intelligible sample. The following, however, may be understood, after we state that Father Willand, as well as Corse de Leon, are the champions of the lovers, and that among the vicissitudes of the hero he is condemned to die. The king and the priest are the colloquists. 'I "Let the sentence be at once confirmed,' said the king. My determination is taken,-my mind made up, Francis.' 'I beg your gracious pardon, sire,' said Father Willand, interposing, but before you pronounce finally, hear me too. Your royal son has spoken as becomes a prince; your daughter has sued as a woman, and I come to talk as a priest.' believe, under such circumstances, my good father,' said Henry, with a faint smile, 'you ought, according to rule, to send me your admonitions through one of my chaplains.' What, trust a purse with a pickpocket!' exclaimed the priest; his usual jesting bitterness mingling strangely with the tone of deep feeling in which he spoke. 'No, no, sire; the admonitions would slip through their fingers by the way. Whenever your majesty wants to do a real act of charity, do it yourself: don't trust to an almoner. I, in my priestly capacity, do as I would have you do in your kingly one, and, therefore, I beseech you hear my admonitions from my own mouth; I would not have them tainted with the breath of any other man.' 'Well, well, speak then,' replied the king. 'It shall never be said that I refused to hear. What have you to say in this youth's favour, why the law of the land should not take its course?' 'In his favour I have very little to say,' replied the priest; 'for, indeed, there is very little to be said in the favour of any living man. We are all pups of one litter, blind and stupid when we are young, and snarling and vicious when we are old: but what have I to say is a warning to your majesty. What will you think of yourself and your present obstinacy should this young man not be guilty? If, entertaining doubts of his being the real person who did the deed, as I know you do, you resist all prayers and entreaties in his favour, and send him to the scaffold, what will be your feelings should you afterwards find out that he was not the man? How will you reproach yourself, then?' 'The impartial judges of the land,' replied Henry, somewhat sternly, 'have pronounced him guilty. If there be a fault, the fault is theirs, not mine.' Think you, sire,' said the priest,' that in purgatory those judges will make you a low bow, and beg to have your share of fire as well as their own? With whom, sire,' he continued in a still bolder voice,-' with whom rests the power to save or to destroy? and why is that power trusted by God unto a king? Inasmuch, and solely inasmuch, as it is needful to have one to moderate the rigour of the law. The law must entertain no doubt. It either acquits or it condemns; but still reason may have a doubt, and it is for that that kings are invested with the glorious privilege of mercy. I tell you, sire, that, more than at any other time, you prove the divine origin of your power when you exercise it to save; for, in communicating to you the means of shewing mercy, God himself gave you a share of his brightest at. tribute. If, I say, you have no doubt of his guilt, send him to the scaffold; for your firm conviction, as an upright judge, shall justify you in the eye of Heaven. But if after having first heard the cause yourself, and read every word of the evidence that has been given, you do entertain a doubt, exer. cise the right of shewing mercy, or prepare for long and bitter self-reproach in this world, and for the punishment of blood-guiltiness in the next. 'Your words are very bold, priest,' replied the king sharply; and this scene must never be repeated.' Mr. James strews his pages with maxims and philosophical reflections, but with more of earnestness and less of bitterness than the Honourable Cecil Danby exhibits. We quote one example : -- "There has there risen up,' he added, 'within my memory, a habit, an affectation of indifference, if you like to call it so, to all things on this earth; which indifference is born of a corrupt and a degraded heart, and of sated and exhausted appetites. To a high mind, furnished with keen and vigorous faculties, nothing on earth can be indifferent; for acuteness of perception, a quality which in its degree assimilates us to the Divine nature, weighs all distinctions. As God himself sees all the qualities of every thing, whether minute or great, and gives them their due place, so the grander and more expansive the intellect may be, the more accurately it feels, perceives, and estimates the good or evil of each individual thing. The low and the base, the palled taste of luxury, the satiated sense of licentiousness, the callous heart of selfishness, the blunted sensibilities of lust, covetousness, gluttony, effeminacy, and idleness, take refuge in indifference, and call it to their aid, lest vanity, the weakest but the last point to become hardened in the heart of man, should be wounded. They take for their protection the shield of a false and tinsel wit, the answer of a sneer, the argument of a supercilious look, and try to gloze over every thing, to themselves and others, with a contemptuous persiflage which confounds all right and wrong." ART. XIII.-A Concise Digest of the Laws, Usages, and Customs, affecting the Commercial and Civil Intercourse of the Subjects of Great Britain and France. Sixth Edition. By CHARLES OKEY, Knight of the Legion of Honour, &c. 1 vol. 8vo. Paris: Galignani. 1841. THERE are few English works published upon the continent that have experienced a more rapid success than those of Mr. Okey, who is the consulting barrister to the British Embassy in Paris. Books of fiction please for a time: a new novel speedily usurps the place of its predecessor; and this in its turn also yield to one of a more recent date. But Mr Okey has furnished the public abroad with volumes whose real utility is not only recognised, but also appreciated in that circle whose interests are connected with the subject of that gentleman's writings. A knowledge of many points in the French law is most essential to Englishmen visiting the continent, particularly as the civil code makes several distinctions between the laws for strangers or foreigners, and those which apply to the French citizen. Mr. Okey saw the necessity of putting his fellow-countrymen in possession of a book which would at once ex plain to them their liabilities, their duties, and the various form they have to go through in certain cases, such as marriages, accession to property, wills, &c., &c., in concordance with the French laws. He saw this necessity-he saw that there was a deficiency to be filled up-and he applied himself to the task, which he ably accomplished. The accommodation was immediately perceived and acknowledged; and the King of the French rewarded with a decoration the individual who had thus turned his acquaintance with the French laws to so excellent a purpose. In whatever legal matter an Englishman may be engaged in France, all he has to do is to seek a solution of his difficulties, or enquire the right path to pursue, by consulting Mr. Okey's work; and it is probable that he will require no other lawyer. The most minute question, relative to points of law, are satisfactorily explained in the Digest; and in asserting that no Englishman in France should be without this work, we are only performing a duty consistent with our characters as impartial reviewers. Let us take advantage of the work now before us to make our readers acquainted with some of the French laws which apply to foreigners. An individual is said to be a foreigner when he is born in a foreign country, of foreign parents, and is not naturalised by legal process in France. An individual born in France, of parents who are domiciled by legal process, is a foreigner. An individual born in another country, of parents naturalized by legal process in France, is a foreigner. An individual begotten in France, by parents naturealized in France, and born in another country, is also considered a foreigner. An illegitimate child born of a French woman and recognised by a father who is a foreigner, is a foreigner. An illegitimate child born of a foreign woman, and recognised by a father who is a Frenchman, is a French citizen. The quality of a child, even if he be a minor, does not always depend upon that of the father. Thus, an individual born in France, of parents naturalized in France, does not become a foreigner in the eye of the law, if, during his minority, his father loses his quality of a Frenchman, which he can do by becoming naturalized in another country, by accepting employment under another government without the sanction of the French executive, or by establishing a commercial business in another country and residing there to superintend his affairs. Every individual born in France, of parents who are foreigners, can demand the enjoyment of the civil and political rights of a Frenchmaa, in the year after the one which marks his attainment to the age of majority, provided that he make a declaration of his intention to establish his domicile in France, the date of domiciliation by legal process to commence in the said year after he arrives at the age of twenty-one. A foreigner enjoys in France the same civil rights, and those rights to the same extent that are granted to the Frenchman in the nation to which the foreigner belongs. Thus a Swiss enjoys the benefits of the civil rights of a Frenchman to a much greater extent than any other foreigner, on account of the reciprocal understanding existing between the two nations. An Englishman, in order to enjoy the benefit of the civil rights of a Frenchman in all their extent, must procure an act of domiciliation, authorised by the King, signed by the Minister of Justice, and published in the Bulletin des Lois. With this act he is empowered to exercise all the civil, but none of the political rights of a Frenchman, so long as he shall continue to reside in France. The advantage of the act of domicile will be perceived by the following statements : "No foreign, not domiciled in France, can enjoy the civil rights of a Frenchman to their full extent; and this is a considerable inconvenience to any foreigner who may desire to recover debts from another. A foreigner may proceed against a Frenchman, or against an individual, who, born in another country, is naturalised by act in France; but the Frenchman, or naturalised individual, thus proceeded against, can make the plaintiff find security for the expenses incidental to the trial. This guarantee is for the safety of the defendant, if he gain the cause." And again, a foreigner can be arrested provisionally for debt, before judgment be obtained against him, unless he possess the act of domicile; and should he not be able to disembarrass himself of his debts, or arrange with his creditors, he must stay in prison double the portion of time which must be completed by a Frenchman, or by one entitled to enjoy the civil rights of a Frenchman. A foreigner not domiciled, can be arrested upon a simple book-debt, amounting to more than a hundred and fifty francs. A Frenchman, or an individual who is entitled to enjoy the civil rights of a Frenchman, can only be arrested, unless he be in commerce, upon a bill of exchange, which must be dated at one place and made payable at another. A bill drawn and made payable at the same place is not considered a bill of exchange, but a single accomodation bill or promissory note. No foreigner can arrest another foreigner for debt without an act of domicile. A foreigner under age that is a foreigner who has not attained the age of twenty-one can be arrested for debts contracted in hotels or boarding houses, for necessaries; but for no other debts. A foreigner who, in a foreign country, may have contracted a debt with a Frenchman, or with an individual enjoying the civil rights of a Frenchman, can be arrested the moment he sets foot in France. The following is the scale of the various periods of detention which act as a sponge for all debts, in respect to Frenchmen, or those who enjoy the civil rights by act of domicile; the double of each period is to be passed in prison by those who are not so situated. A man may obtain his liberty -- "At the expiration of one year when the debt does not amount to five hundred francs. "At the expiration of two years, when the debt does not amount to a thousand francs. "At the expiration of three years, when the debt does not amount to three thousand francs. "At the expiration of four years when the debt does not amount to five thousand francs. "At the expiration of five years, when the debt amounts to more than five thousand francs." No foreigner nor Frenchman can be detained in prison for debt when he has entered into his seventieth year. On the day that he is sixty-nine years old, he can demand his release. It will be seen by the above table that if a man owe millions, he cannot be detained in prison more than five years, if he be a Frenchman, or be entitled to the enjoyment of civil rights, and not more than ten if he be a non-domiciled foreigner. Some time ago, a celebrated individual, who was accustomed to contract with the French government in respect to the commissariat drpartment, undertook a certain engagement, which he obtained by tender. In a few days he presented himself at the office of the Minister of Finance, and desired that he might be accommodated with a million of francs (forty thousand pounds sterling), as he was somewhat deficient in the funds necessary to commence the contract. His character having been hitherto of the most unexceptionable description, the Minister did not hesitate to lay his petition before the council; and the money was advanced to him. He then wrote to the Minister to decline the contract, and forwarded the thousand pounds (twenty-five thousand francs) which he had forfeited by the non-fulfilment of the engagement, according to the conditions thereof. A council of Ministers was called, and the law-offices of the crown were consulted; but the receipt which the contractor had signed to the Minister of Finance, when he received the million of francs, by no means involved him in any offence against the criminal law. All that could be done was to arrest the contractor for the debt, and throw him into prison as soon as a judgment was procured against him. He remained five years in St. Pelagie, kept his million, and then obtained his release according to the law-a free man, without a debt in the world! During the detention of any individual for debt, the creditor is obliged to allow him thirty francs a month in Paris, and twenty-five francs a month in the departments, to secure him the means of subsistence. Should this sum fail to be paid at the minute it is due, the debtor can demand his release, and the debt is cancelled, as if he had stayed out his time. It must also be remembered that the bankruptcy laws exist in France, as well as in England, and thus |