an example.

It may be said, approximately, that the world has adopted three successive attitudes towards foreigners. First came free murdering; when that subsided, legalized oppression took its place; finally, that also gradually diminished, and the actual system of toleration and equality crept slowly in. We will begin our story with the second phase; the first presents but little interest, excepting as a starting-point for the next one.

for we perceive, at last, that for many as the barbarians of by-gone times had thousand years it assumed the additional none of our advantages -as they had no character of unrelenting cruelty. And Young Men's Christian Associations, no yet, though we have abundant testimony Bible-readers, no tracts or hymn-books of this before our eyes, we are obliged to - they may be pardoned for having manmake an effort before we can fully recog- ifested energetically, in their ignorance, nize that vanity and ferocity, conceit emotions very similar to those which we and killing, the pride of nations and the still exhibit, spitefully, in our knowledge. lust for blood, have all been synonyms. When we are worried by hostilities we They seem so different from each other feel pretty much as they did, only we now, that we not unnaturally hesitate to don't utilize our prisoners as slaves or believe that they ever could have been gladiators, and don't cut off their noses. identical: we require to be reminded It is solely during peace that our new that they have only been pushed apart by cosmopolitan politeness comes into play; the gradual thrust of time and education; and then, so long as concord lasts, we do that their separation is a modern fact become momentarily more gentle than brought about by modern influences; the benighted heathen. We shall find, and that, just as bishops no longer fight, however, as we go on, that even this deas princesses no longer spin, as barbers gree of progress has been attained by no longer bleed - so, and for the same Europe with a slowness and a difficulty sort of reasons, do Europeans no longer, which we should probably be unable to nationally, sell, kill, or torture all the correctly realize, if we had not, fortunatestrangers they can catch. The admira-ly, the Tichborne trial to contemplate as ble system of the division of labour which has grown up around us, attributes the monopoly of the latter functions now to guides, hotel-keepers, and cabmen. But if warriors and Governments, as well as the mass of private citizens, have therefore ceased to molest foreigners; if each Christian country now abandons to one special class of its inhabitants the once universal duty of tormenting them; if no idea of public glory results from the sufferings to which they continue to be exposed the very immensity of this When Europe began to rub its eyes change renders still more evident the and shake itself together, after the fall of patriotic fury with which they were for- Rome, the desire of all chieftains was to merly maltreated. And really we ought maintain their power and their pride, to feel no astonishment at that fury; for and, in addition, to do their very utmost not only were our barbarous predeces- for what we should now call their "finansors invariably at war, but they supple- cial interests." So, as they did not mented the killing which combat habitu- trouble themselves with any hesitations ally entails by such a quantity of ingen- about the prejudices or the rights of ious maiming and various torture, that other people, they were very hard on their the other side was stimulated to do the own retainers, and harder still on stransame for the maintenance of its own gers. They no longer slaughtered forcredit. Even in our smooth epoch we eigners - as a rule, at least because find war a vexing process. The acid they had discovered that, as commerce sentiments which our fathers entertained was growing up, it was more productive towards Frenchmen during the cam- to let them live; but they applied to paigns against Napoleon induced them to couple with the Gallic name a set of adjectives and wishes so intensely vicious, that ordinary swearing gets nowhere near them. The fight of four years ago supplied ample evidence that the same cause still produces similar results; and we may assert, without fear of contradiction, that the battles of 1870 spoiled even the sweetest tempers throughout France and Germany. So,

them such a boundless system of bullying and of plunder that we should be unable to comprehend how anybody could have had the courage to expose himself to its action, if we did not know, by present as well as past experience, that, in the fight for money, men are never stopped by humiliations or by danger. There was, however, so very much of both a thousand years ago, that we cannot help inferring that the profits which

outbalanced them must have been big indeed; and that ordinary trade then was rather like blockade-running during the Secession war, where risks and gains were so proportioned that if one venture out of five got through, it paid for the

loss of the other four.

love of this sort of rapine was so intense on the German shores, it lasted there so pertinaciously, that even so recently as two centuries ago, it was usual, in certain villages, to pray publicly in the churches that shipwrecks might occur liberally on the coast, just in the same way as we ask By degrees extortions took a shape; now for rain or a good harvest. To judge all Europe tacitly agreed that, aliens be- from this example, Lutheranism must ing made on purpose to be robbed, it was have given to the Pomeranians and the as well to rob them becomingly and le- Mechlenburgers an odd idea of the use gally; so usages were confirmed by laws, of prayer. But, peculiar as it now apand a certain uniformity of jurisprudence pears to us other Christians, it is evident was adopted. The main features of this that this appeal to Providence was legislation were, that as foreigners were thought quite natural; for one Thomasimply necessary enemies, they had no sius, a noted jurist, wrote a learned disright to any protection whatever; that sertation, pointing out the extreme desirthey were therefore outlaws, sans feu ni ableness of supplicating Heaven to be lieu; and especially that they were ex- pleased to cast vessels on the beach. cluded from the right of either inherit- And there were districts where this need ing or bequeathing property, the sov- of plunder was so imperious, that, to satereign or the seigneur being the sole heir isfy it, ingenious minds invented land of everything that belonged to them. wrecks, which meant that, if a cart got They were subject to many other un- upset by accident on a road, the goods pleasant regulations, as we shall see; which tumbled from it were seized as but this last one, the famous "right of having come within the law. Even aubaine," was the most striking of them princes were considered to be included all. And the power of despoiling them within its action; for, whenever they lost was not limited to the land it extended their way in a foreign land, they were to the sea as well; for, by the privi- captured with no more compunction than lege of wrecking, the relics and the cargoes of stranded vessels were confiscated and their crews were killed or sold as captives. Europe took the curious view that a shipwrecked sailor was a foe to all humanity; and Europe acted on this view so sturdily, that the sailor had but a feeble chance of ever seeing his home again. It is true that, from the Romans downwards, good-hearted sovereigns promulgated edicts for the protection of mariners who were cast away; the Visigoths in Spain and Theodoric in Italy did what they could to help them: but nobody took the slightest notice of such enactments; and it was not until the eleventh century that some of the Mediterranean States, finding all other measures useless, began to seriously try to put an end to pillage by concluding treaties with each other for its mutual abandonment. Edward the Confessor attempted Almost as soon as France was founded, to abolish it in England, and St. Louis foreigners were divided there into two did the same in France, but with no re- classes: albains or aubains (alibi nati), sult. In Germany, notwithstanding pro- who were born so near that their origin hibitions and proclamations, wrecking could be clearly traced; and épaves, who went on abundantly and robustly. It were considered to be lost in the wide flourished there as a cherished institution until the Hanseatic League grew strong enough to object to it, and to diminish it a little by substituting salvage fees wherever people would accept them. But the

if they were bales of cloth. Duke Godwin and Richard Cœur de Lion were handled in this sort of way. In Russia, wrecking seems to have been carefully perpetuated; for it is not fifty years since Baron Ungern-Sternberg was transported to Siberia for pillaging a lost vessel on the Isle of Dagöe. In England it is only just extinct. Those worthy Cornishmen, of whose pilchard-fishing we read so interesting an account in last month's Maga, kept it up with an assiduity which, though admirable in itself, might evidently have been more usefully employed in other ways. But, to make the story clear, it is necessary to follow it through in one country at a time; we should entangle it if we mixed all lands up together: we will therefore take France and England as examples, beginning with the former.

world, because they were born so far off that it was impossible to imagine where they came from. This latter definition would imply a good deal now; but in the days of Clovis it probably

meant, at the outside, a distance like at first sight, that two masters must of that from Florence to Marseilles, or from necessity have been worse to bear than Düsseldorf to Lille. And an official defi- one; yet in this case the royal authority nition of the two categories of strangers was so much more generous than that of which was given a thousand years later the feudal lord, that, as it was more powin the registers of the Parliament of erful as well, it successively introduced Paris indicates distinctly that, even then, improvements which the seigneur never it was possible to be classed as an épave would have granted of his own free-will. without arriving from Greenland or The lion used his empire on this occasion Abyssinia. We read there that "albains to prevent the other beasts from unfairly sont hommes et femmes qui sont nés en preying on the sheep; and the first convilles dehors le royaume si prochaines sequence of his intervention was the apque l'on peut connoître les noms et na- plication of a new practice, called the tivités de tels hommes et femmes; et "right of detraction," by which the sovquand ils sont venus demeurer au ro- ereign and his vassal partners contented yaume ils sont proprement appelés albains themselves with a part only of the inheriet non épaves. Sont reputés épaves ceux tances left by strangers; the heirs were que sont natifs au loin hors du royaume, magnanimously permitted to take the et sont leurs enfants tenus et réputés al- rest. This was so great and so real a bains; et ne peut un épave tester, ni progress, that our admiration of it would faire testement et par icelui disposer de be extreme if it were not paralyzed by ses biens, qui appartienment au roi, fors curiosity about the etymology of the que de cinq sols. Mais un albain peut strange name of this new tax. Détractester." The vagueness of the phrase tion means "scandal," and nothing else; "natifs au loin," makes it impossible to how then could it possibly be applied to determine, geographically, the line round taxes? The only imaginable explanation France where the source of albains fin- is, that the Government felt in its inner ished, and the production of épaves be- heart that the entire thing was scandalgan; and indeed, even if we could settle ous; and that, having an opportunity of its place exactly, the information would indicating its views when it modiñed not much affect the question; for after the droit d'aubaine, it profited by the all, the difference between the two castes occasion to call the new impost by a consisted solely in the power of will- special title, in harmony with its opinmaking on every other point the mis- ions. This interpretation is not given eries of the two sorts of aliens were by any of the authors on the subject, similar and equivalent. At first they all but we are perfectly justified in inwere serfs, without the slightest reference venting it; for it is in evident concordto the greater or less remoteness of their ance with the ulterior action of the kings place of birth; they had no friends to of France, who, not content with a simhelp them; so nothing could be more ple diminution of the right of aubaine, self-evident than the right of the first began, as soon as they got a chance, to seigneur who laid hands on them to make suppress it altogether, so indicating how slaves of them for his own benefit. It ashamed of it they were. It was under seems, however, that the clergy after a the influence of this sentiment (or of while took some pity on them, and pro- some other one) that they gradually made tected them, so that, by degrees, they up their minds to grant exemptions to reached a relative sort of freedom, and certain foreign merchants. In 1461, for were graciously permitted to work for instance, Louis XI. released Dutch their own account, as ticket-of-leave men traders from the rights of aubaine and of used to do in Australia and Tasmania. wrecking; and in 1552, Henry II. accordBut the modern convict had a vast ad-ed the same privileges to the members of vantage over the ancient traveller; all the Hanseatic League, and after them to that the former earned belonged to him all Scotch traffickers. Here the signs of a alone while the latter had to purchase, coming change of system grew distinct; by enormous annual fees, the right to here we see the State acting on the imlabour for himself. Still, with all this pression that perhaps, after all, it might load to carry, the alien had made a first be wise and profitable to utilize aliens step upwards; he could work, he could for the public good, instead of stamping acquire, he could possess: and when the on them with hatred and contempt, as a king stepped in and claimed a share of satisfaction to public pride. That imthe taxes levied on him by the seigneur, pression had been slowly forcing itself other ameliorations followed. It seems, into circulation throughout Western

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Europe ever since the thirteenth century, | stranded vessels; their crews were concurrently with the development of usually too worn out to be able to defen trade and manufacture; but it did not themselves, so their goods were seized become an adopted element of policy without the troublesome formality of a until about the sixteenth century, and fight, and the seigneur and his men got even then was applied fitfully and capri- unlaboriously rich. Indeed, if we may ciously, with intervals of reaction. The judge from the utter inutility of the old habit of oppression was so strong, vehement attempts which were made to that when, as sometimes happened, the put it down, wrecking must have been State suddenly wanted a sum of money, a singularly brilliant and tempting trade. it seemed quite natural that foreigners Scarcely any business which now exists should be called upon to provide a part can be compared to it for facility of exeof it. In 1587, for example, Henry III. cution, absence of all risk, and immensity forced all foreign residents to purchase of profit: even company promotion, "letters of naturality," which cost very though partaking of its nature, must be dear; and later on, Louis XIV. made regarded as inferior to it not morally, their descendants pay a second time for perhaps, but practically. And yet the the confirmation of these letters. Still, local laws that were made against it were notwithstanding these occasional excep- strong enough to put down anything. tions, the tendency to treat foreigners The Rôles of Oieron, which are said to more fairly had become so distinct in date from the twelfth century, and which France in Henry IV.'s time, that the virtually formed the maritime code of Government of the period tried to tempt France for a hundred years (until the Flemish weavers to come to Paris by "Consulate of the Sea" was published), releasing them beforehand from the right give us an idea of the nature of this legisof aubaine, and even by granting titles lation. They tell us that shipwrecked of nobility to their chiefs. Louis XIV. sailors are often attacked by men more followed the same example when he nat- savage, furious, and cruel than mad dogs, uralized as Frenchmen all foreigners who who slaughter those unhappy mariners in engaged themselves for eight years either order to obtain possession of their money, at the tapestry looms at Beauvais, or in clothes, and other property. The scithe glass factories which he set up in gneur shall, in all such cases, execute 1663. The same advantages were con- justice by punishing them bodily and in ceded in 1667 to the workmen at the other ways; he shall throw them into the Gobelins; and in 1687 it was decreed sea until they are half drowned, and then that all strangers who had served for five he shall pull them out and stone them to years in the king's war-ships should be death." They go on to say, that if a considered to be French subjects. This seigneur encourages wrecking on his puts us a long way from the aubains and shores - which appears to have been a épaves of the beginning of the story universal usage amongst seigneursand though there still remained a good "he shall be arrested, his property seized deal to be done before foreigners would and held, and he himself tied to a beam become equal to French subjects, yet all in the centre of his castle, which shall the more odious aspects of the case had then be set on fire at the four corners, so disappeared. that he and the castle may be burnt altogether; after which the ruins shall be cleared away, and the ground they stood on converted into a pig-market forever." Finally, it is provided that if a pilot, to please his seigneur, runs a ship upon the rocks, he is to be excommunicated, and punished as a robber.

While this was growing up inland, wrecking was pursued as an organized occupation on the coasts; it was another way of proving that strangers were simply outcasts made to be robbed and murdered. Frenchmen, like all other Europeans, live in our day on the sea-shore, because the air suits their health, or because their doctor has ordered them to bathe, or because their children have a boat - which motives are as innocent as the jelly-fishes that lie helpless on the sand where the ebbing tide has left them; but their ancestors, like ours, adopted marine residences because they were the most lucrative they could find. Nothing was so easy or so profitable as to pillage

But all these local measures, vigorous as they were, produced no real effect, and even the king himself occasionally indicated to his subjects that they were to take no notice of them; a decree of Louis XI., for instance, officially includes wrecking amongst the rights which constituted his brother's appanage. Gentle manners were reputed to have made an enormous progress when it was enacted,

removed. Since then the civil position of a foreigner in France has been identical with that of a French citizen. With two exceptions, he has the same rights as a native born; those two exceptions are, that he cannot vote at an election, and cannot serve in the army (excepting in the two foreign legions in Algeria).

in certain districts, that instead of con- the abolition of the droit d'aubaine to fiscating entire cargoes, it might be nations which acted with reciprocity, this allowable in special cases to hand back ungenerous limitation did not last; and, one-third to the proprietors, the other to the honour of the Chamber, a special two-thirds being divided between the law was passed in 1819, by which all seigneur and the shore-men. At last, reservations and inequalities were finally however, in 1681, a royal ordinance, applicable to all France, placed wrecked ships and sailors under the protection of the sovereign, and forbade all men to lay hands on them; but as it was naturally supposed that the ordinance would not always be obeyed, Article 45 declares that those who exhibit false lights at night in order to attract vessels into A very pretty ode to France might be danger shall be put to death, “and their composed, in memory of the admirable bodies fastened to a post on the very example which she thus set us eighty spot where they showed the light." years ago. That example was imitated From that date wrecking began to sluggishly by other nations; but we disappear in France. It is worth while English - we the professionals of freeto suggest that if similar legislation dom, we who are convinced that all other were applied now to prospectuses of new races are mere amateurs in its practice, companies, those singularly "false lights "we who regard liberty as an invention of which have attracted so many of us into danger would probably disappear as well. It would be a gratifying spectacle to see the executed bodies of a few "promoters fastened to posts in Cornhill and Lombard Street" the very spot where they showed the light."

Simultaneously with the putting down of wrecking, the droit d'aubaine was still further limited in its action. It was suppressed at Lyons, Bordeaux, and Toulouse. The ports of Guyenne and of Provence were exempted from it; but it continued to exist elsewhere, and it was still in full legal life when the revolution of '89 commenced. Necker had shown, in 1783, that its sole real effect was to prevent foreigners from residing and spending money in France, and that it was more damaging to the nation which applied it than to the stranger whose fortune it usurped;" and Louis XVI. had acted partially on this advice, when, in 1787, he specially exempted English subjects from the action of the law. But it was reserved for the Constituante to abolish it altogether. That Assembly opened "free France to all the nations of the earth, and invited them to enjoy the sacred and inalienable rights of humanity," and admitted "foreigners, though resident outside the kingdom, to inherit, in France, the property of their parents, even if the latter be French subjects." These noble laws placed aliens on a footing of equality with citizens for the first time in history; and though, when the Code Napoleon was drawn up, a backward step was taken, by restricting

our own, just as the Marquis de la Seiglière regarded perspiration as an invention of the working classes — we were the very last to follow it. It is hardly credible, but it is true, that it was not until four years ago that aliens could inherit property in England; and under the denomination of "escheating" (the first syllable was superfluous), the right of aubaine, of course, formed part of the legislation of the United Kingdom. If we sing a hymn of praise-giving in honour of the wisdom and generosity of the French, we ought to chant a dirge of sorrow over our own hesitating, selfish policy. Here is the story of it.

The various earlier conquerors of our island took no measures against foreigners, probably because, being foreigners, it seemed to them unpractical to legislate against themselves. But when the Normans had got settled as final masters of the soil, it was natural not only that they should desire to keep out other people, but that the ideas prevalent on the Continent should receive application by them. So the right of seizing for the Crown the properties of deceased strangers crept into general use; and in Henry II.'s time the strongest measure which had ever been adopted anywhere against aliens became law in England — they were expelled the country. This very thorough and complete proceeding was brought about by the supposed necessity of getting rid of the crowd of bandits who had been attracted by King Stephen's wars; it is reputed to have been voted at a Parliament held at Wal