tional assembly would effect in government and law. Other constitutions, it was said, had been fortuitously framed; their parts had been composed to meet present emergencies, and constituted no systematic whole; they contained many discordant principles, many jarring forms, much unmixed evil, some imperfect good, many institutions which had long survived their motive, and many of which reason had never been the author, or utility the object. The legislators of the revolution were to produce a very different code. They were to tolerate nothing of antiquity which reason did not respect; to shrink from no novelty, to which reason might lead; to despise narrow coastings, and to hazard, under the polarity of reason, a bolder navigation; to discover, in unexplored regions, the treasure of public felicity; and to diffuse it, in their legislative enactments, through every portion of the Gallic empire. Such were the splendid prophecies of the effects of the new jurisprudence ;--it is unnecessary to add how little the effects of the new constitution corresponded with the prediction: yet, let us be just,-if it had not been for the unwise, the illaudable, and the disastrous coalition of Austria and Prussia against France, and their invasion of her territory, the constitutional assembly might have done good.

The fate of the first legislators of the revolution did not deprive them of a tribe of imitators.

In the midst of his victories, Napoléon aspired to legislative fame. The Reminiscent apprehends, that the five codes of law, compiled under the eye of Napoléon, though in some respects imperfect, will always be highly honourable to his memory. He himself thought so favourably of them, as to express to a friend of the Reminiscent, a wish, that he might descend to posterity with

these in his hands. It is greatly to be desired, that some one, properly qualified for the task, would favour the public with a comparative view of their leading principles, and those of the law of England. Unfortunately, such a work can be expected from none but a person, who is at once conversant with the principles, the theory, and the practice of the jurisprudence of both countries:-and Romilly is now no more.

The Discussions sur le Code Civil show the manner in which that code was compiled: Napoléon appears in them to great advantage. The magistrates, who assisted at them, possessed unquestionably great talents; but Napoléon frequently enters the lists with them, generally shows himself their equal, at times their superior, and always takes the humane and liberal side. It adds to his honour, that between him and his assessors, no distinction of rank is ever discernible: Pliny could not act with greater ease, or speak with more freedom before Trajan, than the assessors of Napoléon acted and spoke before him.

On one question of the very highest importance, -whether it be most for the advantage of a nation that it should have few or many courts of judicature, -England and France are now directly at issue. With the exception of a few local jurisdictions, the judicial establishments in England are confined to the chancellor, the vice-chancellor, the master of the rolls, twelve judges, six masters in chancery, and some masters or officers resembling them in the other courts; in France there are at least 600 courts, and 5,600 judges ::-in addition, each kingdom has its justices of peace; in France, they amount to 27,000.

Nothing shows the difficulty of introducing a constitutional innovation with a salutary effect more than the fate of the establishment of juries in France. It was supposed that, as soon as the nation should have a judge and twelve men to try their civil or criminal causes, they would obtain a judicial court, perfectly resembling that of an English judge with his English jury. Under this impression, they constituted courts, in which one man was to preside and propound the law, and twelve were to decide the fact; but they did not recollect that to make this institution resemble our jury courts, centuries ought previously to have existed, and to have incorporated into every jury an habitual confidence in the judge, an habitual deference to every thing that should fall from him, and an habitual respect for their own important character,-and to have equally instilled into the judge a sincere respect for the jury; a consciousness that he was watched, and might, in case of error, be exposed; and, that though the jurymen were silent, they were not without attention, and something bordering on jealousy. The consequence has been, that no two things are more dissimilar for practical purposes, than the juries of England and the juries of France.

Cross-examination is sometimes abused; but it is certainly the surest method of eliciting truth that has been devised. When the affair of the necklace of the late queen of France was in agitation, a person observed to lord Thurlow, that the repeated examinations of the parties in France had cleared up nothing: "True," said his lordship, "but Buller, Garrow, and a Middlesex "jury, would, if such a matter had been brought before "them, have made it all, in half an hour, as clear as "day-light."

III. 6.

The Order of Avocâts in France, and its extinction in the French Revolution.

THE French avocât nearly resembled in rank and function, the English barrister. In the very earliest era of the history of France, her lawyers formed a distinguished portion of her community; so early as in the reign of Tiberius, the city of Autun had schools of eloquence and law, which contained 60,000 students. In 297, the orator Eumenius presided over them, and received for it a salary of 600,000 sesterces, or about 2,8801. of our money. The schools of Toulouse, Bourdeaux, Marseilles, Lyons, Trèves, and Besançon, were also celebrated. When the Francs possessed themselves of Gaul, they respected the profession of the avocât, and their most powerful nobles solicited the office of Avoué or Avocât of a religious or civil community; but, in those turbulent times, it was as much a military as a civil advocation. The profession of avocât maintained its consideration till the division of the Françic empire, in 814, among the sons of Charlemagne. In the troubles which immediately followed that event, it almost vanished; but it re-appeared to advantage in the reign of St. Louis. The Parliament of France was made sedentary at Paris by Philip le Bel; and soon after this event, the avocâts were formed into a distinct class, with many rights, and under many obligations, by the ordonnances of Philip de Valois in 1327 and in 1344; but disdaining the more common denomination of a body, they assumed, in analogy to the order of the nobility, and the order of the clergy, the denomination of l'Ordre des Avocâts.

Bartoli, the oracle of the law in the fourteenth century, asserted * that at the end of the tenth year of successful professional exertion, the avocât became ipso facto a knight. A more moderate opinion assigned to him, at that period of his career, no more than a fair pretension to the honour of forensic knighthood. It has not been discovered by the Reminiscent, that a forensic order of knighthood was ever known in England; but in France, Italy and Germany, it was an order frequently conferred on the successful practitioner at the bar. When it was applied for, the king commissioned some ancient knight of the forensic order to admit the postulant into it. The postulant knelt before the knight-commissary, and said, "I pray you, my lord and my protector, to dress me "with the sword, belt, golden spurs, golden collar, golden "ring, and all the other ornaments of a true knight. I "will not use the advantages of knighthood for profane 66 purposes; I will use them only for the purposes of "religion, for the church, and the holy Christian faith, "in the warfare of the science to which I am devoted." The postulant then rose; and, being fully equipped, and girded with the sword, he became, for all purposes, a member of the order of knighthood, and entitled to a full participation of all the rights of military knights. In the Memoirs of the Maréschal de Vielle-Ville, who died in 1571, such knights are mentioned as very common, but they are treated somewhat disrespectfully by the old maréschal, though one of his own sons-in-law was a knight of that description.-It does not appear that they wore their equestrian costume in the courts; but, as Beauma. noir declares it to have been a general rule, in his time,

* Ad librum 1. Cod. de professoribus.