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the Conquest, did the English people ever know what led to the excess of hierarchical subordination in continental countries; and, according to the spirit of the English constitution, from the Anglo-Saxon period upwards, the sovereign never represented more than the man chosen and delegated by the people to represent their interests."

If the excesses of feudalism in France be well studied, and the effects produced by the narrow-minded selfishness and want of any public feeling on the part of the nobles, be sufficiently taken into account, it will not be difficult to understand the favour with which the ultra-centralizing principle was received, when once brought to bear upon the confused and distracted condition of the people. Centralization was a relief-a reaction against a previous and other form of wrong. It was a worse and more cruel tyranny than what preceded; but that could not be felt at first, because it did away with what was universally abhorred. But centralization, when substituting its own abstract, impersonal despotism to the injustice that had till then been personified by the feudal lords and Grand Passant, could not allow of the existence of a force which, though it had shown itself baleful in practice, was in principle a force necessary to the work of perpetual ponderation, out of which constitutional government (and a certain amount of self-legislation, its natural consequence) may one day spring. The nobles of France had shown themselves unworthy of the part allotted to them in the affairs of the nation; but the affairs of the nation were not likely to get on better, when there should be no nobles at all to stand between the encroachments of the crown and the passions of the people. This, we repeat it, was deeply felt by Henry IV., and by Sully, than whom, to their praise be it said, no two men were ever less theoretical. Henri IV. and Sully both recognized the unworthiness of the nobles as much as did Richelieu later; but neither of them dreamed of suppressing, and still less of degrading, the entire noblesse of the country, in order to make the way clear for the establishment of a kind of dictature. Henri IV., like Charlemagne, would have ,"revised, reformed, altered, modified existent customs, traditions,

and laws," and would decidedly have abstained from the insane attempt to "create a uniform code," wherein little or nothing should be adapted to the tastes, habits, and traditions of the various populations.

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With Richelieu we have for the first time the worship of abstractions, the conception of the "state," and the persistent dealing with men as with mathematical quantities. The feudalism of the noblesse is hateful to the better sense of the cardinal minister, as well it might be; what is best and most upright, most honest and most just in him, is offended by the scandalous misgovernment of the heads of society in France; but he does not see that no force must ever be destroyed, but only differently directedthat what is a power for evil may be a power for good; the cardinal sees nothing of all this-he is a theorist, and he decrees in his own mind the destruction of the French noblesse. When once the French noblesse is destroyed, the remark made by the boatman on the Pont Neuf to a peer of France is the true appreciation of what has happened: "Well, the cardinal has got rid of you, so now there is nothing more standing between the king and us!" and so it was. The political and legislative force of the seigneurs, which they had so misused, was destroyed. The nobility of France had done ill what it had to do, and there now remained to it nothing to do at all. Louis XIV. went on with the work, and completed it by the degradation of the noblesse. The sons of the men whom Richelieu beheaded for their overfeudalism, were those who constituted la noblesse de cour of Versailles, and whose descendants so feebly resisted the overcentralizing tendencies of the Convention, and of the empire under Napoleon I.

We repeat it, from the moment of the death of Henri IV., all possibility of establishing a system of self-legislation in France vanishes; centralization becomes a relief to the ignorant populations, and the uniform legislation of Rome is victorious over the Germanic principle, based upon tradition and the consecration of

custom.

We will now, in a few words, examine what the workings of

legal centralization have been upon the French mind, and how they have helped to bring about that singular fact, peculiar to France, of the unpopularity of the law, the popularity of whosoever infringes it, and its apparent incompatibility with freedom.

We have said that the law, in France, has no root in custom or tradition-that it is a force bearing upon society from without; and the representatives whereof have no sympathies with the citizens they are called upon to judge. We have said that, in our opinion, this state of things has one common origin with all that is defective in France-the supremacy, namely, of the over-centralizing principle, and the establishment of a legislation based upon mere theory instead of practice.

Now, what is one of the consequences of all this that we are perpetually called upon to record? One of the chief consequences is, a manner of administering justice, and a mode of applying punishment to crime, that never fails to surprise and shock the impartial sense of an Englishman. But it is easy to show that, as things stand, this cannot be otherwise. The law, to be impartially and usefully applied, must be independent, and capable of standing on its own merits. It is neither one nor the other in France. It is of foreign growth; and they who apply it are, in every respect, strangers to the population upon whom it is their office to bring it to bear. Compare, in this respect, our country magistrates with a juge d'instruction for instance, who has to decide upon the intricacies of a case where he knows nothing of the parties implicated, or of the habits of the locality, and let it be seen on which side must necessarily be the larger amount of confidence, on the part of the population, in the capacity and integrity of the representative of the law. Every minister of the law in France, is more or less an utter stranger to the population in the midst of which his official duties call upon him to reside. A priori, he knows himself an object of dislike, and this consciousness has mostly one of two diametrically opposite effects: either the representative of the law in France seeks to make himself popular, or he repays antipathy with antipathy, and, ceasing even to be a judge, becomes an enemy. There is scarcely a trial in France in which one of

these two attitudes is not assumed by the ministers of justice. Most frequently they are to be observed courting popular favour, and trying by their own personal behaviour to lessen the dislike felt by the population for the law. According as the public clamour in the locality where a trial takes place, is for or against the "accused," you mark the "accusers" taking their stand, and you may easily enough pre-judge the sentence. But how is this compatible with the dignity of the law, and with the use of which it can be to society? It is not compatible with either; and the law, which is in France without dignity, is fast on its way to become without use. Let us take a few recent cases that may serve as an example of what we have just asserted.

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Our readers may not have forgotten the trial of eighteen months back, known as l'affaire Jeufosse. A lady living in her country house in Normandy, was angry at the attentions paid by one of her neighbours (a married man) to her daughter. She was right so far, and would have been so thoroughly, if she had quietly gone to the Procureur Impérial, and requested him to take measures for preventing any further disturbance of her household; this would be the proper mode of proceeding with "well-regulated” people in France. Madame de Jeufosse having two grown up sons, we, in England, might imagine there were other still more efficacious means of guarding a sister's honour; but with that we have nothing to do. Madame de Jeufosse was a Frenchwoman; her plain and evident course was to apply to the "authorities." Instead of doing so, she ordered her keeper to shoot the individual whom she thought obnoxious to her domestic peace! Madame de Jeufosse was, in her neighbourhood, a more important person than the man who fell a victim to her anger; although public opinion did not go the length of approving what she had done, it did not either clamour for what we should call justice, nor was justice done; for, in this case, the Bench sought for popularity. The dignity of the law was assuredly not raised higher by what took place in the affaire Jeufosse.

How does it stand with the case of Léonie Chéreau, the girl who stole the infant child of Monsieur and Madame Hua? Here public

opinion grows sentimental, and chooses utterly to lose sight of the crime committed and avowed, because it takes into its head to think Léonie Chéreau has been the object of unworthy treatment on the part of another person, whose worthiness or unworthiness had in reality nothing to do with the criminality of the act charged. Had Léonie Chéreau stolen M. Hua's child? Yes; she had done So. Was Léonie Chéreau in any one way a person meriting the interest of the public? No; in no one single way was she so. She was-and did not deny that she was-a girl of precociously bad conduct-spontaneously bad conduct, not bad conduct resulting from the seduction of another individual; but, in the details of the trial, it appeared that the person in whose favour Léonie Chéreau had manifested whatever was bad in herself, was even worse than she was. Léonie Chéreau stole M. Hua's child in order that a man, with whom she had had but a very short connexion, should, believing her to be a mother, be induced to marry her. There was so little excuse for the girl in any respect, that she actually did not at first even represent herself as a victim ; but the counsel for the defence merely sought to make her out recommendable to indulgence on the ground of infirm health. Hysteria was the principal plea invoked. All at once the public sense became excited against George Prieur, the indirect cause of Léonie Chéreau's guilty act, but who was in no possible form or degree any thing beyond an indirect cause, for he had no knowledge whatever of what the girl was meditating; had indeed no communication of any sort or kind with her. The impetus once given, the feeling out of doors was rapidly a flame. M. Hua's stolen child, and the agonies of the bereft parents, were altogether lost sight of. Léonie Chéreau was no longer the object for popular indignation, because, though she might be bad, there was somebody worse. Let it be noted, however, worse only in a sentimental way, and in a way which had no earthly bearing upon the cause being tried. Now, what did the representatives of the law? they instantly obeyed the feeling out of doors, and sought for a popular sentence. There was no justice done in the case of Léonie Chéreau; but the registering of the

VOL. VIII. NO. XVI.

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