nearly double the number (648) in the French code of commerce, and scarcely half the number of articles in the Prussian Landrecht relating to commercial matters. Our readers are probably aware that, according to the opinions of the best jurists, the French code deals too much in generals, and that the Prussian code (the Landrecht) has been overloaded with minute regulations in the hope of anticipating all possible contingencies. The juste milieu was aimed at and seems to have been attained in Spain.

The code is divided into five books. The first treats of the competency of persons to engage in trade, including minors, married women, and foreigners; the duties of persons engaged in trade, such as the keeping of books and the conduct of their correspondence ;1 and the various descriptions of commercial agents, as brokers, factors, clerks, &c. The title relating to these, containing 172 articles, is particularly admired.

The second book, containing 349 articles under twelve heads, treats of all commercial contracts, with the exception of the maritime sorts. It includes partnerships, sales, exchanges, loans, deposits, guarantees, land assurances, bills of exchange, letters of credit, &c. &c. In assigning a distinct title in their code of commerce to sales, the Spanish legislators have deviated from the example set by the French, who, so far as arrangement is concerned, make no distinction between commercial and ordinary sales, nor even between sales of landed property and of goods; but place all descriptions of sale (Vente) in the Code Civil.2 Where no peculiar mode of transferring landed property exists, it may well be doubted whether the separation be politic. M. Pardessus justifies it on the ground that sales of merchantable commodities are constantly modified by the usages of trade. The articles on bills of exchange and partnership, are calculated to set many questions at rest, which both here and in France produce a rich harvest of litigation.

The third book is exclusively devoted to maritime matters.

The French Code of Commerce, Liv. 1. tit. 2. requires every trader to keep a journal or day book presenting a complete register of his transactions, as also to file all letters he receives and keep copies of all which he sends.

2 Art. 195. of the Code de Commerce, regulating the sale of ships, is the only exception we are aware of.

It contains 418 articles, ranged under five heads: 1, vessels; 2, persons who engage in maritime traffic or adventure; 3, maritime contracts; 4, risks and losses, averages, &c.; 5, prescriptions in maritime matters. This book differs little from the second book of the French Code of Commerce, except that more disputed points are provided for.

The fourth book is entirely occupied by bankruptcy, and did we think our readers would bear with us, we should be tempted to dwell at some length on its provisions; for it is a remarkable fact, that in the three first commercial nations of the world, England, France, and America, the law of bankruptcy is precisely that portion of law which is most loudly and deservedly complained of. We shall certainly, however, soon recur to this book, and not improbably translate it at length.

The fifth book relates to the administration of justice in commercial matters. It contains 52 articles, under five heads, on the subject of commercial jurisdictions; but it refers for procedure to a code to be made, and leaves in the interim the jarring systems of the various provincial tribunals in force. There is no absolute necessity for including procedure in the same code with the law-the French, for example, have separated them, and seen no cause to repent'-but the code referred to should appear cotemporaneously, or at least be not indefinitely postponed. We have as yet heard nothing of a general code of procedure for Spain.

We cannot close this short article better than in the words of Professor Pardessus, a judge sans reproche on such matters,

"Questions," says he, "are, generally speaking, decided by it in a manner conformable to universal jurisprudence ; there is nothing referable to national prejudices, to local habitudes. Every country qualified by position to engage in commerce by land and sea, might adopt this code entire. Į am not afraid to say, that states which do not yet possess a system of commercial law, that those which have only an incomplete one, will find a perfect model in the Spanish code; that wherever this work shall be known, it may be cited in the courts as an excellent doctrinal authority. It is a justice which we should not hesitate to render to a work of jurispru

2 Procedure in the Courts of Commerce is provided for in the Code de Procedure Civ. Part 1. liv. 2. tit. 25.

dence, which should thus have united in a compact and complete form the most frequently recurring and most important principles; why should we not render it to a law? We should render it to a simple foreign jurist; could we justly refuse it to the work of a government?"

H.

ART. XIII.-MR. BENTHAM AND LORD BROUGHAM.

Boa Constrictor, alias Helluo Curiarum: Observations on the "Resolved-on" Absorption of the Vice Chancellor's Court, and the Master of the Rolls' Court, into the Lord High Chancellor's Court. London, 1832.

"THE style of Mr. Bentham," says Sir James Mackintosh, "underwent a more remarkable revolution than perhaps befel that of any other celebrated writer. In his early works, it was clear, free, spirited, often and seasonably eloquent. Many passages of his latter writings retain the inimitable stamp of genius; but he seems to have been oppressed by the vastness of his projected works, to have thought that he had no longer more than leisure to preserve the heads of them, to have been impelled by a fruitful mind to new plans before he had completed the old. In this state of things, he gradually ceased to use words for conveying his thoughts to others, but merely employed them as a short-hand to preserve his meaning for his own purpose. It was no wonder that his language should have become obscure and repulsive.”1

Improving on this opinion, the majority of the reading public have at length succeeded in persuading themselves, that all Mr. Bentham's latter productions are too much deformed by obscurities and oddnesses for any but his school to read; that

Dissertation 2nd, prefixed to Encycl. Brit. last edition, p. 385.

if there be really any meaning discoverable in them, it is a purely esoteric one, which none but the initiated can find out. This is a very erroneous supposition indeed. Despite of rugged phrases and tortuosities of thought, which occur, we own, rather oftener than could be wished, he always has been and still remains one of the most spirited and sparkling writers of his day; and we could quote more than one short section from his works, containing enough pointed pleasantry and fanciful allusion to make the fortune of an ordinary pamphleteer. We commend those who may be sceptical on this point to the fourth volume of his Rationale of Evidence in particular; not despairing, however, of proving even from the short tract before us, that a certain aptitude for both reason and ridicule remains in him. It is not printed for general circulation, on which account we may indulge in somewhat longer quotations than would be otherwise allowable.

The first paragraph explains the name, and throws out a hint that we hope to see acted upon :

"A Boa Constrictor, of the first magnitude, appropriately wigged and gowned, crushing in his embrace the bodies, and extinguishing the life, of their two Honours, the Vice Chancellor and the Master of the Rolls, both of them also appropriately wigged and gowned — no bad subject this for the graver of a Cruikshank. All pleasantry apart, I cannot but felicitate those whose hard lot it is to become suitors in equity, at the prospect which such a change presents to view, one stage of appeal at least, and perhaps in some cases two, made to evaporate. Of this halcyon state of things it seems to me that I see a glimpse; may it not prove a phantasmagoric one!

"So much for what the Lord Chancellor calls his 'resolved-on' arrangement. But an arrangement is one thing: a principle on which that same arrangement is grounded, is another: by one and the same person the one may be approved of, the other disapproved of."

After referring to the arguments in favour of single-seatedness to be found under the appropriate titles in a code which he has been long employed upon, Mr. Bentham proceeds.

"To these reasons (of which further on) I have the mortification of finding opposed the authority of the aforesaid noble and learned Lord, as displayed in the string of dictums stated in the Morning

Chronicle of the 2d of this instant September, as having been delivered on the occasion of an announced absorption of the Master of the Rolls' and Vice Chancellor's into the Lord Chancellor's Court: which said oracles of our said Magnus Apollo are in the words following; that is to say- "There are two or three branches of judicature in which the presence of three judges is infinitely better than that of one.

"1. First, where conflicting facts are to be discussed or conflicting evidences to be heard, a jury is perhaps the best forum for such a case; a single judge perhaps the worst: but three men, with minds variously constituted, are much more likely to come to a satisfactory conclusion than a single individual.

"2. The next is—where anything like discretion is to be exercised, either in awarding damages or saying what costs are to be paid, which is often a very important and not unfrequently difficult and delicate inquiry, as too many cases are brought and kept up merely for the sake of the costs. The duty of the judge then is somewhat like that of assessing damages; and in the exercise of such discretion it is better to have three judges than one.

"3. Last of all, where there are great and difficult and important points of law and equity to be settled, it is much more satisfactory to suitors and to the profession which cultivates the sciences, to have that law considered and settled by more judges than one.

"These then (concludes his Lordship) are the reasons which principally move me to the adoption of the resolution which I have taken.'

"There we have his Lordship's dicta.

"For my part, my work intituled 'Constitutional Code, being' as the title goes on to say, for the use of all nations and all governments entertaining liberal opinions; and for the support and elucidation of the proposed enactive matter, the said work presenting throughout a correspondent quantity of ratiocinative matter; it would have been no small satisfaction to me to have seen the truth of my arguments, which, as above, are delivered in support of singleseatedness in judicature, subjected to the scrutiny of so enlightened a mind, and to have given to the work in question the benefit of his Lordship's observations on the one side or the other, or on both; seeing that the questions are not a few, as to which, with perfect sincerity, by one and the same man (as Sir Roger de Coverley was wont to say,) much may be said on both sides.' This satisfaction I might have had, had his Lordship been pleased to add them to the 'pap' which he was pleased to say pray for, and take from a tea