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VOL. IX.

No. IQ.

BOSTON.

OCTOBER, 1897.

SIR MELBOURNE TAIT. ACTING CHIEF JUSTICE, SUPERIOR COURT, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC. BY R. IX MC-GIBBON, Q. C. TH K Province of Quebec, or Lower by the educated classes, as good as any Canada, as it is still affectionately dialect of modern France. called by its people, has, in addition to a One peculiarity, and a regrettable one, number of other interesting peculiarities, a of her position as a civil-law province, is system of jurisprudence and judicature which that she is isolated from the rest of the legal world, and the decisions of her tri is comparatively unique. bunals and the careers and names of her Its civil law is practically the Code Napo leon, with certain changes, supposed to have jurists are unknown beyond the banks of been improvements; its commercial law is 'the St. Lawrence. in effect similar to that of England; its con And yet, from the day when in 1763 stitutional law and criminal law and practice Great Britain, after administering, for a brief period, English law in the English language are distinctively English. The use of both the French and English to the French-Canadian habitant, restored languages in the courts is a curious, if at the use of the French law, practically the Continue dc Paris (codified in 1867), to times a cumbersome, feature; and the famil iar jest of Mark Twain, when visiting the present time, Lower Canada has had a Montreal some years ago, may be repeated. long line of able and learned English and He was being entertained at dinner, and in French judges. Stuart, a giant in intellect, his speech (Canadians have a wonderful Sewell, Lafontaine, Duval, Dorion, Johnson, avidity for making and listening to speeches) Cross, Ballgeley, Panet, Rolland, Ramsay, Taschereau, Mondelet, Sanborn, Monk, said he had that day heard a lawsuit con Loranger, Meredith, Tessier and Fournier cerning six cords of wood tried in two lan guages, and, no doubt if the litigation had have, in their time, done judicial work, and been about one hundred cords, there would pronounced judgments of the highest value; not have been enough languages at the but their names probably were never heard Tower of Babel to enable the suit to be of by the American bar. To the proverbi ally ephemeral character of legal fame, tried. However, every visitor to Montreal or therefore, an added obscurity is afforded in Quebec hears about the dual language, and the case of the Quebec judges. The Superior Court of the Province is the probably learns at the same time, from some illiterate cabman, that the French high court of original civil jurisdiction; all spoken in the Province is a rude patois and cases of over one hundred dollars are in not the pure lingo of the boulevards; the stituted before it. It consists of thirty judges, fact being that Canadian French is pure ten of whom sit in Montreal, four in Quebec, Normart of the loth century and, as spoken the remainder being scattered over the Prov 417