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Untitled Article
of private property sanctioned by the forest code , are such as none but an ignorant and despotically inclined government would have attempted . Inasmuch as the character of the present government of France partakes of those statesman-like qualities , this evil must wait a little longer for its remedy .
These codes , the first attempt to reduce the laws of a great nation into the compass of a pocket volume , consist of a number of sections and short paragraphs , each paragraph marked with a number , to facilitate reference . The style is as concise as is consistent with clearness . The arrangement is minute and elaborate . Copies of it are in possession not only of the judges ^ pleaders ,
and attormes , but of agents , merchants , and persons in business generally , who , without being enabled by it to dispense with the aid of lawyers in a suit , find in it a variety of useful information and explanations , which not unfrequently prevent a suit , and qualify men of moderate understanding to solve questions of common occurrence in their respective occupations . In England , on the
contrary , such is the immense number of law-books , and their ponderous size , that it would require the age of one of the patriarchs to gain a competent knowledge of them . The most condensed edition of the statutes at large , yet given to the public , occupies thirty-nine volumes in quarto , seven and a half of which comprise the Acts from Magna Charta to the end of the reign of
George II ., the remaining thirty-one and a half being filled with those of the two last reigns I In France the justices of the peace are very numerous , there being one for each canton , and consequently near three thousand in the kingdom . They are never , as in England , clergymen , and seldom country gentlemen , * but persons acquainted with the law , and mostly in circumstances which
make the salary , small as it is , ( from eight hundred to one thousand francs , thirty to forty pounds , ) an acceptable return for a portion of their time . They are not unfrequently provincial attornies , or pleaders retired from business . The justice of the peace ( or juge de paix ) in France is authorized to pronounce finally in petty sessions under fifty francs , or two pounds , and to make , in questions up to one hundred francs , a decision subject to
appeal . He takes cognizance likewise of disputes about tenants ' repairs , servants' wages , the displacing of the landmarks of property , driving incautiously on the highway , damaging standing corn , endangering a neighbour ' s property by neglecting repairs , &c . No action can be brought before a court of justice in France until the plaintiff has summoned his adversary before a juge de paix with an amicable intent , ( cite en conciliation , } and received
* Under the old system in France there were no country gentlemen , none aniiwering to what we understand by that phrase , no men of moderate fortunes living on their estates in the country . It was the policy of the Bourbons to have but two classes of persons—the very rich and the very poor . The operation of the laws of inheritance will in time give France this class in society .
Untitled Article
102 Notice * of France .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1833, page 102, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2608/page/34/
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