country in which the law had been power-ty. But this was mere suspicion: comless for nearly two years-in which proper mon as the crime was, not one of the crimty had been a ground for proscription, and inals was identified. One day, however, every stratagem had been used to conceal two gendarmes, as they crossed a porit-in which the legal currency had been in tion of the forest, found a child about ten a course of daily depreciation, while death years old, the singularity of whose dress was the punishment of those who ventured excited their curiosity. He asked for food, to refuse it, or even to take it at less than and was persuaded to accompany them to a its nominal value-where even the con- neighboring town. A good breakfast and nection and mutual rights of husband and a glass of wine obtained his confidence.wife, and parent and child, had been fluctu- He told them that he lived with his father ating the relations of individuals towards and mother, and many other families, in a one another, and towards the property vast cavern in the forest. That a great many which had escaped confiscation, required men came there from time to time, bringto be ascertained. ing with them sometimes plate, and other M. Berryer's narratives of his contests valuables, which were afterwards taken on questions depending on marriage, di- away, and sometimes provisions and clothes vorce, and legitimacy, are interesting. for the inhabitants. It seemed probable They describe a community unsupported that the head-quarters of the Chauffeurs was by religion, delicacy, or morality in now detected; but, instead of attacking which virtues had so often been declared the cavern, the result of which would have to be criminal, and crimes to be virtuous, that public opinion had been destroyed, and with it the conscience and even the self-respect of individuals. Brothers and sisters bred up together attack one another's legitimacy, women set aside their own marriages, husbands disavow their wives, and parents their children; in short, all the misery is exhibited of a society in which mere law is the only restraint. But M. Berryer's stories of this kind are too concise, and too much alike in their features, to be interesting in such an abridgement as we could give them. We shall select, therefore, some other incidents from his parti-colored narrative.

One of the most remarkable, and one of those which throw most light upon the internal state of France, during the interval between the Reign of Terror and the Consulate, is a trial before the tribunal of Chartres, in which M. Berryer was only a spectator. For some years previous to the trial, which appears to have taken place in the year 1795, a large tract of country, of which the forest of Orgeres, extending to within thirty miles of Charges, is the centre, had been infested by bands of ruffians, who, from their use of fire as an instrument of torture, acquired the name of Chauffeurs. They were accustomed to surround lonely farm-houses in numbers too large for resistance, bind the males, and force the females, by fire applied to the feet, to discover the property of the family. From the number of their outrages, the uniformity of their proceedings, and the skill with which they were conducted, it was inferred that they formed a large confederacy, acting on system, and obeying some central authori

been only the seizure of those who might be in it at the time, and the alarm and escape of the other members of the confederacy, it was resolved to use the child as a means of arresting the out-door brigands, one by one, and to reserve the cavern for the last. For this purpose, the child, to whom we will give, by anticipation, the name of Finfin, which he afterwards acquired by the dexterity with which he played his part, was disguised by good clothes, and placed, under the care of a woman who acted as his nurse, at the corners of the markets of the towns to which it was supposed that the brigands would resort to sell the plundered property. Whenever he saw a face with which he had become familiar in the cavern, he gave a sign, and the person indicated was arrested. At length the number exceeded a hundred; descriptions of the prisoners, and of the property found on them, were published; and evidence poured in from all sides. The trial lasted several days. Every morning the accused, about 112 in number, were marched in a long column, guarded by a numerous escort, through the the streets of Chartres, to a church in the centre of the town, which had been fitted up on this occasion as a court, and was large enough to exhibit them all to the witnesses and the jury. M. Berryer dwells on the horrors of the evidence, particularly on that of the daughters of an opulent proprietor, three sisters, whose feet had been destroyed by fire, so that they were forced to come on crutches into the court.

It appeared that the cavern, or rather the collection of caverns, from whence Finfin had wandered, was situated in the least ac

ficial only to captors. In the rare case of a judg-
ment favorable to the neutral, the captor could ap
peal, and the vessel and cargo were detained till
inferior court in favor of a captor was put into im-
the event was known; but every sentence of an
mediate exccution. No security for costs or for
restitution was required, and the neutral, supposing
him to succeed on appeal, had generally a mere
claim for damages; a claim which the captors ren-
dered nugatory, by converting these undertakings
into a joint stock, of which the shares passed by
known, and were constantly changing.
mere delivery, so that the persons liable were un-

cessible portion of the forest; and formed | France; but the right was so given as to be beneout of the quarries which had furnished the stone for the magnificent cathedral of Chartres. Here a colony of malefactors, male and female, had been founded, which recruited itself, partly by immigration and partly by natural increase. Like the Indian associations of the Thugs, it had a government, laws, and police, adapted to the frightful profession of its members. It had corresponding members, who indicated the dwell ings most fit for attack, and an executive, which planned expeditions, and appointed the persons who were to effect them. The whole 112 were convicted. At a subsequent period, it would have been difficult to dispose of a body of criminals for whom death was the only appropriate sentence, and who would have been thought too numerous for such a punishment; but in 1795, and in France, men were accustomed to such scenes, and M. Berryer passes over their execution

without remark.

During the six years which elapsed between M. Berryer's return to his profession and the peace of Amiens, his principal employment-as honorable as it was ineffectual--was the defence of neutral owners against French privateers. At the breaking out of the war in 1793, a decree of the Convention had given jurisdiction in all cases of capture to the local tribunals of France, and even to the French consuls in foreign parts.

istration of the law, under which, in the beginning "Such was the state of the law, or of the adminof the year 1798, I was called, for the first time, as counsel to Nantes. My clients were Messrs. Duntzfels and Co., one of the first mercantile houses in Copenhagen. They were the owners of the Bernstorf and the Norge, worth more than three millions of francs, which had been captured by Nantes privateers, and condemned by the inferior tribunal. It was admitted, indeed stated in the sentence, that they were bonâ fide Danish property. The only pretence for condemnation was noncompliance, on the part of the captain, with some mere formal regulations, imposed indeed by the recent municipal law of France, which could not, except in violation of the treaty made between France and Denmark in 1742, be applied to the words of the treaty; I urged its recognition in a ships of our allies the Danes. I urged the express similar case by the neighboring tribunal of St. Brienne. Such was the influence of my arguments on public opinion, even in Nantes, that instruments, purporting to assign shares in the prizes, were not saleable, except at nominal prices. By an abuse which had become habitual, the superior court of justice in Nantes applied for instructions to the Directory, then the rulers of France. I instantly returned to Paris, in the hope of inducing the Directory, if they interfered in a matter of law, at

"It became," says M. Berryer, "a presumption of law in those local prize courts, that not a vessel that traversed the ocean was really neutral; that every cargo was in fact English property; and that all the exteriors of neutrality were frauds to be ex-least to interfere in favor of the treaty. But it was posed or eluded. The most frivolous objections were raised to the different papers by which the nationality of the ship, or the ownership of the cargo, was proved, and always with success. Every syllable in every passport was challenged, and every change that, during a long voyage, had taken place in the crew. But when the law of 1798 had declared good prize every vessel containing goods (marchandises) the produce of England, or of any English dependency, the robberies of the privateers were unrestrained. They seized, absolutely without exception, every vessel which they met with at sea, whatever the flag, for they were sure to find on board some English goods. It might have been supposed that the word goods (marchandises) meant something intended for sule, or at least something for which freight was to be paid. It was held to comprehend the mere furniture of a cabin, a bed, a chair, or a carpet, or even a knife or a razor used by the captain. The presence of any such article drew after it the confiscation of ship and cargo, valued perhaps at millions. An appeal was indeed given from the tribunal which sat in a French port to the tribunal of the district, and from the judgment of the French consul abroad to a court sitting in

in vain. I soon heard that the law of nations had been overruled, and the vessels finally condemned. The notoriety of these decisions gave a still further extension to the piracy of our privateers. They seized even the coasting traders of the Mediterranean, as they were proceeding, at a distance from any seat of war, from one port belonging to our allies to another. Hundreds of appeals were put into my hands, not from the hope of redress, but because the poles which insured against capture required that every means to ward off condemna tion should have been exhausted. The neutral captains and supercargoes crowded to my officemen who had been intrusted with millions; and now, deprived of their own little funds, and even of their baggage, had to depend on the consuls of their countries for the means of existence during the suit. In one matter, I so far shook the Court of Appeal as to delay its judgment for one day. It was the case of the Federalist, a ship belonging to citizens of the United States of America, with whom we were in strict alliance. The ground of confiscation was a strip of carpet by the captain's bedside. It was discovered, or pretended to be discovered, that this bit of carpeting was of English

manufacture. On this pretence, the ship and her ritory as extensive as can be usefully uniwhole cargo, worth a million and a half of france, ted in one empire. She had incorporated had been condemned. At the conclusion of my | Savoy, Piedmont, the Milanese, a consideraddress, the court was proceeding to reverse the condemnation. One judge only suggested a doubt. able part of Switzerland, and all the great The decision was adjourned to the next day, and and rich countries that lie between her prewas then given in favor of the captors. Generally, sent frontier and the Rhine. The portions I had no clue to the proceedings of the Court of of Holland, Switzerland, and Northern ItaAppeal, but sometimes I could account for them. ly which she had not made French, were Early in the morning sittings of the Council of Five her dependencies. It is true that under the Hundred (Lower Chamber of France), or when the Empire she acquired a still more extended attendance was thin, the pirates used to obtain from the members present resolutions of the Chamber, territory, and a still larger body of subordideclaring in their favor the law on any litigated nate allies; but her subsequent acquisipoint, and these resolutions were considered deci- tions were not ratified by England. They sive. One day, during the hearing of a case, I saw were mere incidents in a fearful game, lia man, whom I believed to be a deputy from the able to be torn away, and in fact actually south, give a paper to the government commission: torn away, as soon as her fatal system of er. While they were whispering together, I rushed towards them, in order to ascertain the nature of playing double or quits should produce its the business which brought the deputy into court. At the Peace of Amiens her usual result. He instantly disappeared, for his business was over. The paper contained a resolution of the house, deciding the question against my client.

Had she remained gains were realized. contented with them, she would probably now form the most powerful empire the "The ultimate results were, that not a vessel world has seen. She would possess fifty ventured to approach a French port; that we were millions of rich, warlike, and highly civilcut off from the supply of indispensable commodi-ized inhabitants, with the best soil, the best ties; that our privateers, acting without concert and without prudence, fell into the power of the climate, the best frontier, and the best posiEnglish cruisers; that our maritime population tion, on the Continent. was crowded into the English prisons, where many perished from ill-treatment; that our colonies were lost, for want of sailors to form a military marine; and ultimately, when the day of retribution arrived, the state had to pay for the plunder which had been profitable only to a few individuals."*

The revolution which placed Bonaparte on the consular throne was unquestionably beneficial. The despotism which seems to be the inevitable result of military rule, was more tolerable than that of factions which owed to treason their rise and their fall. Even the tyranny of the Empire was as great an improvement on the intrigues and violence of the Directory, as the Directory was on the anarchy of the Convention.

The same remark may be extended to the extraordinary man who had seized the command of her destinies. He then enjoyed more real power, more real popularity, and more real glory, than at any subsequent period of his career. As a soldier, he never repeated the miracles of his Italian victories. In his subsequent campaigns he obtained vast and decisive advantages when he had a superior force; suffered vast and decisive defeats when his force was inferior; and when the force on each side was nearly balanced, as at Eylau, Aspern, Borodino, and Ligny, so was the success. As a politi cian, he was known only as a Pacificator; he had had nothing to do with the origin of We are inclined, indeed, to consider the the three great wars in which he had been eighteen months of the Peace of Amiens, an actor; and he had concluded each of as the most brilliant portion of the history them by a glorious peace. He owed, it is of France since the death of Charlemagne. true, his power to usurpation, but it was England was supposed to be incapable of the most pardonable usurpation that history any but maritime war, and had accepted an records. Those whom he deposed were insecure and dishonorable peace. The themselves usurpers, and for hundreds that force of Russia was unknown, and neither regretted the change, there were millions Austria nor Prussia had yet adopted the that hailed it with delight. Never was systems which, at the expense of all the there an easier or a more popular revoluother objects of government, now give tion; and, up to the time of which we are them powers offensive and defensive, which speaking, the millions appeared to be right. their happier ancestors never contemplated. He had given to France internal as well as The military supremacy of France seemed external peace. He had restored the rule established; and it was supported by a ter- of law, and made it omnipotent against all except himself. He had laid the foundation of a Code which, with all its defects, is superior to that of any other Continental nation. He had restored Religion, not indeed

*This narrative is extracted, with some changes of arrangement, from the second volume, cap. iii. $ 1, 2.

in its purest form, but in the form most "To delude the English cruisers, a ship which attractive to a people among whom imagin-had belonged to the English East India Company, ation and passion predominate over reason, was purchased and sent to Copenhagen. There and who yield more readily to feeling, to she was named the Caninholm, and fitted for her authority, and to example, than to convic-she had a whole set of Danish papers, and cleared voyage; her captain was naturalized as a Dane; tion. With religion he had restored de- or Tranquebar, a Danish settlement; taking in at cency of manners, and, in a considerable Portsmouth her outward cargo in dollars. These degree, decency of morals. He had effected precautions were supposed, and indeed proved sufall this under the forms of a constitution ficient as regarded the cruisers of her enemy, which depending not on the balanced rights England; the real danger was from those of her and privileges of classes, but on the simple ally, France. To ward off this the Batavian government took into their confidence the French basis of centralized power, gave to the government, then consisting of the Directory, and body of the people the equality which they obtained their sanction to the expedition, and a seem to prefer to real liberty and to real license or protection against all interference by security. French vessels. As a further precaution, a Dutch supercargo was taken in at Tranquebar, and the Caninholm, on her return voyage, cleared out at Canton for the Texel.

One of the first acts of the Consulate was to withdraw matters of prize from the ordinary tribunals, and place them in the hands "The expedition lasted more than eighteen of a department of the government, de- months. The Caninholm left Copenhagen in Nonominated the Conseil des Prises. The un-vember 1797, and it was in June 1799 that she fitness of the petty local courts had been was captured as she entered the European seas by shown; but the referring questions of pure a French privateer, and carried into Bordeaux. law to an administrative instead of a legal The captain instantly went on shore to show his body, was a strange anomaly. And when license to the Bordeaux authorities; but no justice was to be expected in a privateering town, when a we add that the persons appointed to decide prize of ten millions of francs was in dispute. The between French captors and neutral owners, ship was of course condemned. The owners apwere mere officers of the executive, remov-pealed, but before they could be heard, the revolu able at pleasure, the anomaly became an tion of 1799 had overthrown the Directory. The oppression. It is strange that M. Berryer, consular government refused to recognize the conhimself a lawyer, approves of this institution: he had soon a remarkable opportunity of ascertaining its impartiality and its integrity.

tracts of its predecessors or the rights of its ally, and the Caninholm was definitively condemned as Bonnet and Co., the owners of the privateer, had English property. I ascertained afterwards that been obliged to scatter a little of their rich prey in order to keep the remainder. Bills accepted by them suddenly appeared in the Paris market; I myself had to advise proceedings on more than half a million's worth of them.”*

"Holland," says M. Berryer, "at that time forming the Batavian Republic, was in the year 1797 the unhappy ally of the Republic of France. The price of the alliance had been the loss of all her colonies, and of all maritime commerce under her Some branches of the legal profession own flag for all Indian commodities, and particu-may flourish under a despot; attorneys larly for tea, in Holland a necessary of life, she de- and chamber counsel do not excite his pended on that of Denmark, the only flag respected by England on the southern ocean. The respect paid by England to the Danish flag was, indeed, a pretence for its violation by France. The French privateers and the French tribunals affected to believe that England used Danish vessels as the means of her Eastern communication. When it is recollected that the Indian trade of England was carried on in the great ships of the East India Company, sailing in fleets, and under convoy, the insincerity of this pretence is obvious; but it served as a convenient instrument of pillage, particularly in the case which I am about to relate.

"In the autumn of 1797 the Batavian Republic wished to import a year's supply of green tea. The attempt to send from Amsterdam to Canton ten millions of francs of Dutch property, and to bring it back in so peculiar a form, was very difficult and very perilous; on the one hand the seas of Africa and Asia were swarming with English cruisers, which respected no flag but the Danish, and on the other hand the seas of Europe were filled with the privateers of the dear ally of Holland, which respected no flag whatever.

jealousy; and judges are the best instru-
ments of his power. They enable him to
express his will in the form of general prin-
ciples, and thus to regulate the actions of
millions, of whose separate existence he is
not even aware.
to his power into a breach of law, and
They convert resistance
punish it without his apparent interference.
An army or a mob may give power to its
chief; but that power cannot be safe until
it is supported by legal forms, enforced by
legal authorities. But no arbitrary ruler
looks favorably on advocates. The bar is
essentially an aristocracy in the noblest
sense of that term; the relative position of
its members depends on their merit; the
smiles of the crown cannot give reputation
to mediocrity, its frowns cannot repress
diligence and talent. The functions of the

Vol. ii. Sec. iii.

bar are still more offensive than its inde-reau and Dupont, and the family of Monnet, pendence; its business is to discuss, and an the unfortunate defender of Flushing. For absolute government hates discussion; its these offences he was excluded from the Tribusiness is to enforce the observance of bunate, and from the honors of the bar; but general rules, and adherence to precedents: the contest which he appears to think the such a government, though it requires them most dangerous was his defence of M. the from others, refuses itself to be bound by Mayor of Antwerp, in 1812 and 1813. either. Every day,' said Bonaparte, and he was then only Consul, one must break through positive laws; there is no other mode of proceeding. The action of the government must never be impeded-there must be no opposition."*

The Mayor, an old man of high character and great wealth, and once in high favor with Bonaparte, was married to a young wife, who quarrelled with the wife of the commissioner of police about a box in the theatre. The commissioner revenged himself by accusing the Mayor, and three other municipal officers, of embezzling the proceeds of the Octroi of Antwerp; and, having Bonaparte's confidence, contrived to render

Again, a bar, though it offers its services indifferently to the government and to its subjects, is really useful only to the latter. Such a government does not require the aid of an advocate to persuade judges to be sub-him the determined enemy of the accused. servient to a power which appoints, promotes, and removes them; but to those whom the government is attacking, his assistance is inestimable. He may sometimes be able to protect their lives or their for tunes, and he can almost always protect their reputation. All other appeals to public opinion may be tolerated up to a certain point, and silently prevented from passing the prescribed limit. A censorship may effectually chain the press without attracting attention to any given case of interference; but if an advocate is once allowed to speak, he cannot be stopped without an apparent denial of justice.

The indictment was an enormous instrument: the attorney-general of the imperial court of Brussels, which then included Antwerp in its jurisdiction, was said to have been killed by the labor of preparing it. The trial took place at Brussels, before a jury consisting of the principal persons of the country. After it had gone on for some days, it became clear that it would terminate by an acquittal. The law-officers who conducted the prosecution, therefore, interrupted its progress, by indicting for perjury two of the mayor's witnesses. As this matter was to be disposed of before the Mayor's trial could be concluded, the latter was Bonaparte, who had all the jealousies and thrown over to a subsequent session and a the instincts of ambition in their utmost in-new jury. The indictment against the wittensity, must, under any circumstances, have hated the French bar; but he had also a per'sonal quarrel with its members:-out of more than two hundred advocates, only three voted in favor of the Empire, and this was a subject on which he never forgave opposition. He restored indeed the order, but he deprived it of self-government, and "On my second arrival at Brussels I had to unveil laid it at the feet of the imperial authorities.before the jury the complicated iniquity of the prosThe express permission of the chief judge ecution. I referred to the oppressive indictment of was necessary before an advocate could the witnesses for the defence, and showed it to have plead in any court but his own; the attorney-been a trick to get rid of the first jury. I dwelt on general selected the members of the conseils the absence of any documentary evidence against de discipline, which regulated the internal my clients, and refuted all the verbal testimony affairs of the order; and he also selected from them the bâtonnier, or president of the bar; and, finally, the chief judge had an arbitrary power of suspension, and even of expulsion.

M. Berryer himself incurred Bonaparte's especial displeasure. He had been counsel against Bourrienne before Bourrienne had lost his master's favor; he had defended Mo

✦ Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat, p. 229,

231.

nesses utterly failed, and the Mayor's trial was resumed. A new jury was selected solely from Frenchmen, most of them public functionaries, and all devoted to the Empe. ror, whose determination to destroy the Mayor was now notorious. We will pursue the narrative in M. Berryer's words:

days of hearing, ended by a general acquittal. The which had been procured. The trial, after several whole population of Brussels surrounded the mayor and drew his carriage in triumph to his hotel. Even when I left the town late in the evening, on my return to Paris, the streets were still resounding with music and acclamations. The news reached Bonaparte at Dresden, and put him in a state of fury. He instantly sent a violent despatch to Paris, ordering the mayor and his co-defendants to be re-tried, and even the jury to be tried for having acquitted them. The minister of justice transmitted the order to M. Argenson, the prefect of Antwerp. M. Argenson replied that it was impossible to try men