and as far as possible he deems it necessary that these should be allowed to give accounts of the scenes and events of which they formed a part. He has, in the spirit of the skilful dramatist, thought it proper to retire himself behind the scenes, and let the characters on the stage divulge and develop the plot. A better idea of M. de Bienville, for example, can be formed from a single sentiment he may utter, than from any elaborate description. We would far rather, however, admit, the justness of Mr. Gayarré's last apology, which he had almost forgotten, but which is very refined and chivalrous. The "fair Louisianians" will appreciate the 66 passage: Je dírai donc que, sachant que la plupart de nos Louisianaises ne lisent quère l'anglais, j'ai pensé qu'en écrivant dans la langue qui leur est familière, elles seraient tentées, par un sentiment de curiosité, de jeter les yeux sur les pages de cette histoire, et peut-être de les lire jusqu'au bout. Comment pouvais-je résister à cette considération? C'était pour mois plus qu'une raison. C'était une seduction.

We shall postpone an analysis of Mr. Gayarré's work until the completion of the other volumes, so as to take up the subject as a whole; our present object was but to introduce it in company with other authorities, and then to proceed, without delay, to the development of the subject which now occupies our mind.*

II. Discoveries.-The legends of De Soto, Marquette, and La Salle, shall not arrest our attention. These wild and daring passages belong rather to the romancer than the historian. Louis XIV. seized upon the proposal of Iberville, and addressed himself in earnest to a new and vast country which dazzled his ambition. Iberville, and Bienville his brother, founded a colony of Frenchmen on the shores of Louisiana in 1699. Hard was their struggle against nature,

*The above-named, Stoddard, Martin, Marbois, and Gayarré are all the historical works proper that we have upon Louisiana. The reader, if disposed to extend his investigations in every department, will find material enough within reach. We would name the memoirs of Charlevoix, Hennepin, and Tonti, upon which Mr. Sparks comments at large in his life of La Salle; also Vergennes' memoir, Dupratz' History of Louisiana, printed in 1758, and the files of the colonial gazettes. Of later days we have "Views of Louisiana," by Wm. Brackenridge, 1814, a work singularly accurate in its delineations of country and in its geographical particulars. Mr. Wm. Darby, formerly of this city, a distinguished geographer and practical man, has also published a work upon the physical character of the State, etc. Flints" "Valley of the Mississippi," will also be referred to with advantage. There is also a small volume upon Louisiana prepared by some one at the North, and now in the hands of the teachers and scholars of the Second Municipality. Mr. B. M. Norman, of New Orleans, published, not long since, a prospectus for a history of Louisiana, which, he informs us, it is his intention to prepare at leisure, and with great care and labor. The early documents of Louisiana, such as Charlevoix and others, are in Mr. French's library, and might be published as Louisiana Historical Collections. Seriously, a good English history of the State, brought down to the present time, is a great desideratum, but it is a work that few can execute, though many may attempt it. We dismiss our note by referring, as other sources of valuable information upon the subject before us, to the Louisiana Law Journal; to the 2d volume United States Land Office Papers; to Hall's Law Journal, where the discussions of Jefferson and Livingston on the Batture case are to be found; to the frequent decisions upon that case in the Reports of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, and particularly the great case of 1840, and the able arguments of Hunt, Mazureau, Soule, Preston, Peirce, Hoffman, Eustis, and Roselius, occupying, with the decisions of the court, upward of a thousand pages of matter; to Bullard & Curry's Digest of the Laws of Louisiana, and the debates on the adoption of the Constitution of 1846. We also refer to the Digest of the French Colonial Papers, which Mr. Forstall is now publishing in our journal. With such elements to work upon, we ought to have a Louisiana Historical Society, which, in fact, it is time for us to set about forming.

CROZAT'S CHARTER-JOHN LAW.

393

the buzz and sting of the musquitoes, the hissing of snakes, the croaking of frogs, and the cries of the alligators, incessantly asserted that the lease the God of nature had given these reptiles had still a few centuries to run." This is the earliest era in the history of Louisiana.

III. Crozat's Charter.-In 1712, the king of France granted to M. Crozat a charter which covered the whole province of Louisiana. The aims of both parties were commercial, and included the whole of the Mississippi and its tributary bays, lakes, rivers, and bordering territories. M. Crozat for twenty years was endowed with exclusive privileges of trade in these countries, to work mines for gold and precious stones, with a large share of the results. The laws, edicts and ordinances of the realm, and the customs of Paris, are extended over Louisiana.

A word about this custom of Paris. France, in ancient times, was governed by the usages of the different provinces. These were unwritten, and of consequence conflicting. Charles V., in 1453, ordered them to be reduced to writing by commissioners. So far as the customs of Paris were concerned, the edict was not executed till 1510. These customs were embraced under sixteen heads and three hundred and sixty-two articles. The heads, are fiefs, quit-rents, movables and immovables, complaints, actions, prescription, redemption, arrests and executions, servitudes, community of goods, dower, guardianship, donation, testaments, successions, seizures and sales.* The customs of Paris extended to all the French colonies.†

The privileges allowed to Crozat were ample, but so vain are the calculations of men when employed upon novel enterprises, they satisfied not one of his greedy desires after wealth in the western world. The grant was surrendered, after five years, into the hands of the king, with the bitter complaint, that from the imbecility of the colony, the strength of the Indians, the presence of the British, and the sterility of the soil, it had proved of no kind of value whatever to him, but rather a ruinous expense.

IV. The Western Company and Law.-There settled in Paris about this period a man from Scotland, by the name of John Law. He was a singular character, a restless projector, a daring financier, high-minded and full of enterprise. This extraordinary man soon succeeded in gaining a ruling influence over the Duke of Orleans, then Regent of France, obtained a charter for a bank of $1,200,000, substituted paper for specie, and set the whole French nation mad with magnificent schemes of creating wealth as it were, by the wand of a magician. The Chancelor d'Aguesseau opposed this daring scheme with infinite peril to himself. To the royal bank of Law was attached a great commercial company, in which were to be concentered all the rights, privileges and possessions of all the trading companies then chartered in France. To this company was granted the great territory of Louisiana as it was surrendered up by Crozat. All Paris was in commotion, every man, woman and child became a financier; the boot-black and the collier of to-day were the grandees of to-morrow, and their splendid equipages dazzled the Parisian populace. The Royal Bank Stock went up to six hundred times its Louisiana Law Journal, pp. 15, 46. + Marbois' History of Louisiana.

par value, and dividends were rendered of two hundred per cent, The exhaustless mines near the Mississippi would reimburse any investment, it was said. In three years John Law was a bankrupt and a beggar. The government of France received a terrible shock; the deluded votaries of stock-jobbing were undone; the magnificent Western Company-the Mississippi scheme-became a by-word; the banking bubble, when inflated to the skies, had burst!

The charter of the Western Company was granted for twenty-five years. It was to have exclusive privileges of trade, and of the purchase of beaver skins for exportation. The company might make all Indian wars and treaties, work all mines, grant lands, construct fortifications, nominate governors and appoint inferior judges. Its vessels and crews to be of the French nation. The descendants of European parents born in Louisiana to be counted natural-born subjects of France. The inhabitants of Louisiana are exempted from taxes, and the company's goods from duty. The company engage to bring into Louisiana six thousand white persons and three thousand negroes. The issue of its stock is not limited in amount, but the shares are to be 500 francs each. The bolder of fifty shares will be entitled to a vote in the affairs of the company, which are to be managed for the first two years by directors appointed by the king, and then by those appointed by the stockholders every third year.

There are different accounts of the condition of Louisiana during the fourteen years it remained under the Western Company, who enjoyed the privileges granted to Law. Dupratz and Charlevoix, quoted by Marbois, represent everything in the most deplorable condition; while Judge Martin, on a comparison of all the authorities, has concluded that these were the best years which Louisiana knew under the dominion of France, the white population having increased from 700 to 5,000, and the black from 20 to 2,000: "a vast number of handsome cottages lined both sides of the river at the German coast, the culture of rice, indigo and tobacco, and a regular administration of justice were provided for."

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The Western Company, in despair of finding the gold they had anticipated in Louisiana, from mineral researches, turned their attention to agriculture. To promote their aims, large grants of the soil were made to powerful and wealthy individuals. To Law they granted a plot of twelve miles square. These grantees were to introduce settlers, but they succeeded to an extent far less than was anticipated, while sanguinary Indian wars desolated the colony. The company, in utter hopelessness, threw up their charter in April, 1732, which the king accepted, and declared the commerce of Louisiana thenceforward free.

V. French Colonial Government.-The commissioner Salmon took possession for the king. He found property to which the company had sold out their rights to the monarch amounting to two hundred and sixty-three livres: among this property was found 8,000 barrels of rice. The new government established consisted of a superior council, of the Governor-General of New France, the Governor and Commissary of Louisiana, the king's Lieutenant and the town Mayor of New Orleans, six Councilors, an Attorney-General, and a Clerk.*

* Martin's History of Louisiana.

CESSION OF LOUISIANA TO SPAIN.

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A war broke out between Great Britain and France in 1760, whose influences were felt throughout all America. We know the particulars of this conflict, in which our own Washington had so conspicuous a part. Canada fell into the hands of the English at last, and rather than submit to the consequences, large numbers of its inhabitants sought a home in southern climes, fixing themselves on the Acadian coast of Louisiana, or taking their course westward of the river, to form the settlements of Attakapas, Opelousas and Avoyelles.

VI. The Cession of Louisiana to Spain.-France looked to Spain in her emergencies, and the Duke of Choiseul, the minister, entered into a family compact with the Spanish king, on the 15th August, 1760, and on the 3d November, 1762, a secret treaty between the two governments ceded the territory of Louisiana west of the Mississippi, with New Orleans, to Spain.

The bad system of government under which Louisiana long suffered, was attended with the consequences which were to be expected from it, and the sovereignty of the finest country in the world, says Marbois, a country which might have become another France, was of no use to the parent state, but was even a charge to her. After the experience of several years, the government wearied with a possession which its faults and ignorance had made burthensome, felt disposed to abandon it.

In 1763, Great Britain, France and Spain, entered upon the treaty of Paris, and terminated their difficulties. France abandoned to Britain, Nova Scotia, Acadia, Canada, Cape Breton, and all the islands and coasts of the gulf and river of St. Lawrence, the whole of Louisiana east of the Mississippi, except the town of New Orleans. The navigation of the Mississippi is declared free to the subjects of either nation. Thus did France, by her cession to Britain and Spain, divest herself of every foot of territory she held in North America.

The private treaty of cession to Spain was long held secret, and it was not until 1764 that D'Abadie was ordered by Louis XV. to announce the fact to the colony. D'Abadie was heart-broken at the intelligence, and died before he could communicate it. The duty devolved upon his successor, Aubry. A day of lamentation and sorrow had dawned upon the unfortunate Louisianians, and they heard their fate with settled gloom. A general meeting of the leading inhabitants of all the parishes assembled hastily in New Orleans, and entreaties were sent up to the throne that this painful treaty might not be made to go into effect. Louis XV. declared the cession irrevocable.

Ulloa.-Don Antonio de Ulloa arrived in Louisiana in 1766, appointed, as he professed, by Charles of Spain, to take possession of the province. His powers being demanded by the colonists, were not shown. This man was a scholar, a mathematician, and an astronomer, but was held in detestation by the Louisianians, and the more particularly that Aubry, the governor, exhibited towards him in appearance, the most humiliating obsequiousness. The Council, over the head of the governor, notified the Spaniard to produce his powers, or to depart the province. He determined on the

latter alternative, and in a few days made sail for Spain, amid the universal acclamations and rejoicings of the people.*

O'Reilly.-Scarcely had the colony breathing time before it was announced that a Spanish frigate and transports were upon the coast and approaching the town. Notwithstanding some threats of resistance on the part of the inhabitants, Don Alex. O'Reilly, commander of the Spanish forces, landed, and sent up a message to the governor, informing him that he was prepared to take possession of Louisiana; that he would not publish more of his orders until put in possession; and that any show of opposition would be signally punished. The inhabitants returned a deputation to the Spaniard, declaring their intention to abandon the colony, and requesting two years delay to effect the arrangement; O'Reilly consented with apparent cheerfulness, and with the warmest professions of regard. He soon after landed at the city and took formal possession in the name of the king.†

But this display of clemency and virtue was a dastard scheme to ingratiate himself into the confidence of the inhabitants, and then, by a single stroke, to bring down upon their heads the worst excesses of tyranny. On a shallow pretence some of the first citizens were arrested and thrown into prison. They were declared guilty of treason against a government which they had never acknowledged, and which could not in fact be considered as established. The prosecution was based upon the statute of Alphonso VII. (Partidas, vii, 1.), making it death to incite insurrection against the king. Villere was murdered in cold blood, Marquis and De Noyant, French officers, La Frenière the attorney-general, Milhet and Caresse, merchants, after the form of a trial were sentenced and executed. Posterity, says the historian Martin, the judge of men in power, will doom this act to public execration and posterity, we add, has already regarded it as one of the blackest which it is the shame of history to record.

What was the precise character of the powers conferred upon O'Reilly has never yet been satisfactorily determined; and it is almost equally uncertain how far he construed these powers, and how far, in one particular, he exerted them-we mean in relation to the change of government. This question has within the last forty years been extensively discussed in Louisiana, both in the forum and out of it, and opposite opinions held.

The question was first opened in 1809, during that famous discussion of those remarkable men, Edward Livingston, of Louisiana, and

* In a statement by Governor Ulloa, of the events in Louisiana, a paper of 300 pages, now among the colonial records of Paris, Mr. Forstall conceives it clearly demonstrated that Aubry was at the bottom of the plot, the principal informer; and that the design of the colonists in the whole transaction was not for the purpose of remaining under a kingly dominion, but that the end was freedom. But this was Ulloa's statement, which, after all, ought not to be too much relied upon in the circumstances of the case.-Com. Review, vol. i. No. 4, p. 257.

The trade of Louisiana at this time, 1769, was not inconsiderable. The following were a few of the items:

The population of New Orleans was 3,190, and of Louisiana 13,538.