 Introduction xvii

them to agree to limit their sovereignty in a legal instrument creating

enforceable legal rights for individuals. Such rights and obligations,
Lauterpacht believed, would do no more than codify generally
accepted principles of law and would be generally applicable, avail-
able to all.25
The third section of the Bill is in six Articles and addresses the
sensitive matter of the enforcement of the rights identified in the Bill’s
first section. The scheme includes an obligation to adopt those rights
into domestic law and allow for their review by national courts,
supplemented by an international supervisory mechanism that is
notable in falling short of a call for an international court. The
balance between national and international anticipates the principle
of ‘complementarity’ reflected in the Statute of the International
Criminal Court, adopted more than five decades later.26 In certain
respects this third Part is the heart of the book: Lauterpacht was
concerned that any Bill must not merely declare rights (as the Institut
de Droit International’s 1929 effort proposed, and as the 1948 Uni-
versal Declaration on Human Rights would later replicate) but should
impose binding legal duties that could be the subject of enforcement
measures. This would avoid mere academic exhortation.
Lauterpacht rejected too the model offered by the procedures and
approaches of the discredited Minorities Treaties implemented after
the First World War. These were inadequate, he believed, not least
because they failed to provide for a constant supervision (no Perman-
ent Minorities Commission ever emerged, as some had hoped) but
because they became mired in political actions. He wanted too to
avoid any vestige of ‘individual intervention’, namely supervision at
the instance only of the State alleged to be in violation, and proposed
a scheme that allowed action at any time, not merely after a violation
had occurred, or was about to occur.27 He rejected any idea of
‘international judicial review’ by means of an international court

25
An International Bill of Rights of Man (n. 2), pp. 75–82.
26
Statute of the International Criminal Court, Rome, 17 July 1998, preamble
(‘Emphasizing that the International Criminal Court established under this Statute
shall be complementary to national criminal jurisdictions’; see also Art. 17.
27
An International Bill of Rights of Man (n. 2), p. 172.
xviii Introduction

accessible to individuals who could not find a remedy at the national

courts. Such an idea, he believed, may be ‘logical and simple’28 but
was unsound and impracticable because it would lead to ‘an amount
of litigation so vast that not one tribunal would be required, but many
tribunals’, and this in turn would lead to ‘a divergence of interpret-
ations’.29 This was practical Lauterpacht speaking. He recognized
other difficulties, not least the fact that some countries (like Britain)
did not allow for domestic judicial review and could hardly be
expected to agree to an international model that would imply ‘a
surrender of sovereignty on a large and unprecedented scale’.30 He
recognized too that an International Bill would be a text of ‘great
generality’ and that its details would have to be filled in by legislation
and judicial precedent in each State, that there was ‘room for a wide
divergence of law and practice’, and that the law and judicial practice
of each State had ‘evolved their own solutions and their own proced-
ures’.
On this view, an International Bill must not attempt to introduce ‘a
world law’, and the municipal law of States ‘cannot be administered
by international courts possessing no requisite knowledge of the law,
of the legal tradition, and of the social and economic problems of the
individual States’.31 An alternative approach might be national tribu-
nals that included foreign judges, but in the transitional period after
the Second World War the time was not ripe for such innovation.
Against this background, enforcement should primarily be a matter
for national courts, coupled with a ‘permanent international author-
ity’ that was neither judicial nor political in character which could
supervise and enforce the observance of the rights set out in Part I of
his International Bill.
***
Lauterpacht knew his ideas would attract criticism. In July 1944 he
told Dr Simon Segal of the AJC that the book ‘would be assailed by

28
An International Bill of Rights of Man (n. 2), p. 173.
29
An International Bill of Rights of Man (n. 2), p. 174.
30
An International Bill of Rights of Man (n. 2), p. 175.
31
An International Bill of Rights of Man (n. 2).
 Introduction xix

the orthodox as going too far; by the progressive as being too conser-
vative and evasive; by the lawyers as being revolutionary; by the
layman as being too legalistic; and so on’.32 He would take any
criticism ‘philosophically’, and expressed the hope that the AJC
would do the same.33 The book was published in June 1945, as the
United Nations Charter established a first global organization com-
mitted to ‘promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and
for fundamental freedoms for all’ (Article 1(3)).
The book was widely reviewed in academic journals and generated
a range of reactions. Robert Jennings, a younger colleague at Cam-
bridge, considered the work to be ‘statesmanlike’,34 and from George-
town in Washington DC came the view that it was ‘persuasive’.35
Others were less enthusiastic, not least in respect of his partial
embrace of natural law and rights, which had been sidelined by the
drafters of the US Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights and
also exploited by others who sought to justify everything from slavery
(Aristotle) to the Aryan leadership principle (Hitler).36 Such critics
considered that Lauterpacht had failed ‘to come to grips with the
realities of government’.37 An anonymous reviewer in the American
Bar Association Journal thought the book to be already out of date,
and suggested that Lauterpacht could render ‘a vast service by re-
surveying the whole subject in the present tense with the Charter and
the Statute before him’.38 Yet other reviews found the book to be ‘full
of ideas’ and ‘fresh’, a ‘pragmatic and realistic’ combination of legal
theory and political knowledge.39
The quality of the reviews reflect a broad recognition of the singular
importance of the work. Philip Jessup applauded the ‘quiet and mod-
erate assurance’ with which Lauterpacht inspired ‘the anticipation of

32
Life (n. 3), p. 255, letter of 17 July 1944.
33
Life (n. 3).
34
See also R.Y. Jennings, 23 British Yearbook of International Law 509 (1946); see
also Harrap Freeman, 15 Fordham Law Review 309 (1946).
35
Francis E. Lucey SJ, 34 Georgetown Law Journal 121 (1945–46).
36
George Jaffin, 45 Columbia Law Review 977 (1945).
37
William S. Stokes, 36 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 337 (1945–46).
38
Life (n. 3), note 23, p. 257.
39
Reviewed by CMJ (full name not provided), 8 Cambridge Law Journal 261
(1945–47).
Other documents randomly have
different content
shall use sharp reason, and, if necessary, irony and sarcasm. And I
shall ask him (usin’ a ironicle tone, if necessary) how he thinks it
looks in the eyes of the other nations to see him, who ort to be a
model for ’em all to foller, allow such iniquity as Mormonism to
flourish in his borders. To let a regular organized band of banditty
murder and plunder and commit all sorts of abominations right under
his honest old nose. And how it must look to them foreign nations to
see such a good, moral old gentleman as he is lift his venerable old
eyewinker and wink at such crime and sin. How insignificant and
humiliatin’ it must look to ’em to see him allow a man in Congress to
make laws that will imprison a man for havin’ two wives when the
same man has got four of ’em, and is lookin’ round hungry for more.
“And I shall hunch him up sharp about sellin’ licenses to do wrong
for money—licenses to make drunkards, and unfit men for earth or
heaven—licenses to commit other crimes that are worse—sellin’
indulgences to sin as truly as ever Mr. Pope did.
“I don’t s’pose, in fact, I know, that Sam hain’t never thought it
over, and took a solemn, realizin’ sense of how bad he was a cuttin’
up (entirely unbeknown to him). And, if necessary, to convince him
and make him see his situation, I shall poke fun at him (in a jokin’
way, so’s not to get him mad). And I shall ask him if he thinks it is
any nobler for him to set up in his high chair at Washington and sell
indulgences to sin, than it was in Mr. Pope to set up in his high chair
in Vatican village and sell ’em.
“And I shall skare him mebby, that is, if I have to, and ask him in a
impressive, skareful tone that if he can’t be broke in any other way,
if he don’t think he ort to be brought down to a diet of Worms.
“It will go aginst my feelin’s to skare the excellent old gentleman.
But I shall feel it to be my duty to not spare no pains. But at the
same time I shall be very clever to him. I shall resk it. I don’t believe
he will get mad at me. He knows my feelin’s for him too well. He
knows there hain’t a old man on the face of the earth I love so
devotedly, now father Smith is dead, and father Allen, and all the
other old male relatives on my side, and on his’en. I’ll bet a cent I
can convince him where he is in the wrong on’t.”
 Here I paused for a moment for wind, for truly I was almost
completely exhausted. But I was so full and runnin’ over with
emotions that I couldn’t stop, wind or no wind. And I went on:
“He hain’t realized, and he won’t, till I go right there and hunch
him up about it, how it looks for him to talk eloquent about the
sanctity of home. How the household, the Christian home, is the
safeguard, the anchor of church and state, and then make his words
seem emptier and hollower than a drum, or a hogsit, by allowin’ this
sin of Mormonism to undermind and beat down the walls of home.”
And then (this theme always did make me talk beautiful), as I
thought of home and Josiah, and the fearful dangers that had
threatened ’em both, why, as I thought of this, I begun to feel
eloquenter far than I had felt durin’ the hull interview, and I don’t
know as the feelin’s I felt then had been gone ahead of by me in five
years. Why, I branched out perfectly beautiful, and very deep, and
says I:
“Home! The Christian home! The mightiest power on earth for
good. Each home seperate and perfect in itself, like the little crystal
drops of water, each one on ’em round and complete and all floatin’
on together, unbeknown to them, makin’ a mighty ocian floatin’ right
into that serene bay into which all our hopes and life dreams empty.
That soundless sea that floats human souls right up to the eternal
city.
“The love of parents, wives, and children, like golden rings, bindin’
the hearts to the happy hearth-stone, and then widenin’ out in other
golden rings, bindin’ them hearth-stones to loyalty and patriotism,
love of country, love of law and order, and love of Heaven, why,
them gold rings within rings, they all make a chain that can’t be
broke down; they twist all together into a rope that binds this crazy
old world to the throne of God.
“And,” says I, lookin’ at Elder Judas Wart, with a arrow in each eye
(as it were): “This most wholesome restraint, this strongest of ropes
that is stretched firm and solid between safety and old Error, you are
tryin’ to break down. But you’ll find you can’t do it. No sir! You may
all get onto it,—the whole caboodle of you, Mormons, Oneida
Communities, Free Lovers, the hull set on you,—and you’ll find it is a
rope you can’t break! You’ll find that the most you can do is to teter
and swing on it, and stretch it out a little ways, mebby. You can’t
break it! No sir! Uncle Samuel (after I have hunched him up) will
hold one end of it firm and strong, and Principle and Public
Sentiment the other end of it; and if necessary, if danger is at hand,
she that was Samantha Smith will lay holt of it, too; and I’d love to
see any shacks, or set of shacks, a gettin’ it out of our hands then.”
Oh, how eloquent I had been. But he wuzn’t convinced. I don’t
s’pose anybody would hardly believe that a man could listen to such
talk, and not be proselyted and converted. But he wuzn’t. After all
my outlay and expenditure of eloquence and wind and everything,
he wuzn’t convinced a mite. And after he had got his hat all on to
go, he jest stood there in front of me, with his hands in his pockets,
and says he, bold as brass, and as impudent as brass ever was:
“I am a goin’, mum, and I don’t never expect to see you agin. I
never shall see you in the kingdom.”
“I am afraid you won’t,” says I, givin’ him a awful keen look, but
pityin’. “I am afraid if you don’t turn right square round, and stop
actin’, you won’t be there.”
“I shall be there,” says he, “but you won’t.”
Says I, “How do you know I won’t?”
Says he, “Because I do know it.”
Says I, with dignity, “You don’t know it.”
“Why,” says he, comin’ out plain with his biggest and heftiest
argument, the main pillow in the Mormon church, “a woman can’t be
saved unless some man saves ’em, some Mormon. That is one
reason,” says he, “why I would have bore my cross, and married
you; obtained an entrance for you in the heavenly kingdom. But now
it is too late. I won’t save you.”
 JOSIAH ENDS THE ARGUMENT.

“You won’t save me?” says I, lookin’ keen at him, as he stood

there before me, with his red bloated face, a face that had that low,
disipated, animal expression lookin’ out so plain under the
sanctimonious, hypocritical look he had tried to cover it with. “You
won’t save me! Won’t take me into the heavenly kingdom! Wall, I
rather think you won’t.”
I was so engaged and bound up in my indignant emotions and
principles and everything that I didn’t see what was goin’ on behind
me. But there was a fearful scene ensuin’ and goin’ on there. A awful
scene of vengeance and just retribution. For my faithful pardner,
maddened by the terrible insult to his Samantha, jest lifted himself
up on one elbo, his righteous anger liftin’ him up for the moment
above stitches and all other earthly infirmities, and he threw that
broom-handle at Elder Judas Wart with terrific force, and aimed it so
perfect that it hit him right on the nap of the neck. It was a fearful
blow. I s’pose it come jest as near breakin’ his neck as anything ever
did and miss.
And it skairt him fearfully, too; for Josiah had been so still for a
spell that he thought he was asleep. And it had come onto him as
swift and severe as a judgment right out of the heavens. (Not that I
would wish to be understood that broom-handles are judgments,
and should be handled as such; not as a general thing. I am speakin’
in a poetical way, and would wish to be took poetically.)
But oh! how fearful Elder Judas Wart looked. It squshed him right
down for a minute where he ort to be squshed—right onto his knees.
He couldn’t get up for a number of minutes, bein’ stunted and wild
with the blow and the fearful horrow of his skare. And oh! how
Josiah Allen did converse with him, as he knelt there helpless before
him; hollered! it wasn’t conversation, it was hollerin’; loud, wild
holler! almost a beller!
He ordered him out of the house, and threatened him with instant
and immediate execution on the galluses. Though he knew we
hadn’t no gallus built, and no timber suitable to build one; and he
disabled with a stitch, and nobody but me to do anything. But he
vowed, in that loud, skareful axent, that he would hang him in five
minutes’ time; and chop his head off with a broad-axe; and gulotine
him; and saw his neck off with our old cross-cut saw; and shoot him
down like a dog; and burn him to the stake; and scalp him.
Why, Josiah ort to have known that one of these punishments was
enough for any man to bear, and more than any man could stand up
under. And he knew we hadn’t the conveniences by us for half of
these punishments. But he didn’t think of that. He didn’t think of
nothin’, nor nobody, only jest anger and vengeance. He was more
delerious and wild in his conversation and mean than I had ever
known him to be during our entire aquaintenship. It was a fearful
scene. It was harrowin’ to me to see it go on. And Elder Judas Wart,
as quick as he could get up,—started off on a quick run, almost a
canter. I s’pose, I have heerd sense, and then I could see from his
looks and actions, that a skairter man never lived. And well he might
be. I don’t blame him for it a mite. I blame him for lots of things, but
not for that; for the words and mean of Josiah was enough to apaul
a iron man, or a mule.

DEPARTURE OF THE ELDER.

 But as I told Josiah afterwards, after the crazy delerium begun to
disperse off of his mean, says I, “Why is it any more of a insult to
me than it is to them other poor wimmen who have to endure it?”
Says I, “You feel awfully to have that doctrine jest throwed at your
pardner, as you may say. And look at the thousands of wimmen that
have to submit to the humiliation and degredation of this belief, live
in it, and die in it.”
“Wall,” says he, chucklin’, “I jest choked old Wart off of it pretty
sudden. I brought him down onto his knees pretty suple. He won’t
talk about savin’ wimmen’s souls agin right away. He won’t till his
neck gets well, anyway.” And he chuckled agin.
I don’t believe in fightin’, and am the last woman to encourage it;
but I could not help sayin’, in fervid axents:
“Oh! if Uncle Samuel, that dear, blunderin’, noble old man, would
only hit old Polygamy jest another such a blow, jest as sudden and
unexpected, and bring him down on his polluted old knees in front of
the nation. Oh! what a day that would be for America and Samantha.
What feelin’s we should feel, both on us.”
“Yes,” says Josiah, “I wish it could be did.” In the case of Josiah
Allen my powerful talk (aided by previous and more late
occurrences) had fell on good ground, I knew. The seed was
springin’ up strong. I knew it was by the way he threw that broom-
handle, and I knew also by his looks and axents.
He was perfectly and entirely convinced of the awfulness and vile
horrors of Mormonism. I knew he was. He looked so good and sort
o’ noble at me. And his tone was so sweet and kind of affectin’,
somehow, as he added, in gentle and plaintive axents:
“I believe, Samantha, I could relish a little briled steak and some
mashed-up potatoes.”
Says I, “So could I, and I will get dinner to once.” And I did.
 A CRISIS WITH KELLUP.

T he very next day after I gin the Elder such a talkin to, Cassandra
and Nathan Spooner come to our house a visitin, or that is,
Nathan brought Cassandra up as far as there for a drive, in the
mornin’, and I made ’em come in and stay to dinner, Cassandra not
bein’ very strong. They have got a young babe, a boy, five weeks old
that very day. Wall, while they was there, while I was a gettin’
dinner, I had a letter from Kitty. Kitty had gone home two weeks
before, unexpected. A letter bein’ had by her from her mother, to
that effect.
I never shall forget the day Kitty went. Never. Josiah had hitched
up to take her to say good bye to the children, and they hadn’t been
gone more’n several moments, when Kellup Cobb come. He had
heerd the news of her goin’ home, and he looked anxious and
careworn. And his hair and whiskers and eyebrows bein’ a sort of a
dark mournful color that day, made him look worse. He had been
foolin’ with logwood and alum, and a lot of such stuff.
He said, “he was fairly beat out a layin’ awake the night before.”
“What ails you?” says I. “What is the matter?”
“Wimmen is what ails me!” says he with a bitter look. “Wimmen is
what is the matter! Why,” says he, “wimmen make such fools of
themselves about me, that it is a wonder that I get any sleep at all; I
shouldn’t,” says he firmly, “I know I shouldn’t, if I didn’t get so
sleepy and sort o’ drowse off.”
“Well,” says I reasonably, “I don’t s’pose we should any of us get
much sleep, if it wasn’t for that.”
Says he, speakin’ out firm and decided, “I want to do right. I want
to do the fair thing by wimmen. But there it is. How can I? Now here
is Kitty Smith goin off droopin’ and low-sperited, I s’pose, jest on my
account. And situated as I be, how be I goin’ to help myself, or chirk
her up before she goes?
“I think my eyes of that girl. And I jest about made up my mind,
last night, in the dead of night (for I don’t believe I slept a wink
before ten o’clock), I jest about made up my mind that marry her I
would, and let the rest of the wimmen live or die, jist as they was a
mind to.
“Why, I think so much of that girl, that it jest about kills me to
think of her goin off home, as them without hope. But what can I
do? I dassent say right out that I will marry her, till I look round and
see what would foller. I want to see the doctor! I want to see what
he thinks, if he thinks the effects of such a terrible blow onto the fair
sect would be worse at this time of the year. It is a sickly time.
Mebby they would stand it better some other time of the year.
“But,” says he, “this I think I may safely promise you; this, I think,
will chirk her up a good deal: I will write to her. I will kinder watch
things, and enquire ’round, and see what I can do—see how they
would seem likely to stand it, and if I see it haint likely to kill ten or
fifteen, I will try to get round and marry her. You tell her so from me.
And tell her I will write to her, anyway. My very heart-strings seemed
wrapped round that girl,” says he, sithin’ hard, “and how I am a goin’
to stand it is more than I can tell, to think of her bein’ way off there
alone, a sufferin’ and droopin’ round, on my account.
“But this letter will probable be the greatest comfort she can have
next to havin’ me myself. You will be apt to write to her?” says he
anxiously.
“Yes,” says I, “most probable I shall.”
“Wall,” says he, “I will put in a letter with you when you write. It
haint the postage that is the stick with me, it haint the 3 cents I
mind. But if I can’t, after all my efforts, see my way clear to marry
her, it would seem more cruel and cold-blooded in me, to have gin
her the encouragement of sendin her a letter by myself, all stamped
and paid for by me, than it would to send it in with somebody else.”
Says he, “Don’t you think so?”
 Says I in a sort of a blind way, “I think of a great many things that
it wouldn’t do to tell of.”
“Yes,” says he, “you probable pity me, and realize the situation I
am placed in, more than you feel free to tell. You probable think that
sympathy would break me down—make me feel worse.”
“Yes,” says I firmly, “I don’t feel free to tell my opinion of you. It
would be apt to make you feel worse.”
“You are a woman of principle, Josiah Allen’s wife, and a woman of
strong sense. You realize my situation—you feel for the condition of
my heart.”
“Yes, and your head too,” says I; “I realize jist what has ailed you,
ever sense you was born. But,” says I, wantin’ to turn the subject,
for I was sick of it, sick as a dog. Says I “you wuzn’t to meetin’ last
night wuz you?” Says I, “We wimmen talked it over after the meetin’,
and we are goin to take up a collection to make Miss Bamber a
present of a new black dress. We are goin’ to ask each church-
member to give jest one sixpence, and one sixpence apiece from the
250 members will get her a good bumbazeen dress, or a very nice
alpacka. And so,” says I, “I thought I would ask you for your
sixpence.”
Knowin’ it is Kellup’s duty to be tackled for the good of the meetin-
house, I will, no matter whether he will give anything or not, I will
insist on tacklin’ him.
Says I, “You know Miss Bamber has lost her mother-in-law and
wants to mourn for her—wants to the worst kind, and can’t.”
“Why can’t she mourn?” says Kellup.
“Why,” says I, “She can’t mourn, because she haint got no dress
suitable to mourn in, thats why Miss Bamber feels like death about
it. She knows it is her duty to mourn, and she wants to, like a dog,
but can’t.”
Says Kellup, lookin stingy, awful unwillin’ to give anything, “She
can mourn jest as bad in one dress as another, or without any.”
“Wall,” says I reasonably, “So I think. But everybody has their little
different ways and excentricities, and it don’t look well for us to
meddle with ’em. Now that feller by the name of Procrustes, at Attica
village. Now, I always thought he went too far. He had a iron
bedstead, and he used to make everybody that traveled his way lay
down on it, and if their legs was too short, he would stretch ’em out
to fit that bedstead, and if they was too long, he would saw ’em off.”
Now Mr. Procrustes wuzn’t doin’ exactly the fair thing. What
earthly business was it of his, if other folks’es legs was too long to be
convenient, or too short? It wuzn’t his place to trim ’em off, or
stretch ’em.
And I always thought that if I had had business in his
neighborhood, and been travelin’ that way, and he had tried to fit me
or Josiah to that bedstead, why, I always thought he would have
seen trouble. I should have gin him a awful talkin’ to, and kicked.
Mr. Procrustes is dead. Yes, I believe old Thesius, a neighber of
his’en, killed him upon some mountain or other. I presume he got to
stretchin’ old Thesius’es legs out, or begun to saw ’em off, and got
the old man mad, and he jest laid to and killed him.

TAKIN’ A REEF.
 Yes, I believe old Mr. Procrustes hain’t livin’ at the present time,
but he left a large, a very large family. And every one of ’em inherits
the old gentleman’s traits and disposition. I have seen lots of ’em
that, if they dast, would have every leg in the world jest the length
of their’n. If they dast, they would tackle you in a minute with a saw
or a broad-axe.
“But I never felt that way. Now, as fur as my own feelin’s are
concerned, I think memories can haunt anybody, and hearts can
ache jest as severe under a white dress as a black one, and visey
versey. Hearts can beat gay and triumphant aginst bumbuzeen
bodist waists and crape trimmin’s. But Miss Bamber feels different.
She feels that she can’t mourn without certain conveniences. And
feelin’ in that way, and feelin’ that it would be a duty and a privilege
for her to mourn for her mother-in-law, I say that woman shall have
the wherewith to do it with. I say she shall mourn if she wants to;
she shall be helped to a black dress. There hain’t a member of the
meetin’-house but what can give a six-pence without feelin’ it. We
want to keep it all still from Miss Bamber, and get it, and get it all
made for her before she knows a thing about it. And,” says I,
“mebby you had better give me the six-pence to-day, as we have got
it about all collected, and want to get the dress right away.”
Says he, “Hain’t there nobody else whose duty it is to get the
dress? Her relations? I should think it was their duty to help.”
Never did I ask a stingy human creeter for help for the poor, or
help for the meetin’-house, but what this argument was dragged up
by ’em. Tryin’ to shirk off their own duty onto somebody else.
“No,” says I, “her family is all dead. She hain’t got but one relation
in the world, and that is an aunt of her grandmother’s; and she is
supported by the town.”
“Wall,” says he, cheerfully, “mebby the town would feel like gettin’
this dress.”
I jest give him a look, and never said another word,—only jest that
look. But I s’pose that look spoke louder and awfuler than words, for
he hastened to say, in a apologizin’ way:
“I didn’t know but the town would want to—would feel it a
privilege to—”
 I still didn’t say nothin’, only jest that awful look. And agin he says,
in a apologizin’ way:
“I would advance the six-pence to you, I would try to raise it some
way for you, but the hard times we have had, and are havin’, have
depressed all sorts of business so, we have suffered terribly
financially as well as the other public. We have got a great deal of
money to make out this fall—over 10 dollars. Father hain’t a bit well;
my health hain’t what it once was; our expenses are enormious—
taxes, household expenses, clothin’; and takin’ all these things into
consideration, together with the public debt, the withdrawal of funds
by foreign capitalists, the almost total stagnation of public enterprize,
the total lack of public confidence, the total—”
Says I, “Put in total selfishness and total meanness, and keep your
six-pence.”
I don’t believe I have been more wore out in over seven months,
—and mad.
“Wall,” says he, lookin’ relieved, “if you will excuse me, I won’t
make no move towards raisin’ the money for you. It would probable
cramp me considerable to raise the sum jest at this present time.”
And then he begun about Kitty agin. Says he, knittin’ up his
eyebrow hard, and lookin’ gloomy:
“I never calculated to fall in love with a poor girl. It never used to
pass my mind that I ever should select such a one out of the
hundreds that stand round me, hankerin’ to marry me. But I have
done it. Why, sometimes I think I couldn’t love that girl any more if
she was worth two hundred and 50 dollars. I think so much of her
that it is as hard for me as loosin’ a limb, almost like loosin’ my
pocket-book, to think of her bein’ way off there a pinin’ for me, and
bein’ on a perfect rack, not knowin’ whether she will get me or not.
“When I think of that side of the question, Josiah Allen’s wife, I
feel jest like leavin’ word here with you for her, that I will marry her,
whether or no. But then, jest like a blow aginst the side of my head,
comes the thought of them other wimmen, that had hopes before
she come to Jonesville that they would get me. I believe, anyway, it
will be safe to leave word here for her to keep up good courage, and
try not to get too cast down and melancholy; to hope for the best;
and I’ll do everything I can. I’ll enquire round about the wimmen,
see the doctor, and try to arrange things for her good and happiness;
try to get round and marry her. At the same time,” says he, with a
cautious look, “I would feel it my duty to warn her to not get so
bound up in me that the disappointment would kill her, if she should
lose me.”
“Wall,” says I, bein’ wore almost completely out, “I must go and
skim the milk for the calves.”
And he took the hint and started off, and glad enough was I to see
him go. But jest as he went down the steps, and I turned to go into
the buttery, I see a paper of indigo that Marier Burpey had left here
that very day. She had forgot it, and I knew she was in a hurry a
colorin’; so I jest carried it to the door, and asked Kellup if he would
carry it to her, knowin’ he had to go right by her door.
“No,” says he, firmly, “I dassent do it.” And he looked anxious and
skairt as he said it. “I’d be glad to, but I dassent,” says he. “I have to
make my demeanor perfectly stunny towards that girl, in order to
keep her affection anywhere within bounds. She don’t show it any by
her looks or actions—she has got almost marble self-control; but I
see right through it. I see that she almost worships me. I see that I
am makin’ her perfectly unhappy; and when I think of Sofier’s fate, I
tremble for Marier. I am careful; I am a careful feller; I am on my
guard. And at the present time, situated as I be in regard to Kitty, I
feel that I ort to be doubly careful. But at any and every time a
young man like me can’t be too careful when they are round
amongst wimmen.”
“Nobody wouldn’t mistrust you was makin’ such havock,” says I,
mechanically, for I really didn’t know what to say.
 MARIER BURPEY.

“Yes, if a young man like me is unprincipled enough to go

headlong into wimmen’s company without lookin’ where he is goin’,
without actin’ offish and cold to ’em, why, before that man knows it,
he is a wadin’ through goar. Bleedin’ hearts lay round him on every
side a bleedin’. Why don’t other young men think of these things?
Why hain’t they more careful, more offish?”
Says I, with feelin’, “That’s so, why hain’t they? The offisher some
men be, the more I think on ’em.” And I looked longin’ly at the path
down to the gate, and the road to Jonesville.
 “Yes, you know what actin’ on principle means. That is why I
respect you, confide in you.”
“Then you don’t think you can carry the indigo?” says I, turnin’ to
go in.
“No,” says he, firm as marble, and as sot as that stun. “I’d love to
accommodate you, but I dassent. When I think of the fate of Sofier,
when I think of the deadly blows my conscience dealt to me every
minute, as I drove her hearse to the buryin’-ground—then I feel as if
I had almost ruther lose ten cents than go through it agin with
Marier. I feel that I must not be resky, and do anything to ensnare
her affections.”
“Good land!” says I, “indigo won’t be likely to ensnare ’em, will it?”
“Other men might handle it safe, men with less attractions than I
have got, but I can’t, I dassent.”
And I wouldn’t demean myself by urgin’ him another word. And I
went into the house, and he started off.
Wall, as I was a sayin’, Kitty had been gone two weeks, the day
Nathan and Cassandra visited me, and this letter from her, brought
in to me while I was a gettin’ the dinner onto the table, brought
news that was startlin’ and agitatin’ in the extreme. I was jest a
stirrin’ some sweet cream and butter together over the stove, havin’
a fresh salmon trout for dinner, and Josiah bein’ fond of that kind of
gravy to eat with it, and Nathan bein’ such a clever creeter, offered
to stir it for me, while I read the letter. And I was so anxious to git
the news, that I let him do it, though, the stove bein’ so hot, take it
with that and his burnin’ blushes, it made a pretty hot time for him.
But the news was this: Kitty was married. But the curiousest and
most agitatin’ part of the news was, the old gentleman, Mark’s
father, had got after Kitty’s mother. He went to give her a scoldin’,
and fell in love with her on the spot. Like Hamen, he got hung on his
own gallowses—went to smite her, and got smit himself, awful. So he
courted her up violent and powerful, and they all got married the
same day.
It was very pleasant and agreeable news to me, and to Josiah.
And Cassandra and Nathan acted well about it. They said they was
glad it all turned out so well, but their minds didn’t seem to be on
the news so much as they was on their babe. And it is a very good-
lookin’ child, and appears middlin’ well for a child of its age. Takes
after its father some—sort o’ sandy, with red hair. It don’t look much,
as little Samantha Jo did, nor it don’t have that noble, beautiful
appearance she had at that age. But then you can’t expect that any
other child is ever goin’ to look and act like her. I do despise people
bein’ so bound up in their own childern and grandchildern that they
can’t see no good qualities in any other childern. Thank fortune that
hain’t my way, nor never was. And I say, and I always shall say, that
Cassandra’s babe hain’t a babe to be ashamed of, and feel above,
not by any means.
Bein’ so awful bashful, Nathan don’t probable associate with it so
much, and act on such intimate terms with it as he would if it wuzn’t
for that. But in a mild, sheepish way, he seems to think the world of
it, and seems to want to do everything he can to make it feel to
home with ’em, and happy. But he don’t come out openly and
express his admiration and affection, as he would if it wuzn’t for that
drawback.
Now, he dassent hold it much, or that is, he don’t seem to dast.
But Cassandra bein’ proud-spirited, and wantin’ Nathan to show off
some, would once in a while put the babe in his lap.
He never would make any move to stop her. He never would
refuse to take it. He would set and hold it jest as long as she felt
disposed to leave it there. But he would look down on it in a skairt,
wonderin’, breathless way, as if the child got there in his lap through
some mysterious and inscrutable decree of Providence, and it wuzn’t
for him to resist. But he suffered intensely at such times, I could see.
And every little while Cassandra (bein’ determined to make Nathan
show off) would tell him to say sunthin’ to the babe, talk baby-talk to
it. And he would always try to. He would always do jest as Cassandra
told him to (a cleverer critter never walked). His face would be as
red as a red handkerchief, but he would ask the babe, up in a little,
high, fine voice:
 “DO YOU WANT A PAIR OF BOOTS?”

“Do you want a pair of boots?”

He never made any other remark to the child that I heard, only
jest that. I heard him say that to it more’n 20 times, I dare persume
to say. For Cassandra, bein’ so anxious to have him show off, kep’
tellin’ him to talk to it. And it seemed as if that remark was all he
could think of that would be agreeable to the child. But Josiah said,
as we was talkin’ it over afterwards, that he heard him say two or
three times to it:
 “Yes, it shall have a pair of boots.”
But it must have been when I was out a gettin’ dinner. For if I was
under oath I would say that I didn’t hear him say a single thing to it,
only jest this:
“Do you want a pair of boots?”
They started for home jest after dinner, Nathan havin’ left some
work that must be done. And Josiah hitched up and went to
Jonesville to mill. And I s’pose he told the news about Kitty there.
But it wuzn’t till the next afternoon that I heard what the effects of
that news wuz in a certain place and to a certain feller.
And though it hain’t always best to mention names, and come
right out plain and talk, yet it probable won’t do no hurt to mention
that you might expect Kellup Cobb, under any circumstances, would
act like a fool.
 THRILLING NEWS.

I was down to the creek lot, pickin’ a few berries for supper, when
Josiah told me on’t. It had got a little later than I thought for, and
Josiah had come down after me, bein’ worried about me. It was only
a little ways from the house. I had put the tea-kettle on, and sot the
table, before I had come out, and the tea-kettle was a bilin’, so
Josiah said, after he told me the news. The news was thrillin’ and
agitatin’ in the extreme. He said Kellup Cobb had disappeared the
night before, after the news of Kitty’s marriage had got abroad in
Jonesville. They said that he felt so that he disappeared, he and the
hearse and Elder Judas Wart—the hull three on ’em. Kellup had been
on intimate terms with Judas Wart for some time; and some think
that Kellup bein’ so cut down by Kitty’s marriage, and the Elder bein’
so cut down by my witherin’ eloquence and Josiah’s broom-handle,
that they both got into the hearse, and drove off in it to Utah to jine
the Mormons. And some think that they sold the hearse, and took
the money, and went to Salt Lake by rail. Which last way, I told my
Josiah, when he mentioned it, was the proper way to go there, if it
wuz the right kind of a rail. But anyway, they had gone, the hull
three on ’em, and there hain’t been a word heard from ’em sense in
Jonesville.
Josiah said old Cobb felt awfully.
Says I, “To lose Kellup?”
“No,” says he, “to lose the hearse.”
But I jest repeated this line of poetry to my pardner. Says I:
“Poetry, Josiah, will somehow express the feelin’s of the soul better
than you can express them yourself.” And says I, “Josiah, as for Elder
Judas Wart and Kellup, I say with the poet, good riddance to bad
rubbidge.”
“Wall,” says Josiah, with a sort of a dreamy look,—that man loves
poetry, though he seldom quotes it—“don’t you s’pose, Samantha,
that you have got about enough berries for supper, for I am gettin’
hungry as a bear.”
“Yes,” says I, “because I have got stewed peaches and cold
chicken and everything else good for supper besides them. But,”
says I, lookin’ sort o’ longin’ly at some berries that was a hangin’
over the water, “there is a few extra big and ripe ones that do look
too good to leave.”
“Wall,” says he, sweetly (for his mean sense I told him what we
was goin’ to have for supper had looked perfectly beautiful), “you set
down and rest, Samantha, and I will pick ’em for you.”
 And so he took my little tin pail, and with a happy frame bent
down to pick ’em. And I, bein’ tired, sot down, and looked into the
water. And I see that everything was reflected in it. The trees, the
nodding red sumac feathers, my Josiah and me, gay golden-rod and
wild blue china-oysters, the berry bushes, the thorny stalks and the
ripe fruit, fresh posys, and withered leaves; all imaged there in the
water; and the water was a runnin’ swift.
And out on the end of a slender bush that hung over the water, a
bird swayed and swung to and fro, and sung out a dretful sort of a
sweet song, yet sad like. Some as if it was practicin’ over a farewell
song to its home, its happy nest, before it sailed away south in
search of a balmier climate.
So the bird sailed back and forth on that slender twig, over the
deep waters, a singin’ about a happier country, sweet and sad, sweet
and low. And my pardner picked the ripe berries, and I sot there
peaceful and serene (though some sweaty), a thinkin’ how, over all
that was pictured on the changing face of the waters, the changeless
blue heavens was reflected, shining down over all, the old and the
new, the mournful and the sorrowful; over all, and beneath all. That
thought was perfectly beautiful to me, and dretful comfortin’. And I
sot there a thinkin’ of that, and a thinkin’ how swift the water was a
runnin’ towards the sea.

THE END.
 HAVE YOU READ
MY OPINIONS
AND
BETSEY BOBBET’S
By JOSIAH ALLEN’S WIFE?
AUTHOR OF
“SAMANTHA AT THE CENTENNIAL,” AND “MY WAYWARD PARDNER.”

IF NOT GET IT THE FIRST OPPORTUNITY.

This book is one of those indescribable ones, of which little can be

said except that it is rich and spicy throughout, readable and
fascinating, brimfull of humor and sharp things—yet not a line in it,
that does not point a moral, and teach a lesson. It will create a
sensation whenever read, and no one will enjoy it better than the
ladies, although it deals with them in a plain way. The men will like
it, the children will like it, all will like and laugh over it, and
remember its teachings long afterwards.
The Public will make no mistake in purchasing this book, as it is
full of good things, which will at once arrest and rivet the attention
of the reader.
Never was a character’s lines drawn more distinctly than that of
Josiah’s wife, and her originals will be found among the
acquaintances of many. Cute, wise, shrewd and observing, with a
vein of strong common sense, yet simple and innocent as a child,
she will keep the reader crammed with sharp hits and funny
observations.
Betsey Bobbet’s opinions act upon Josiah’s wife’s, as settings do
upon diamonds: adding to their brightness and resplendency.
 The book contains 432 Pages, and is filled with Pictures, put in, as
the author says, to explain the text.
Price in Fine English Morocco Cloth, $2.50
” ” ” ” ” Gilt 3.00
Edges,
” ” Half Turkey Morocco, ” 4.00
The book can be had by addressing
AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO.,
AGENTS WANTED. HARTFORD CONN.
 JOSIAH ALLEN’S WIFE’S
AS A

P. A. and P. I.

JOSIAH’S FIVE HOURS’ RIDE.

Samantha at the Centennial.

By the Author of
“MY OPINIONS AND BETSEY BOBBET’S,” AND “MY WAYWARD
PARDNER.”
 This book the writer sends forth to the world, expecting it will (as
did other martyrs: John Rogers and etcetery) tread on the hot coals
of public opinion; be briled on the gridiron old bigotry keeps to brile
her enemies on; be scalded by the melted lead of old custom; and
be burnt up on the stake of opposition; yet still, upheld by firm
principle and lofty emotions, she is able to say: “I am happy in the
thought.”
A kind and noble Artist has risked his fame by
drawing a few pictures for the book.

This Volume Contains 580 Pages,

25 Full-Page and 50 other Engravings

Prices: In Fine English Cloth, $2.50; do. do., Gilt Edge, $3.00;
Half Turkey Morocco, $4.00.
The book can be had by addressing
AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO.,
AGENTS WANTED. HARTFORD CONN.
 Transcriber’s Note
The Table of Contents had several errors in pagination,
briefly off by two pages. These have been corrected.
On p. 198, a lengthy (and literally) parenthetic remark
begins in mid-sentence and finishes with the following
paragraph.
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have
been corrected, and are noted here. The references are
to the page and line in the original. The following issues
should be noted, along with the resolutions.
ix.6 How he Courted Removed.
Cassandr[i]a
52.16 it cannot long [h/b]e hid Replaced.
61.15 if I was in his place.[”] Removed.
62.10 for I may not marry at all. Replaced.
[’/”]
72.3 I am most afraid it is resky Added.
then.[”]
103.18 my tooth-brush.[”] Removed.
103.19 the tooth[ /-]brush Replaced.
113.6 [“]Says I: Removed.
114.17 but it se[mede/emed] as Transposed.
210.5 poke at [’]em Added.
240.7 [“]And superintendents Added.
243.1 and not fatigue Removed.
[your-]yourself
248.8 we was a marchin[’] round Added.
383.5 Tamer Moony,[’/”] says I, Replaced.
426.15 right away from happiness. Added.
[”]
473.1 [“]Says I, in a sort of a Removed.
blind way,
 *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY WAYWARD
PARDNER; OR, MY TRIALS WITH JOSIAH, AMERICA, THE WIDOW
BUMP, AND ETCETERY ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions

will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.

copyright law means that no one owns a United States
copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy
and distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the
General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and
distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the
PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if
you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the
trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the
Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is
very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such
as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and
printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in
the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright
law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially
commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
 PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the

free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this
work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase
“Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of
the Full Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or
online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and

Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand,
agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual
property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree
to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease
using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for
obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg™
electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms
of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only

be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by
people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.
There are a few things that you can do with most Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works even without complying with the
full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There
are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg™
electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and
help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookultra.com