so, and they nominated Col. Macarty, by general and repeated acclamations. They then withdrew in peace to their respective homes, and on the 16th the Governor expresses the hope that this unpleasant affair is at an end, that everything is then quiet, and the public mind much composed: that some of his hotheaded countrymen censured the mild course which was pursued, and would have been better pleased if the military had been called upon to disperse the assemblage. But I feel, says he, that the policy adopted was wise and humane, and that a contrary conduct would have increased the discontents, and occasioned the effusion of much innocent blood. The Louisianians, he adds, are an amiable, virtuous people, but sensibly feel any wrongs which may be offered them. Mr. Livingston is alike feared and hated by most of the ancient inhabitants. They dread his talents as a lawyer, and hate his views of speculation, which in the case of the batture was esteemed very generally by the Louisianians no less iniquitous, than ruinous to the welfare of the city. The governor says in another letter of October 5, to the Secretary of state, that in a progress he made a few days afterwards through several parishes of the territory, he perceived but one sentiment with respect to the decision of the court. The long and uninterrupted use of the batture by the city, the sanction given by the Spanish authorities to the public claim, and the heavy public expenditures in maintaining the levee which fronts it, seem to have given rise to a very general opinion that the court has been in error in deciding the batture to be private property. On the 13th of November he again. writes, I should be wanting in duty did I not earnestly recommend the subject of the batture to the attention of the government. There is no doubt but the agents of Spain considered it as a public property, and did appropriate the same to the use of the city, as a common. I should presume that, under the treaty, the United States may justly claim the batture, and if any *means can be devised to arrest the judgment of the territorial court, or to carry this case before another tribunal, the earlier they are resorted to, the bet *19 ter; for Mr. Edward Livingston is now in possession of the property, and making improvements thereon.' And the next day, Nov. 14, a grand jury of the most respectable characters of the place gave in a presentment Livingston's works. to the court in which they say, 'We present as a subject of the most serious complaint the present operations on the batture by Edward Livingston and others connected with him: that this is from 4 to 6 months of every year a part of the bed of the river, and an important part of the port of New-Orleans: that these operations of Edward Livingston are calculated to obstruct the free navigation of the river, to change the course of its waters, to deprive our western brethren, whose only market for the produce of their extensive territory, is to be found in this city, of the deposit which has hitherto remained free to them, and not only of incalculable importance, but of absolute necessity. Whether it be private or public property, is immaterial, so long as the laws do not permit such use of it as to injure and obstruct the navigation: and we present it as our opinion that all such measures should be taken as are consistent with law to arrest these operations which are injurious for the present, and, in changing the course of the river, are hazardous in the extreme.' We find Mr. Livingston then, instead of awaiting the decision of Congress, the only constitutional tribunal, resuming his works boldly, and the people, whom he represented as like 'to change the insolence of riot into the crime of murder,' appealing peaceably, by presentment, to the laws of their territory until the National government should decide. In the latter end of the same year, [Surveyor's Rep. to Mayor, Dec. 28, '08.] he opens a canal from the bank directly through the beach into the river *276 feet long, 64 feet wide, and 4 feet 2 inches deep at low water, and with the earth excavated he forms a bank or quai, on each side, 19 feet 6 inches wide, from 4 to 6 feet high above the level of the batture, and faced with palissades. Within one year after this, what had been anticipated by the Governor, the grand jury and others, had already * These are French measures: add a fifteenth to make them ours. *20 manifested itself. In Dec. of the ensuing year, 1808, [See Surveyor's rep. Dec. 28, '08.] a bar had already formed across the mouth of the canal, which was dry at low water, the course of the waters had been changed during the intervening flood, and the places where dry ground first showed itself, on the decrease of the river, were such as had, the year before, been navigable at low water. [Mayor's *answer to Governor, Nov. 18, '08.] The port in front of the town had been impaired by a new batture begun to be formed opposite the Custom house, which could not fail to increase by the change of the current. The beach or batture of St. Mary had, in that single tide extended from 75 to 80 feet further into the river, and risen from 2 to 5 feet 10 inches generally, and more in places, as a saw scaffold which, at the preceding low tide, was 7 feet high, was now buried to its top; and Tanesse, the Surveyor, [See his affidavit, MS.] in his affidavit says he does not doubt that these works have produced the last year's augmentation of the batture, at the expense of the bed of the river, have occasioned the carrying away a great part of the platin or batture of the lower suburbs, and breaking the levee of M. Blanque next below, and that the main port of the city being a cove, immediately below Livingston's works, would, if they were continued, be filled up in time; and it is the opinion of Piedesclaux also, [See his 3d affidavit, MS.] that they would produce changes in the banks of the river, on both sides, prejudicial to the city, and riparian proprietors, by directing the efforts of the river against parts not heretofore exposed to it. And Mr. Poydras tells us, [p. 20 of one of his speeches,] that when the river is at its height, the boats which drift down it can only land in the eddies below the points, as they would be dashed to pieces in attempting to land in the strong current. That, at the town, they cannot land for want of room, there being always there two or three tier of vessels in close contact; nor at the lower suburbs of Marigny, which being at the lower part of the cove, are too much exposed both to winds and curIndeed no evidence is necessary to prove that in a river rent. of only 1200 yards wide, having an annual tide of 12 to 14 feet rise, which brings the water generally to within 8 or 10 inches, and sometimes 2 or 3 inches, of the top of the levee, insomuch that it splashes over with the wind, [See Peltier's, and Tanesse's affidavits, MS. and also the maps,] were the channel narrowed 250 yards, as Mr. Livingston intends, that is to say, a fourth or fifth of its whole breadth, the waters must rise higher in nearly the same proportion, that is to say, 3 feet at least, and would sweep away the whole levee, the city it now protects, and inundate all the lower country. Thus urged by the continued calls of the Governor, who declared he could not be responsible for the peace or preservation of the place, by the tumult and confusion in which the city was held by the bold aggressions of the intruders on the public rights, by the daily progress of works which were to interrupt the commerce of the whole western country, threatened to sweep away a great city and its inhabitants, and lay the ad- 21* jacent country under water, I listened to the calls of duty, imperious calls, which had I shrunk from, I should have been justly responsible for the calamities which would have followed. On the 28th of October, '07, the Attorney General had given his opinion, and on the 27th of November, I asked the attendance of the heads of the departments, to whom the papers received had been previously communicated for their consideration. We had the benefit of the presence of the Attorney General, and of the lights which it was his office to throw on the subject. We took of the whole case such views as the state of our information at that time presented. I shall now develope them in all the fulness of the facts then known, and of those which have since corroborated them. Cabinet deliberation. What law? The first question occurring was, what system of law was to be applied to them? On this there could be but one opinion. The laws which had governed Louisiana from its first colonization, that is to say, the laws of France with some local modifications, were still in force when this question was generated by the sale of the Jesuits' property to B. Gravier and others. France had indeed, about the end of the preceding year 1762, by a secret convention, ceded Louisiana to Spain, to be delivered whenever Spain should be in readiness to receive it. But this was not announced to the inhabitants till the 21st of April, 1764, nor did Spain receive possession till the 17th of August, 1769. [9 Raynal, 222. 235.] In the mean time the French government and laws continued, the Jesuits' property was sold, and purchased under the faith of the existing laws; and according to these laws must the rights acquired by the purchaser, or left in the crown, be decided. Indeed in no case are the laws of a nation changed, of natural right, by their passage from one to another denomination. The soil, the inhabitants, their property, and the laws by which they are protected go together. Their laws are subject to be changed only in the case, and extent which their new legislature shall will. The changes introduced by Spain, after 1769, were chiefly in the organization of their government, and but little in the principles of their jurisprudence. The instrument which some have understood as suppressing the French and introducing the Spanish code, is the proclamation of O'Reilly of November 25, 1769, two months after the actual delivery of the colony. [See appendix to documents communicated to Congress by the President, with his message of October 17, 1803.] The transfer of the country, however, had been announced to the people five years before. Now surely, during these five years. the *French laws must have continued entire, and of course after them, so far as not altered. And that this proclamation made specific only, and not general alterations, a brief examination of its tenor Proclamation of French code. *22 will evince. It begins by charging the late council with a participation in the insurrection which had taken place, and by declaring it indispensable to abolish that, and to establish the form of politic government and administration of justice prescribed by the wise laws of Spain. But a form of government may surely be changed, and the mass of the laws remain the |