tucky, one to three free inhabitants. The number of horses in the United States is more than three times as large as that in Great Britain. agriculture. The only schedule in which the live stock of the country could be enumerated, were those used for obtaining the agricultural products of farms. From this fact the schedules for population and manufactures being alone used in cities, their live stock was not included in them. ASSES AND MULES.-As mentioned in the preceding paragraph, we find in the tables of 1840 no basis of comparison in regard to the raising of asses and mules. By the last return it is shown that the number of these animals in the Union is 559,070, of which all but 30,000 are found in the Southern States. For various employments, the mule is far better adapted to that region than the horse. Extreme and long-continued heat does not enfeeble him, and the expense of his subsistence and general care is much less, in comparison with the service he is able to perform. In some Northern States a considerable number formerly were reared for export, and a brisk trade was kept up with the West Indies in this kind of stock. What are now exported from the points which formerly monopolized this branch of traffic are brought from the South. Tennessee is the leading state in the production of mules, the number in that state, in 1850, having been 75,303; Kentucky was next, having 65,609. In New-Mexico tors, except New-York. the number of mules was 8,654, greater by nearly four-fifths than the horses returned for that territory. Much attention has been given to the improvement of mules in some of our Southern States, and those sent from Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri, to be employed in army transportation in Mexico, were often not inferior in height to the horses of that country, and were at all times superior to them in strength, endurance and usefulness. BUTTER AND CHEESE.-The census of 1840 furnishes us no statistics from which we can accurately determine the quantity of butter and cheese then produced. The value of both is given under the heading of value of the products of the dairy, at the sum of $33,787,000. It is presumed that the marshals made their returns in accordance with the prices governing in their respective districts, which would differ so widely as to render any assumed average as mere conjecture. New-York is far in advance of any other state in the productiveness of its dairies. They yield one-fourth of all the butter, and nearly one-half the cheese produced in the Union. Pennsylvania, which makes 40,000,000 lbs. of butter, is less prolific in cheese than many smaller states. In this latter article, Ohio is before all other competi The following table shows the amount of dairy products exported from the United States for several years past.— 1840-41. 1820-21. Value. Butter, lbs. Cheese, Ibs. .2,055,133.. 2.456,607.... 385,185 7,941,187. 878,865 .3,408,247. 3,440,144.. 508,968 1843-44. .3,251,952. 7,343,145 758,829 .3,587,489. 1845-46. 1877-48. 1849-50.. 1850-51.. .3,436,660.. 8,675,390....1,063,087 4,214,433. 15,673.600....1,741,770 .2,751.086....12,913,305....1,361,668 .3.406,242....17,433,682....1,654,157 .3,876,175. 13,020,817....1,215,436 .3,994,542....10,361,189....1,124,652 SHEEP. There was, between 1840 and 1850, an increase of 2,309,108 in the number of sheep in the United States. It will be useful to observe with some closeness the progress of sheep breeding in different parts of the country. We perceive that in New England there has occurred a remarkable decrease in their number. There were in that division of the Union, in 1840, 3,811,307; in 1850, the number had declined to 2,164,452, being a decrease of 1,646,855, or 45 per cent. MILCH COWS.-Under the general term of neat cattle were embraced, in the Sixth Census, the three descriptions of animals designated in that of 1850 as milch cows, working oxen and other cattle. The aggregate of the three classes in 1840 was 14,971,586; in 1850, 18,355,287. The increase, therefore, between the two periods, was 3,383,701, or about twenty per cent. They appear to be distributed quite equally over the Union. The amount of butter gives an everage of something over 49 pounds to each milch cow. The average production of cheese to each cow is 1633 pounds. As with horses, the same allowance In the five Atlantic Middle Statesmust be made on account of the omis- New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, sion of cows, except in connection with Delaware and Maryland-there was a Value of Live Stock-Imports of Wool. decrease from 7,402,851 to 5,641,391, equal to 1,761,460, or about 22% per cent. In Pennsylvania there was a gain, however, during this period, of 155,000 sheep. We see that while there has been a positive diminution of 3,408,000 in the states above named, there has been an augmentation of 5,717,608 in those south of Maryland and west of New-York. Ohio has gained most largely, having been returned as pasturing, in 1840, 2,028,401; and in 1850, 3,942,929: an increase of 1,914,528, or nearly 100 per cent. In each of the states south and west of the lines indicated, there has been a very large proportional increase in this kind of stock, and there is reasonable ground for the opinion that the hilly lands of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and the prairies of Illinois, Iowa, and Texas, will prove highly favorable for the rearing of sheep for their wool and pelts. New-Mexico has the extraordinary number of 377,271 sheep, more than six to each inhabitant, proving the soil and climate of that territory to be well adapted to this description of stock, and giving promise of a large addition from that quarter to the supply of wool. The importance of fostering this great branch of national production, is shown by the fact, as assumed by an intelligent writer on the subject, that our population annually consumes an amount of wool equal to 7 pounds for each person. If this estimate be even an approximation to correctness, we are yet very far short of producing a quantity adequate to the wants of the country; and it is equally clear that we possess an amount of unemployed land adapted to grazing sufficient to support flocks numerous enough to clothe the people of the world. VALUE OF LIVE STOCK.-The very large amount representing the value of live stock in the United States cannot be considered extravagant in view of the immense number of animals returned. It is an item of agricultural capital which affords a good indication of the wealth and prosperity of the country. 227 It is a very gratifying fact that, though the number of sheep has increased, in ten years, but twelve per cent, the aggregate weight of their fleeces has augmented forty-six per cent. In 1840, there were 19,311,374 sheep, yielding 35,802,114 pounds of wool, equal to 1 84-100 pounds per head. In 1850, the average weight of each fleece was 2 43-100 pounds, from which it would appear that such an improvement had taken place in the various breeds of the American sheep as to increase their average product about thirty-two per cent throughout the United States. And a critical analysis of the returns of sheep and wool proves not only that our breeds are capable of such improvement, but that it has actually taken place. In Vermont the greatest attention has been given to sheep breeding; time, money and intelligence have been freely applied to the great object of obtaining a breed combining weight and fineness of fleece. These efforts have succeeded so well, that although the number of sheep in that state had declined nearly half in the period from the sixth to the seventh census, the yield of wool remained nearly the same. The average weight of the fleece in this state, in 1840, was 2 1-5 pounds, and in 1850 it had increased to 3 71-100 pounds; the gain being equal to almost 70 per cent. In Massachusetts also, where strenuous exertions have been made, though not on so large a scale as in Vermont, to improve their sheep, a correspondingly beneficial result has been obtained, and the average weight of the fleece has been increased from 2 to 3 1-10 pounds. The State of New-York produced 226,000 pounds more wool, in 1850, from 3,453,000 sheep, than from 5,118,000 in 1840, showing that the weight of the fleece had been raised from less than two to nearly three pounds. Our imports of wool during the past ten years have varied as follows: Y cars. 1841. 1842. 1843 (nine months). 1845.. WOOL.-Analogous to the uses for 1844. which it serves to cotton, wool is a pro- 1846. duct of only less importance to the pros- 1847. perity of the country than that leading staple of our agriculture and commerce. 1850.. 1848. Quantity in Pounds. Value. $1,091,953 .11,420,958. 797,482 3.517,100.. 245.000 .14,008,000. 851,460 By this statement it is shown that the from regions where sheep are reared quantity of wool brought into the coun- without care or labor than to produce try, of late years, amounts to almost it at home; but there is no country in one-third part of that produced in it, the world in which sheep may, by juwhile at former periods, as from 1841 dicious treatment, be made a source of and 1845, the quantity was nearly one- greater wealth and comfort to its inhabihalf. The largest proportion of this im- tants than the United States. ported wool was chiefly from Buenos Ayres and the neighboring states on the Rio de la Plata, and is of a coarse and cheap variety, costing from six to eight cents per pound. It will be always cheaper to bring this kind of wool 000. The importations of wool in 1849 and 1850 exhibit a remarkable increase over the preceding or any former year, amounting in quantity to 32,548,693 pounds, and to the value of $3,800, ART. V.-DECISIONS OF THE SUPREME COURT OF REPORTS OF CASES ARGUED AND DETERMINED IN THE SUPREME COURT OF LOUISIANA. BY HON. F. Z. MARTIN-TWENTY VOLUMES COMPRISED IN TEN, WITHOUT ABBREVIATION, WITH NOTES OF DECISIONS UP TO SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORTS, AND REFERENCES TO THE AMENDMENTS OF THE CONSTITUTION AND CODES. BY THOS. GIBBES MORGAN. NEWORLEANS J. B. STEEL. [It is not our purpose to review this great work, but simply to refer to some of the traits of Judge Martin's legal character, and to the circumstances under which the reports were first prepared, as we find them in the memoir of Judge Bullard, drawn up several years ago. We make a few extracts.] code, but the rules applicable to ours were obviously different in many respects, in consequence of the manifest difference in their creating and repealing clauses. "Seven years before the period of which and was composed of three judges, any I am speaking, (1809,) Louisiana was a one of whom formed a quorum; and as Spanish province; governed by a system the several judges then sat separately in of laws written in a language understood the different districts, each could proby only a small part of the population, nounce a judgment in the last resort. and which had been forced upon the There was no means of establishing unipeople at the point of the bayonet by formity of decision: no publicity had O'Reilly, and which superseded the an- been given to the decisions, and the pubcient French laws by which the province lic was without any guarantee for their had been previously governed. Upon uniformity. The law was wholly unthe change of government the writ of settled and in a state of chaos. The habeas corpus, that great bulwark of Court of Cassation in France had begun, personal liberty, had been introduced, it is true, to fix the interpretation of their together with the system of proceedings in criminal cases, and the trial by jury, according to the principles of the common law. In 1808 was promulgated the digest of the civil laws, then in force in Louisiana, commonly called the old code. That compilation was little more than a mutilated copy of the Code Napoleon. But instead of abrogating all previous laws and creating an entire system, as had been done in France by the Code Napoleon, superseding the discordant customs, ordinances and laws in the different departments, our code was considered as a declaratory law, repealing such only as were repugnant to it, and leaving partially in force the voluminous codes of Spain. The Superior Court had already been organized for some years, It became necessary to study and compare the French and Spanish codes; and although the Roman law never had proprio vigore any binding force here, yet in doubtful cases, or in cases in which the positive law was silent, it might well be consulted as the best revelation of the principles of eternal justice, and, as it were, an anticipated commentary upon the code. "Judge Martin felt at once the difficulty of the task before him, and he determined to commence without delay the publication of reports of cases decided by the Superior Court. He was induced to un Appointment of Judge Martin to the Supreme Court. 229 The opinions prepared by him exhibit evidence of deep learning and extensive research, while at the same time he superintended himself the printing and publication of his reports. dertake that labor for the double purpose his full share of the labor of the court. of giving publicity to the decisions of the court, in the nature of a compte rendu to the people, and thus guarding against misrepresentations or misapprehensions, and to ensure to a certain extent uniformity of decision. The first volume appeared in the spring of 1811, and a second in 1813, bringing down the decisions of the court from 1809 to the establishment of the state government. "At that period a Supreme Court was created, having appellate jurisdiction only. That court was at first composed of Judges Hall, Mathews and Derbigny, and Judge Martin was appointed the first attorney-general of the state, on the 19th of February, 1813. He was an able criminal lawyer, and although it has been said he was not eloquent, yet he is admitted to have discharged the duties of that office with zeal and ability. After the resignation of Hall, he was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court on the first of February, 1815. From that period he continued in office until the 18th of March, 1846—a period of more than thirty-one years. He entered on his eighty-fifth year on the very day he was superseded by the appointments under the new constitution. * * * Not only was Judge Martin aided in moulding into form and symmetry our system of jurisprudence, by the quick perception of what is just, and the instinctive sense of equity of Mathews, and the more ardent industry and extensive research and erudition of Porter, and previously by the unpretending but extensive learning of Derbigny-but the period between the organization of the territorial government and the repeal of the Spanish law, was the classical age of the bar of Louisiana. The court was assisted in its researches and enlightened in its path by the various learning and elegant scholarship, and profound knowledge of different systems of jurisprudence, of Livingston and Brown, Workman and Moreau Lisbet, and Duncan, and numerous others. It does not become me to speak of the survivors of that distinguished corps. They form the living and brilliant link which connects that generation of lawyers with the present. It was then the sources of the Roman, Spanish and French laws were extensively explored, and a taste for comparative jurisprudence was created for the first time in the United States. The principles of the common, the customary and the Roman laws were invoked together and placed in juxtaposition.The illustrious writers on jurisprudence of the 16th century in France, Spain, Italy and Germany, were consulted and compared. The most antiquated of the Gothic codes were studied, not as monuments of literary curiosity, but as fragments of pre-existing systems of human laws, originating either with the Romans or their barbarian conquerors. The whole of these various and often discordant materials were fused into one mass, and the court left to select such "He continued to publish his reports of principles as appeared most consonant the decisions of the Supreme Court until with the general scope and enactments 1830, and, including the two small of the codes. Whoever has read the volumes containing the decisions of the first twenty-five volumes of our reports, Superior Court, already mentioned, he cannot fail to have observed what vast produced twenty volumes, embracing stores of legal erudition were brought to the entire period from 1809 to 1830. light in the discussion of leading cases, During nearly all that time from 1810 he and how much the range has been was one of the judges, and performed narrowed since our jurisprudence ha "The time at which Judge Martin was appointed to the Supreme Court will ever form a memorable epoch in the history of Louisiana. A powerful invading army menaced the capital: the citizens were in arms: martial law had been proclaimed by the general in command; and by an act of the legislature, passed on the 18th of December previous, all judicial proceedings in civil cases were suspended until the first of May: no business was transacted at the January and February terms of the court. In the mean time the enemy had been repulsed and peace restored. Official information, however, had not yet reached here of the treaty of Ghent, and when the court met early in March martial law was still in force. * * become better settled under the more tions, which owe their origin to Alfred full and explicit text of the new the Great. The common law has paid code. It is thus we have witnessed the formation, even its process of crystallization, as it were, of the existing jurisprudence of Louisiana. Its ingredients are derived from various sources, and after being filtered through numerous codes, meet in one harmonious mass. The protection of wives, incautiously engaged for the contracts of their husbands, rests upon a Roman senatus consultum-their ultimate rights in the property acquired during the marriage, upon the customs of the erratic tribes that overrun Gaul, and were carried by the Visigoths across the Pyrenees. The wisdom of Alphonso is found infused into many of the institu back a part of what it had borrowed from the Roman jurisprudence. The commercial law, standing out almost independently of the code, rests in a great measure upon the usages of commercial states, but more especially of the United States and Great Britain, but slightly modified by positive local legislation. The whole body of our law thus forms a system, most admired by those who understand it best, and who can trace back its principles to the sources from which they originally flowed. Of the springheads of our law it may be said, as it has been of the waters of Castalia: "There shallow drafts intoxicate the brain, ART. VI.-WISCONSIN AND THE GROWTH OF THE NORTH WEST. [IN our January Number appeared a paper upon Wisconsin, which we are now enabled to complete, in every particular, from a pamphlet prepared by J. H. Lathrop, Chancellor of the University of that state. The information will be entirely new to our readers in the South-west.] At the opening of the 19th century, the "Territory North-west of the Ohio" was an unbroken wilderness, shared in doubtful supremacy by the aboriginal man and the other denizens of the forest and prairie. It were needless to except from the universality of this description the occasional advent of the Indian trader, the nascent settlements on the Ohio, which were attempting a precarious existence, or the military posts which were pushed into this outer domain of our Republic, in token of our political dominion, and as heralds of an advancing civilization. In 1802, the State of Ohio was carved out of the body of the North-west and admitted into the federal Union. Steadily advancing in population, wealth and respectability, to its present enviable position in our political system, her brief but impressive history commands the admiration of older communities, and awakens the generous emulation of the new. Her population, in 1850, had reached nearly 2,000,000 souls, and she ranks the third in the sisterhood of states. The history of Ohio has been the history in succession of Indiana, Illinois and ichigan. Their advance has been, in like manner, rapid in population and in the other elements of political greatness. The four states above enumerated contained, in 1850, 4,000,000 of freemen. Surprising as these results are, transcending all that the world had previously known of the creation of new political communities by the peaceful migration of men and of the arts, distancing even all previous experience in the settlement of the new world, it might seem enough for Wisconsin, the youngest of the creations of the Ordinance of '87, to say, that she is of the North-west, and shares with her kindred states in the experience of a like early development. But to say this, is not enough. The settlement of Wisconsin has thus far been on a scale unapproached even by that of the four states above enumerated, and constituting with her, the area long familiarly known as the "Territory North-west of the Ohio." That this is not a vain boast, is a fact too broadly and familiarly known, to need the formality of demonstration. For the satisfaction of the curious, however, there is appended hereto a tabular view of the population of the five states of the North-west, for decades of years, constructed by collating the census re |