state; he consecrates the city with its walls and gates; he consecrates the territory around it. Every thing about him is sanctified to bis use, and his very property is not like other peoples'; he holds it ex jure Quiritium. Thus descended, thus constituted, thus disciplined, with such a character, and under such laws, he has from God the grandest mission that was ever confided to merely human hands. He is trained up for centuries in civil broils and border warfare, that he may learn to conquer the world, and in disputes about rights that he may know how to give it laws. The day is coming, when those laws, converted as it were to Christianity, shall breathe a higher, a purer, and a holier spirit; and when the cross, which is now the instrument of his most terrific despotism, shall be the earnest of a new order of triumphs in Constantine, and the symbol of the most perfect civilization that has ever blessed mankind — a civilization founded upon peace on earth, good will to men, and equality before the law.

We have thus accomplished one of the objects we proposed to ourselves when we began this paper. We have brought into immediate contrast the Roman Law as it originally stood, with the same law as it has been transmitted to us in the collection of Justinian-the jus civile of the XII Tables, and the period immediately after that, with the jus gentium of Paullus and Ulpian, and still more of Domat and D'Aguesseau-in a word, the code fashioned by the Tuscan priest, with the same code remodelled by Christian potentates. It has been our purpose, as more suitable to such a work as this, to speak rather of the spirit of the law, than of the law itself.

But, in consequence of the inordinate length of this article, we are constrained to omit—perhaps to reserve for a future occasion-all that we proposed saying of the progress of Roman jurisprudence towards that consummation, from the time it first became matter of public instruction and scientific cultivation, up to the reign and the labors of Justinian. That investigation would have comprehended some of the most interesting and difficult questions in the history of the law as the Lex Ebutia, and the origin of the Edict of the Prætor, in its most extensive application- both of them unfortunately still problematical the responsa prudentum- and the origin and difference of the Sects, with the characters of Labeo and Capito― of Nerva and Sabinus the legislation of the republic against bribery, extortion, and peculation, and the Cornelian laws the legislation of Augustus in the Leges Juliae and Papia-Poppæa

Salvius Julianus and the Perpetual Edict some notice of the great lights of the third period, or the Augustan age of the 'law, the five jurisconsults of the Theodosian constitution, who have been well characterized as "the last thinkers of antiquity ;" and finally of the merits of Justinian and his commissioners, who certainly improved the spirit, and as certainly hurt its forms by a most slovenly compilation.

We will only add, with regard to Mr. Schrader's new edition of the Corpus Juris Civilis, that we have found great convenience in the use of his Institutes, and heartily bid him God-speed for the yet unpublished part of the work.

Note. We will take the liberty to point out in a note, some blemishes which struck us in reading the work of Mr. Justice Story, and which, although it is desirable they should be removed in a future edition of it, did not appear to us important enough to be adverted to in the text.

Perhaps we ought generally to object to his habit of citing at length, not only the opinions, but the reasonings of so many different authors upon the same points, especially those of inferior note. It gives to this valuable treatise too much the air of mere compilation, and it is but seldom that either strength or authority is added to the judgments and arguments of such men as Du Moulin or Pothier, by those of other writers. It is true, the subject is, in itself, a difficult one, new to English law, and variously viewed in different countries. It was natural, therefore, to collect and compare as many opinions as possible; but the author has been constrained, on grounds almost always satisfactory to us, to dissent from a great portion of those he has cited, and might, we think, often have spared himself, as well as his reader, unnecessary trouble, by barely referring to them, or summing them ur very concisely.

We will add some critical remarks of a more minute character At pp. 60, 61, we find the following sentence-the author is referring to what Huberus says, (l. 1. t. 3. § 12.) of personal qualities or capacity following a man wherever he goes, and translates as follows:

"Hence he who in Frieseland has obtained the immunity of his age (veniam ætatis) contracting in Holland, is not deemed restored to full capacity, (non restituitur in integrum.")

Now, with profound deference to the learned author, we apprehend Huberus is here made to say the very reverse of what he means. He teaches that, "he who, in Frieseland, has ob

tained an exemption from the disabilities of his age, (veniam ætatis means that,) he is not absolved from his contracts made in Holland (restitutio in integrum, is the setting aside of a contract, and nothing else.) In other words, being enabled, by way of privilege, to bind himself in Frieseland, his domicil, his capacity, goes with him into Holland. The learned author translating veniam as he does, falls (very logically, we admit) into a misinterpretation of the other part of the sentence, in order to make it square with the doctrine of Huberus.

At p. 63, laying down his general principles, he says:

"In the first place, the acts of a person done in the place of his domicil, are to be judged by the laws of that place, and will not be permitted to have any other legal effect elsewhere than they have in that place."

Now the proposition thus generally stated, is liable to objection, and accordingly, the passage cited from Voet to maintain it, contains the necessary qualification. It is as follows:

Statutum* personale ubique locorum personam comitatur, in ordine ad bona intra territorium statuentis sita, ubi persona affecta domicilium habet. Voet de Statut. chap. 2. § 6.

"A personal statute follows the person everywhere, so far as concerns property situated within the territory subject to the statute, wherein the person affected has his domicil."

We suggest that droits publics is hardly well interpreted, "public rights," at p. 69; rather "provisions or rules of public law."

We do not understand the passage quoted from 20 Martin, 25, at p. 250, and suspect more than one typographical error in it. Sed ubi agitur de consuetudine solvendi, vel de iis, quæ veniunt implendi diu ex post contractum, &c,

At pp. 65, 89, majority, under the existing French law, is said to be twenty-five years. That is, indeed, the majority for contracting marriage without consent; but for all other purposes, twenty-one is, by the code, the age of full capacity.

There are some other passages in which, through, a certain carelessness of phraseology, the ancient law of France seems to be spoken of as still of force. p. 131.

If we may be pardoned for so minute an objection, we do not like the use of "contestation," in the old sense of "controversy," which so frequently occurs in this volume, as well as in other works of the author. The true sense of contestatio, in the phrase * Jus Civile or municipal law of each state.

litis contestatio, and others, is illustrated by a passage quoted by Mr. Justice Story himself, at p. 43. Domicilium re et facto transfertur, non nuda contestatione; by mere naked declaration and attestation. See Calvin Lexic. Juridicum in Voce.

But these are mere trifles, which we venture to suggest to the consideration of the author in the most friendly spirit, and only because his work deserves to be made free from all blemishes, however inconsiderable.

ART. II. The Theory of Money and Banks investigated. By GEORGE TUCKER, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Virginia, and Member of the American Philosophical Society. Boston: 1839. C. C. Little and J. Brown. pp. 412.

WE deem this subject, of Banks and their operations, the most important one now before the country-the hinging one, in fact, of our national prosperity. Nor is it one that bears merely on wealth. It is as essentially interwoven with the morals of the nation, and with its civilization with the development of all its resources, intellectual as well as physical—in short, with every scheme of good, whether educational, benevolent, or religious, throughout our land. Viewing it in this light, we hail with pleasure every scientific laborer who undertakes to develop the nature of banking, to analyze the laws by which it is to be governed. Nor do we intend to be ourselves wanting in our endeavors to indoctrinate the public with sound opinions on this point.* What makes this more imperatively the duty of every good citizen at the present time, is this, that the question has become, of late, so involved with political prejudice, as to stand little chance of being dispassionately judged, at least by the mass of the community. Now, the only correction to this error, is to take men back to first principles-to place them on the rock of science, whence they may look out on such agitated questions in peace. It is in this spirit we propose to treat it, and we are well convinced there would be but one opinion on the subject of banks, if ignorance and prejudice were both excluded. The one source of

* We hold it one of the clearest of our moral obligations to do so-it is part of the guardianship we have undertaken.

error we may hope, in time, to get rid of, by the progress of sound teaching. The other, we should despair of extirpating, were it not that the interests of men's pockets speak louder after a while than the interests of their party. To that point of openness to conviction, the country is, we think, now fast coming. The delirious stage of the fever against banks is past, and the exhausted patient is approaching that state of repose in which tonics may safely be administered, and the cure completed by natural healthful exercise. To the advancemeut of this cure, our influence, whatever it be, shall not, as already said, be wanting. And with this view, we shall preface our notice of the work before us, with our own argument. The question of banks/ fully analyzed, resolves itself into the question of creditand the question of credit, carried out to its conclusions, becomes the question of the civilization of man. The savage, wherever found, is a hard money dealer; he must have the actual equivalent paid him in hand-material values for material values. No trust in his fellow man, because no confidence. Out of this savage condition, the very first step is one of confidence in human nature. Such is the origin of the social compact-power entrusted into the hands of some, for the good of others. And so in every succeeding step of the advancement of a nation, whether in their political, social, or financial condition, each and every one is an act of confidence, or in other words, a form of credit. And all illustrative of the great truth, that faith, in some form or other, lies at the bottom of the perfectibility, not only of the individual, but of the species. Faith, we mean, in the form of truth and virtue-faith, in the identity of honesty and good policy. The savage does not recognise this identity- the civilized man does and therefore is willing, in his dealings with his fellow man, for mutual advantage to postpone actual payment, and take a promise on which he relies, in the meantime. From this pregnant source of mutual confidence as dictated by mutual interest, arises in all civilized communities what we term CREDIT a term, be it remembered, that should never be spoken of but with respect, since it holds the same place with regard to man's social well-being here, which FAITH does, touching his well-being hereafter. It is the heart and the heart's blood of the social system, just as the latter is of the religious; and it would be as great an absurdity to propose to carry on the one without credit, as to make the latter operative on man's conduct without faith. That such reasoning may strike many of our readers as too far fetched and metaphysical to be