of dealing and the use of bills of exchange there may have been some intermediate steps, is highly probable. But the history of bills of exchange has by no means as yet been so carefully investigated or clearly elucidated as could be wished. The story of these documents having been invented by the Jews, when banished from France, for the purpose of concealing their effects, or of secretly removing the effects they had concealeda story originally told by Cleirac, in the edition of the Us et Coutumes de la Mer, which he published at Bordeaux in 1661, adopted without reflection, and sanctioned, in his epigrammatic style, by the great Montesquieu, and, of course, repeated by every inferior writeris highly improbable, vague, and unsatisfactory, if not absurd. And, although bills of exchange are not treated of or mentioned in the Consolato, there is reason to believe they came into mercantile practice, if not before, at least soon after the date of that compilation; for in the Colleccion Diplomatica of Capmany, and in the middle of a public authentic document, there is to be found a copy of a bill of exchange, drawn by a merchant in Bruges upon a mercantile company in Barcelona, somewhat in the present form, dated the 28th April, 1404, commencing with the salutation, "Al nome di Dio," and ending with the prayer, "Christo vi guardi."

CHAPTER III.

OF THE ROLES D'OLERON.

HAVING thus taken a short view of the maritime and commercial law, statutory and also consuetudinary, of the trading Republics which arose in the middle ages

on the European side of the Mediterranean, from Venice to Barcelona, and having also considered, at some length, the compilation of maritime usages and customs which latterly came to be recognised as common law in these different states, and in their intercourse with each other, we proceed to trace the progress of the law of maritime commerce, advancing northward, round by the Bay of Biscay and the British Channel, to the Baltic, in the laws of Oleron, the laws of Wisby, and in the code which, at Lubec, received the public sanction of the Hanseatic League.

The best known and most generally cited text of the Roles d'Oleron is that published by Cleirac, in his collection, entitled, Us et Coutumes de la Mer, first printed in 1647; and this text Cleirac took from a book composed by Garcie de Ferrande, under the title of Grand Routier de la Mer, first printed in 1542, dividing it into forty-seven articles. But this is not the state in which the Roles are found in the manuscripts and in the ancient prints.

Two manuscripts, still extant in England, the one at Oxford, in the Bodleian Library, and the other at London, in the Cottonian Library, contain twenty-four articles, corresponding to the first twenty-two of Garcie and Cleirac. A third manuscript, also extant at Oxford, in the Bodleian Library, in a collection commonly known by the name of the Black Book of the Admiralty, contains, with the intercalation of eight unpublished articles, the twenty-four articles of the manuscripts just mentioned, and two articles corresponding to the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of Cleirac. These twenty-five or twenty-six articles, and, besides them, two articles which none of the manuscripts of England contain, being No. 27 and No. 28 in the edition of Cleirac, compose the compilation found in the editions of the ancient Coutumes de Bretagne, published in 1485

and 1501, in the Coutumier de Normandie, edited in 1539, and in a French manuscript in the Histoire de Bretagne de Morice. The Flemish and Castilian translations, the last about 1266, likewise contain only the twentyfour articles in the Oxford and London manuscripts.

From this exposition, we are led to conclude that the whole of the Roles d'Oleron, in the state in which the editions of Garcie and Cleirac present them, have not been composed at one and the same time; yet these editors have made no distinction, and evidently had no idea of doing so, having clothed the primitive articles in a more modern style, similar to that of the latest. Besides this, Cleirac has suppressed, at the end of the primitive articles, the final formula-Tel est le jugement en ce caswhich we find in all the manuscripts and printed editions before mentioned, and yet terminates the whole by a certificate of 1266, which accompanies only the first twenty-seven articles in the manuscripts, and in the ancient editions of France.

This confusion has not only the inconvenience of not permitting us to distinguish and recognise the ancient text, but also that of presenting the whole of the publication as made at one and the same period, which we might believe very recent, according to the language, although the date of the certificate be long anterior, and of thus exhibiting improbabilities which have, more than once, embarrassed historians, and furnished arms to criticism for contesting the antiquity of the compilation. But, from the unimpeachable documents before referred to, we are clearly warranted in separating what has reached us under the name of the Roles d'Oleron into three or even four distinct parts.

The first part is composed of twenty-five articles, which may be called primitive or original, because they are the only ones of which the manuscripts of England, and the Castilian and Flemish versions, attest the exist

ence, and of these there is subjoined a summary analysis: 1st, Prohibition against the master selling the vessel, and the case in which he may borrow money; 2d, Prohibition against the master setting sail without consulting the crew; 3d, Of the salvage due for the recovery of a shipwrecked vessel; 4th, Of the case of the vessel becoming unnavigable; 5th, Obligation of the crew not to quit the vessel; 6th, Of the police of the vessel, and of a mariner hurt or wounded in the service; 7th, Of the sailor who falls sick in the vessel; 8th, Of jetson to save the vessel; 9th, Of the mast or anchors sacrificed for the common safety; 10th, Of the obligation of the master and crew to discharge the cargo in a proper manner; 11th, Of losses occasioned by bad stowage; 12th, Of the disputes of the mariners among themselves, and between them and the master; 13th, Of the expense of loading the cargo; 14th, Of the right of the master to dismiss and cashier a sailor; 15th, Of the damage caused by one vessel to another at anchor; 16th, Of the damage caused by the anchors of one vessel to another; 17th, Of the hiring of mariners upon the reach of the vessel, or voyage, or upon freight; 18th, Of the maintenance or subsistence of the mariners; 19th, Of the obligation of mariners to continue on the return voyage; 20th, Of the rights of the mariners in the case of the prolongation or shortening of the voyage; 21st, When the sailors may go on shore; 22d, Of the indemnity due by the shipper of the cargo in the case of delay; 23d, Of the captain who has need of money on the voyage; 24th, Of the obligations of the seaman or pilot who conducts a vessel to the place of discharge; 25th, Of the punishment of the seaman or pilot who causes the loss of the vessel.

The second part consists of two articles which, not being contained in the manuscripts and early versions before mentioned, are probably less ancient than the

preceding the one regarding damage done to goods at the time of their discharge from the vessel; and, the other, joint adventures in shipping.

The third part is composed of eight articles, for the first time only lately published by M. Pardessus, added to the first class in the Black Book of the Admiralty. Their objects are, 1st, The obligation imposed on the master, who has undertaken the conveyance of commodities, to load them without delay; 2d, The prohibition against the master, who has let his entire vessel on freight, putting on board of it anything else than victuals or provisions; 3d, The quantity of loading which he who has freighted an entire vessel has a right to put on board; 4th, The mode of payment of the sailors who go on the voyage on freight, and the right of the master to exact the freight of goods thrown overboard for safety; 5th, The prohibition against the sailors exacting anything from the shippers of the cargo; 6th, The obligations of the master for the maintenance of the merchants, and the superintendents of the wines on board; 7th, The delay or period (lay days) within which the merchandise must be discharged, and the right of the master to retain the cargo in security of his freight; 8th, The rules as to what goods ought to contribute in the case of jetson. The old style of these articles, the fact that they are contained in a book which everything leads us to believe was composed in the fourteenth century, and which has evidently the language of that age, afford decisive grounds for placing them before those which are found solely in the editions of Garcie and Cleirac, and which are of a less ancient style.

The fourth part consists of twenty articles, which treat exclusively of shipwrecks, shipwrecked goods, and ma

rine waifs.

Such being the state of the compilation, we proceed