so monstrous that he begins invariably by refusing to believe in it; and when the fact of its existence, prolonged into this "enlightened age," is made evident to him, he stands aghast, and seriously wonders how any community so administered can subsist. Yet let any thinker on our side of the water say which system practically works the best; and then, perhaps, we may be content to uphold a set of laws-confused, " illogical," absurd even as they may seem to our neighbours—which are of such strong self-growth amongst us, that obedience to them is applauded, and all attempts to escape from their action is unmistakably unpopular.

In France, legal like political institutions do not emerge from within, but press upon the nation from without. Law acts upon, and against, never with the community, and, besides this, it is with law as with government, there is too much of it; the French people are over-legislated for, if the term may be allowed, as they are over-governed. They are protected nowhere in their freedom; and a Frenchman, from cradle to grave, can with great difficulty have his own way in any one act of his life. At his birth, at his marriage, at his death-upon every occurrence however trifling of his life he comes for ever in contact with "le Code!" and is amenable to the justice of some tribunal for the commission or omission of some, to our minds absurdly trifling, act, equally unimportant whether omitted or committed.

“La légalité nous tue!" said most truly a deputy under Louis Philippe's reign. It does so. Frenchmen are unnecessarily entrammelled and tied down by the countless threads of a vast legal web, which it is no wonder they hate. But whence comes this over-legislation, and this particular characteristic of the law in France, that it springs not from, nor is in sympathy with, the habits of the people? It comes from the fact of the preponderance of the Roman element in French jurisprudence. "At the time of the Renaissance,” says M. du Boys, "there is no denying that a certain reaction in favour of Paganism took place throughout Europe, but most of all has its influence to be noted in the formation of our social institutions; meanwhile the Germanic element was gradually weakened, day after day by degrees, as

civilization progressed! Of this there now remains to us nothing save the memory of certain liberties and local traditions."

It is curious enough that the uniformity and excess of centralization, which are the principles of Roman jurisprudence, so fascinated the modern French mind, that they are to be found secretly inspiring every man who in France aims, since the commencement of the seventeenth century, at becoming either a legislator or a statesman. Henri IV., who was the last French king, the last sovereign who understood that a nation, to maintain its place amongst other nations, must co-operate in the task of governing itself-Henri IV. encouraged the existence of all really national traditions, of all local customs; and had he and his minister, Sully, but been followed during half a century by other sovereigns and statesmen of their own stamp, they would have laid the basis of a legal edifice in France, which would assuredly have been wanting in the perfect uniformity of the present "code," but which would have been respected by the nation, because emanating in fact from itself, and would have insured unpopularity to the law-breaker, which we take to be the best and most practical end and aim of all law.

There are two prime sources of all legislation in our modern world-tradition and the Roman law; and, in proportion as any country is ripe for independence and self-government, will tradition be found to inspire its lawgivers. The Roman law prevails only there where the notion of the state supersedes that of the nation. This is what has been progressively occurring in France. During the reigns of the Valois, between Louis XII. and Henri III., we find the nation so active, so ready to take its own part, that the part played by "the government" is almost a secondary one; and there can be no doubt that Henri IV. left at his death an independent country, a complete body composed of those several strong, living, counterbalancing forces, which, summed up together, make a body national, a people. To the death of Henri IV. the French nation is occupied in developing itself. With Cardinal de Richelieu we come at once to the idea of the state. Without seeking for an instant to detract from his

political greatness (which was incontestable), it must, however, be remarked that, more perhaps than any of his successors, he was imbued with the unfortunate conviction, that a state may be created, fashioned, modelled, animated, brought to be, and to act, by the will of one resolute man, or of a small set of resolute men, independently of the genuine tendencies or habits of the populations. From the time of Richelieu dates that perfect mania (for it deserves no milder name) by which all French legislators and politicians have been possessed until the present moment—the mania, namely, for reducing each living national force to an abstraction, and for treating populations of human beings as though they were mere mathematical quantities. Louis XIV. declares "the state" incarnate in himself, and authoritatively lays down the principle, that the king is the state. At the same time he reverts to Rome as the source of all legislation, with such determined conviction, that, aided by such narrow, dogmatic theorists as Colbert, Louvois, and some few others, we have him (which is too little known) working day and night at the elaboration of a compact, uniform code, entitled "Le Code Louis," and in which the only things utterly neglected are the tendencies, tastes, habits, customs, and traditions of the populations that are to be governed and legislated for. The Convention next continued this system, which unconsciously adopts all the theoretical notions of le Grand Roi; and is even more enamoured of the idea of the "state" (which term it only sometimes exchanges for that of "la Patrie"), deals even more in abstractions, treats men still more as mathematical quantities, and reverts to Rome with such idolatry, that upon some solemn occasions it can be satisfied with nothing less than actually inflicting, upon what it calls the "Tribunes of the People," the disguise of a Roman citizen's attire. The Convention worships classical traditions only; and, in what it misconceives to be a liberal movement, it inaugurates simply the reign of an abstract despotism, the despotic nature whereof escapes it for the mere reason of its impersonality. As to the Consulate and the Empire, this is all Rome. "The state" is incarnate in Napoleon now as

it was in Louis XIV., and France is more than ever kept down, bullied, oppressed, and rendered literally inanimate by the overgovernment and over-legislation of a set of theorists who obey the one arch-theorist who stands at their head. The work of excessive centralization had been so vigorously done, that no one, of no matter how contrary an opinion to his predecessors, dreams of undoing it. Republicans, revolutionists, soldiers, imperialists, royalists of the restoration, constitutionalists of the monarchy of July, socialists of '48, “Decemberists" of the present régime, all accept the fact of political and legal centralization as a duty, as one of the very things of which France has to be proudest; and all theorize in the same dogmatical manner, and join in the work of tightening round the country the bonds of a "code," of which, upon every possible occasion, the country shows its dislike.

The principal aim of M. du Boys, in his two volumes, has been to show the antagonism between the national legal traditions of France, and the spirit of her present legislation. M. du Boys clearly sees, and plainly states, that the legal traditions of France are of Germanic origin, as are our own; but as decentralization and strong local vitality are among the worst inevitable consequences of the Germanic spirit of legislationwhen the system of over-centralization was adopted by French rulers and statesmen, the Germanic element was necessarily banished from what was to be the "perfectly uniform" edifice of the laws of France.

The one first great lawgiver of France was Charlemagne ; and we have sincerely to thank M. du Boys for the straightforward way in which he has destroyed all the misapprehensions, encouraged by the theoretical schools of writers, upon the subject of one of the founders of French nationality. The supporters of the purely Roman institutions all affect to find a champion in Charlemagne, whereas nothing can be farther removed from the truth. Charlemagne was so thoroughly convinced that law, to be beneficial, must be simply the consecration of custom; he was so wedded to the maintenance of tradition, that by degrees, as the work of centralization progressed, it was found thoroughly

incompatible with the spirit of this really great legislator and statesman. Whilst, in our own so contrary mode of proceeding, many a law will be found to date originally from Alfred (who is our Charlemagne), we do not suppose it would be possible to discover, in the entire and uniform web of French legislation, one trace of the thoughts of one of the most human, and one of the most practical lawgivers and organizers of the Christian era.

The following is worthy of note upon the reluctance with which Charlemagne consented, at the request of the Pope, to restore even an apparent semblance of what had been the empire: "There was," says M. du Boys (and his long and patient historical researches enable him to say it with authority)—" there was a strong and mysterious sort of repugnance in the Frankish king, in the liberal conqueror of the Saxons and Lombards, to consent to associate himself with the memories, and assume the outward insignia of a dignity, the spirit of whose latest wearer's was so absolutely at variance with his own. Those who have affected to treat this repugnance on the part of Charlemagne as hypocritical, prove either their own bad faith, or their own incapacity of comprehending so lofty and grandly statesmanlike a character as that of Charlemagne. This really great ruler may have had, according to the spirit of his times, a certain inclination towards Romanism; as a Christian and child of the church, he was religiously a papist, his age would not have allowed him to be any thing else; but as a man, a sovereign, and above all, as a legislator, he was always, and above and before all, a Frank and a German. In all his tastes and habits, in his tendencies, and in the spirit of his institutions, Germanism is every where to be traced: neither was it in the milder zones of his vast empire that he even fixed his residence, but on the banks of the Rhine, and along those banks tradition has every where preserved his memory. Whilst the France of the Capetian dynasty seems gradually to separate herself more and more from the legislative principles of the great founder of her power; and whilst it is to be remarked that Philip Augustus and St. Louis, Beaumanoir and Pierre Desfontaines, never allude to the Capitu