Roman senate had likewise many similar terms to denote its legislative procedure, which are enumerated in treatises on Roman antiquities. (4)

International law, as it concerns no one country in particular, employs a phraseology nearly common to all nations; and where the several languages use native technical terms, their equivalence to the corresponding terms in other languages is settled. Thus, the words designating treaty, convention, armistice, war, peace, siege, blockade, suspension of hostilities, truce, safe conduct, passport, spy, credential letters, ambassador, minister plenipotentiary, consul, factory, harbour, high seas, flag, pirate, privateer, run through all civilized languages, and their mutual interpretation is probably recognised in all diplomatic intercourse. This, again, is a sort of technical nomenclature; and the standard of interpretation, in case of dispute, is borrowed from authoritative writers on the law of nations, not from popular usage.

In the military and naval services, and in the business of administrative departments, where there are different degrees of official rank, and a great variety of duties to be performed, a necessity arises for a technical nomenclature similar to that used for describing the parts of a ship or machine. Not only in the army and navy, but in the revenue departments, as the Customs, Excise, and Post-office, in the administration of justice, the police, and other branches of the public service, an artificial phraseology for the description of a connected series of officers and powers is needed; and it is varied or enlarged from time to time as convenience may dictate. A similar necessity exists in the learned professions, as in that of law, and, to some extent, in that of medicine. The names of degrees in universities likewise belong to the same category.

Terms of finance, viz., those connected with the receipt and disbursement of the public revenue, with the public funds and securities, with coined and paper money, and with other pecu

(40) Compare Schoemann, de Comitiis Atheniensium, for the corresponding phrases at Athens.

niary transactions of a government, are likewise sometimes invented deliberately, in order to facilitate the operations of business; and they acquire a precise signification fixed by official usage.

In conducting the statistical operations of a government, questions of nomenclature frequently arise. It is necessary to form classifications, which bear some resemblance to the labours of the scientific naturalist. Thus, in taking the census of a nation, it may be requisite to classify the population according to their occupations, employments, trades, and other social relations; and in framing classes of this kind, there may be much opportunity for judgment and discretion, inasmuch as the classes thus arbitrarily formed and named are intended to furnish materials for reasoning.

§ 9 We have already remarked, in this chapter,(") that although the names of titles of offices may pass unchanged through several languages, or may be expressed in different languages by peculiar terms, but with a recognised equivalence, yet they do not form classes, like names descriptive of a certain aggregate of political powers. Thus, as we have already shown, the class of kings furnishes no materials for a general proposition, because kings at different times and places have exercised very different powers. A similar remark applies to such titles of honour as duke, marquis, earl, viscount, baron, (2) to orders of knighthood, to titles of military and naval rank, as marshal, colonel, admiral. The names of ecclesiastical dignities and offices, as being derived from a common source, run through the languages of all Christendom; as bishop, dean, canon, priest,

(41) Above, § 4.

(42) Raumer (Geschichte der Hohenstaufen, vol. v. p. 57) says, that although the title of the graf remained unaltered, the nature of his office, and its rights and duties, were different at different times. With regard to the pfalzgraf, or count palatine, he remarks, that the office was not only different at different times, but it was not the same at different places at the same time (ib. p. 64).

The variations in the powers and honours of the titles of duke, count, baron, &c., are traced at length by Selden, ib. part ii. ch. i. On the original application of the titles of duke and count to military commanders under Constantine, and the great subsequent change in their meaning, see Gibbon, Decl. and Fall, c. 17, vol. ii. p. 29.

deacon. Yet the legal relations of ecclesiastical persons have varied from one age and one country to another. Nobody would think of forming one class from the Roman consuls, the consuls of the Italian republics, and the modern consuls of commerce, because they all bore the same title of office. The identity of name alone does not constitute a class composed of similar individuals. A class so formed is nearly as useless for logical purposes, as a class formed of all the persons bearing the name of John or William would be for statistical purposes.

Many of the Oriental titles of office have in like manner designated persons exercising very different political powers. Thus, the title of sultan was anciently given only to sovereigns, and even to the greatest, as the grand signior. It is also sometimes applied to the king of Persia; and yet it is the common title of the inferior class of provincial governors in Persia.(3) In Ike manner, the sovereign of Tartary, and the provincial governors and grandees of Persia, both bore the title of khan. Many others of the Oriental titles also represented both supreme and subordinate power, as bey, emir, sheik; the khalifs of Bagdad, having originally been sovereign princes, were at last deprived of all temporal power, and reduced to the mere service of the mosque.(") Indian titles, such as rajah, zemindar, nizam, peshwah, have varied in like manner through different degrees of power; nor can the precise functions of the office in question be known, without an inquiry into the special circumstances of each country.

§ 10 Indeed, the national individuality of a political office, considered as an aggregate of powers, is often so manifest, that

(43) Chardin, Description de Perse, tom. v. p. 257: ed. Langlès.

(44) D'Herbelot, Biblioth. Orientale, in 'begh,' 'emir,' 'khalifah,' khan,' 'pad,'' solthan,' 'scheikh,' 'scherif.' On oriental titles of supreme power, see Chardin, ib. tom. vi. p. 1-6. Nearly all these titles represented various aggregates of power and degrees of dignity; sometimes applied to sovereign power, sometimes to inferior rank. Pharaoh, as applied to the ancient kings of Egypt, is said to have been a title of office, not a personal appellative. Joseph. Ant. viii. 6, § 2. Alcalde and ammiraglio are European names of offices, derived from the Arabic, al-kadi and emir. See Ducange, in Amir.'

no attempt is made to translate its name, and the native term is used in history, and by foreign nations. Thus, the Athenian archons and the Spartan ephors, the Roman dictator, consul, quæstor, prætor, ædile, tribune, centurion, the chagan of the Avars, the major-domús or maire du palais, the podestà of the Italian republics, the scabini of the middle ages, and other officers, are named by their proper title of office, without any attempt at finding an equivalent. (45)

In other cases, too, where peculiar institutions are described, it is found more convenient and more precise to adopt the native term than to attempt a translation, which could only approximate to the meaning. Hence, such words as taille, gabelle, corvée, octroi, are generally used in their original form: names of classes, involving social distinctions and position, are likewise often untranslateable for a like reason. The word γένος, οι gens, is imperfectly rendered by clan, house, or family.(46) The French noblesse, roturier, and tiers état; the English gentleman, commons, and yeoman; and the German bauer, cannot be adequately rendered in any other language. Many of the native Indian names for offices, courts of justice, and other political ideas, are used in English as technical terms, without any attempt at translation. (*) Many similar words in Oriental countries have been adopted into European languages, as vizier, cadi, mufti, divan, firman, and the titles of offices already mentioned. Hence, too, such words as κήνσος, δηνάριον, πραιτώριον, κουστωδία, which occur in the New Testament, were transplanted by the

(45) Our old translators sometimes attempted to render the titles of offices into English. Thus, in the authorized version of the Acts, the 'Aouapxoì are called the chief of Asia,' ypaμuareùs 'the town clerk;' so iepóovλo are 'robbers of churches,' xix. 31, 35, 37, 38: see also the enumeration of officers, including sheriffs, in the third chap. of Daniel. In like manner, the old German writers (as Niebuhr remarks, Hist. of Rome, vol. i. n. 1376) called the Roman tribunes Zunftmeister, or masters of guilds.

(46) See Grote's Hist. of Gr. vol. iii. p. 88, n. The word ostracism is translated by Nepos- Testarum suffragiis, quod illi ostracismum vocant,' Cimon, c. 3; compare testula, Aristid. 1. The Greek σrparnyol is rendered by prætores, Milt. 4. Conon i.

(47) See the glossary in the first vol. of Mill's Hist. of India.

Greeks into their own language from that of their conquerors and rulers.(+8) The Greek writers on Roman history were manifestly perplexed by the difficulty of finding equivalents for the technical names of Roman offices and institutions, and by the intolerance of their own language for foreign terms. Some names they translated: thus, the consuls were called "Tarot, the tribunes of the people δήμαρχοι, the censors τιμηταί: but they could find no native name for dictator, and hence were forced to acquiesce in the use of the alien term dikráτwp.(49) In later times, such words as κvalorwp for questor, pairwp for prætor, &c., were introduced: (50) and when the Roman law was extended to the Eastern empire, the necessities of legislation broke through all philological scruples; as may be seen on a cursory examination of the Basilica.

Sometimes, again, questions arise as to the equivalence of titles of office, and other technical political terms, in different languages; and the same term is not translated in a uniform manner. Thus, the Anglo-Saxon titles of ealdorman, or thane, were rendered by consul and dux, as well as by comes; and the same terms were sometimes used as equivalents of the later title of earl.(51) After the time of Charlemagne, a controversy arose between the eastern and western empires, as to the Latin title which was equivalent to basileus. The head of the western empire claimed to be called imperator, or emperor,

(48) On untranslatable words, see Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, iii. 5, § 8. The terms of our law (he remarks) which are not empty sounds, will hardly find words that answer them in the Spanish or Italian, no scanty languages.'

(49) The word diktáτwp is used by Polyb. iii. 87, who calls the prætor the εξαπέλεκυς στρατηγός; later writers call him πραίτωρ. The term SIKTάrop is explained by Plutarch, Camill. 18; Marcell. c. 24. Concerning TаTо, and the origin of the name, see Dion. Hal. iv. 76. The office of ædiles is explained by a periphrasis, in Dion. Hal. vi. 90. The Feciales are not translated: Διὰ τῶν εἰρηνοδικῶν, οὓς καλοῦσι ̔Ρωμαῖοι φιτιάλεις, Dion. Hal. vi. 89. Oi radovμevoi Pntiaλeis, Plutarch, Cam. 18. So Plutarch, Public. 12, παρέδωκε τοὺς καλουμένους φάσκης.

(50) See the Treatise of Joannes Lydus, De Magistratibus P. R. in many places.

(51) Selden's Titles of Honour, part ii. c. 5. § 7.