TO THE MOCKING-BIRD. BY HON. RICHARD HENRY WILDE. WINGED mimic of the woods! thou motley fool! Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule Pursue thy fellows still with jest and gibe. Wit, sophist, songster, YORICK of thy tribe Thou sportive satirist of Nature's school; To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe Arch-mocker and mad Abbot of Misrule! For such thou art by day-but all night long Like to the melancholy JACQUES complain, And sighing for thy motley coat again. LOUISIANA AND HER LAWS. BY HENRY J. LEOVY, ESQ. country and Union; the Civil law, is WE propose giving as briefly as possible an outline of the legal history of Louisiana. We would premise for the benefit of the uninitiated that there are two grand systems of law known to the civilized world. The one-the Common Law, composed of the Customary and Statutory law of England, is now the law of the law of that twenty-eight of the States of this other, the Corpus juris Civilis, or now taught and obeyed not only in many, Holland and Scotland, but in the Islands of the Indian Ocean, and on the banks of the Mississippi and the St Lawrence. In this we see exemplified the great D'Aguesseau's remark, that "the grand destinies of Rome are not yet accomplished; she reigns throughout the world by her reason, after having ceased to reign by her authority." The Roman or Civil law is founded upon the royal constitutions of its first kings, on the Twelve Tables, the statutes enacted by the Senate and the People, the Pretorial edicts, the opinions of learned lawyers and the Imperial Decrees. From these numerous sources was formed an immense reservoir of both useful and useless laws, a part of which were first codified by Theodosius, then the whole under Justinian in 533, by Tribonian and others. The body of law thus compiled and finished, consists of the Institutes, in four books-the Pandects in fifty-the Imperial Code in twelve books, and the Novels or New Constitutions. It is the general belief that this old Roman law, modified and polished by the wisdom of French and Spanish enactments, is the existing system of jurisprudence in Louisiana. This opinion, though true in the main, needs some qualification. Our laws are a texture composed of the best materials, from both the English Common and the Roman Civil law. Other States and other nations have contented themselves with adopting, without change or modification, either the one or the other of these systems. Our plan is the interweaving of the two, the mingling of both as the colors mingle in the rainbow, and so imperceptibly, that like the verge of the horizon and sea, none but the most experienced eyes can discern the distinctive line between them. Each of the two grand systems has its imperfections, as well as virtues. The Civil law is defective in its public, the Common law in its private relations. There are but few writers acquainted with the relative merits of the Common and Civil law, that do not unhesitatingly declare that in all the relations between man and man, the Roman law is infinitely superior to the English law; while in all the public relations-in all that exists between government and man-between society as a whole and man as a part-in all that concerns the protection of the property and liberty of the individual, there has been in no country, nor does there any where exist, a system at all comparable to the Common law. Brown, speak Civil law, re ing of Rome in his work on the marks that ❝ it was the peculiar glory of the nation which subdued the world to furnish mankind with a code of laws, containing the most perfect system of justice and equity between man and man, that has ever been produced by human invention." But, says Montesquieu-"Liberty was in the centre, and slavery in all its extremities," and adds the writer first quoted from, "In the crim inal law, in that great palladium of liberty, the jury, we are immeasurably in advance of the Roman code; and here, upon the whole, is the glory of the English system.' Kent, too, after expressing his preference for many parts of the Civil law, concludes that "In every thing which concerns civil and political liberty, the Civil law cannot be compared to the free spirit of the English and American Common law." None were more aware of the relative merits and defects of the two systems than the American and French jurisconsults who found themselves in Louisiana on its adoption into the Union. The United States, by the act of 1804, left to the people of Louisiana the task of legislating for themselves, and gave them the power to make such changes in their system of laws as they might in their wisdom deem necessary. They found the Civil law with all its unwieldly incumbrances harnessed upon them. They felt that great and many difficulties would arise by engrafting new principles on the political system of the Union. They knew that by adopting the Civil law without amendment, they would be introducing into the Union a jingling and discordant element. To so model this system as to make it harmonize with the |