the question of prison discipline ; and as he possesses

considerable P. hamentary influence, and withal is a discreet and trimming politician,

job,

Dutchess of Portsmouth. During the war of the Spanish Succession,

Under the old French law, as it existed before the Revolution, the

French 3Ionarchs, in the plenitude of their absolute power, could " mo- think the Post-office ought not to prevent it. came by law absolute proprietor, the estate being inheritable equally by

all his children.

Such had been the law of France for two-and-twenty years, when

THE DUKEDOM OF A U13IGNY : WHIG JOB FOR THE the fourth Duke of Richmond, father of the present, and nephew of the

DU KE OF II ICHMOND. Duke under whom all the great changes in the condition of the estate of [FROM A CO IIIIESPON DENT.] Aubigny took place, not content with the general clause in favour of the AT the long interval of one hundred and seventy years, the results of claimants on both sides, contrived through his personal and political the coarse profligacy of the Courts of Louis the Fourteenth and friends Castlereagh and Wellington, the British negotiators, to get a Charles the Second are still capable of working mischief between the secret clause introduced into the treaty in his favour. The clause in French and English nations. We allude here to the dutchy and estate question, and which has now been a source of litigation for twenty years, of Aubigny in France, claimed by the present Duke of Richmond as heir is as follows. " The sequestration on the dutchy of' Aubigny, the lands to a French lady, the mother of an illegitimate son of Charles the Second, ((dens) attached to it, shall be taken oil; and the Duke of Richmond the first Duke. The French courts of justice have for years been oc- restored to the possession of such lands as they now exist." By a Royal cupied with this affair ; and the French 1,rms,s has recently taken up the ordinance of July 1814, the Duke of Richmond was placed in possession subject, pronouncing it, with too much :.1.0w of' reason, an attack by of Aubigny, and bus continued to hold it ever Ace, undisputed, until the English Government and aristocracy on the integrity and inde- 1818. In this last year the Administration of the Royal Domains (cor- pendenee of French institutions and nationality. The transaction from responding with our Woods and Forests) made its claim for one-fintrth first to last is curious, and well entitled to public attention. part of the value of the estate of Aubigny, in virtue of the law already In time year 1422, Charles the Seventh of France granted the estate alluded to. On this occasion, and this one only, the Ministry of Aubigny to John Stuart, a Scotch lord, for services rendered to the of the Restoration gave, as it was rational enough for it to do, state in the wars against England. This happened in the reign of James an opinion favourable to the aristocratic and feudal claim-us of the the First of Scotland and of Henry the Filth of England. The grant Duke of Richmond. The question, however, was again brought dates but seven years after the battle of Agincourt; and we may rea- forward by the Administration of' the Domains in 1828; and sonably suppose that the services rendered by the first grantee were of' then the Duke's claim to exemption from time municipal law of Bo small importance. In conformity with the conditions of the on- France under the political treaty was declared by the Administration ginal grant, the estate escheated to the Crown on failure of heirs male in to be wholly untenable. This opinion is conveyed to his Grace in a 1672; and in the following year was regranted on the same conditions, by report of the Minister of Finance, and in a letter of the Foreign Mi- Louis the Fourteenth, to a French lady then in England—the celebrated nister, M. Sebastiani, in 1831. The first-named document does not Mademoiselle De Queroil, one of the kept mistresses of Charles the mince the matter, but commences as follows—" Monsieur the Duke of Second, afterwards created Dutchess of Portsmouth, and who even- Richmond, one of the Members of the English Cabinet, and wrongful tually became mother of the first Duke of Richmond. Louis the possessor (Menton.) of the land (term) of Aubigny." He was in this Fourteenth, in his capacity of pander, had furnished his brother of instance a wrongful possessor because be had not yet complied with the England with a mistress; and not content with this, bad made a very conditions of the law and made that payment in failure of which his handsome provision for herself, or for any bastard children she might estate was subject to forfeiture. Time Duke appealed to the Courts of bear to the King of England. The party actually named was Charles Justice ; and both in time Courts of First Instance and the Royal Court Lennox, often called Prince Charles Lennox ; who in due course sue- has been cast. After this voluntary appeal to the regular tribunals, he ceeded his Blather, and was also the first Duke of Richmond. The once more appeals to the treaty of 1814, and declines going to the Court succession has been as follows. The first Duke was succeeded by his of Cassation. son ; and he by his son, the third Duke, the friend of Pitt, and of na- But the very same principle has been tried in another form. In tional.fortification memory ; who died in 1806. The latter was sue- 1830, the heirs general of the third Duke of Richmond—that is, the ceeded in title and estates by the son of his only brother, the late Duke— children and grandchildren of his four sisters, the Beauclerks, the the same individual who as Colonel I.ennox fought a duel with Napiers, the Fitzgeraids, and the Foxes—now ihr the first time became the late Duke of York, and who, being Governor-General of Canada, aware of their rights under the French lasv, and claimed an equal share died at Quebec of hydrophobia, produced by the bite of a tame fox. The of the Aubigny property with the present Duke, the grandchild of his present Duke came to his title in 1820; and lately inherited some brother. The Duke was summoned before the Court of First Instance 20,000/. a year by the death of his maternal uncle the Duke of Gordon. of Simcerre, within the jurisdiction of which Aubigny lies ; and here a In the course of more than a century and a half, the Dukes of Richmond decree was given in favour of the heirs general. From this decree the have not furnished one man of distinguished talent or public eminence : Duke appealed to the Superior et urt of Bourges ; which, considering and such is the family whose private interests have been made twice the question a political one, decreed that it had no jurisdiction. The over the subject of articles in treaties of peace. The present holder of heirs general then brought the question before the highest tribunal in the title, the sixth in descent from Charles Stuart and Mademoiselle the kingdom, the Court of Cessation; which, by an unanimous Judg- went, pronounced by its President Portalis on the 24th of June last, broke and annulled the decree of' the Court of Bourges, and directed the issue to be tried by the Royal Court of Paris. The Procureur or At- t me -General of the Court of Cassation is the celebrated lawyer I m,MTARY B101711.111MV.

Dupin; who on very important occasions takes an opportunity of de-

livering his sentiments to the Bench, and he did so now in very strong The Life and Services of General Lord Harris, G.C.R.. during Ns r`ampapignarkserin.

terms. assienernis.

Government and the private parties are concerned, the Duke of Rich- stristee Nese:es in English History and poetry. Sy William Maim Author of mond again appeals to diplomacy ; and prays, as he did in 1828, when Samuel Williams. his prayer was rejected, that his case may lie tried by the Council of State. Lord Palmerston, at its solicitation, writes to the British Am- Poems. By John Sterling. Mona, bassador; and the latter importunes the French Ministry, while Louis Philippe is reported to be fhvourably disposed to the claim. Such is MR. LUSIIING TOE'S LIVE OP LOBE HARRIS. the present state of the Aubigny affair.

Melbourne's Administration, advocating the Duke's claim, stand in re- engaged as a eonnnander, was the campaign against TIPPOO in ference to the French nation. The vague words of the secret article of the 1799, which ended in the storming of Seri ugapatatn, the death of treaty of 1814 direct, that the sequestration on the dutelly and lands of the Sultan, and the establishment of' the British as the supreme Aubigny shall be taken off, and the lands as they existed at the moment power in Southern India. His personal career is chiefly remark- restored to the Duke of Richmond. The Duke of Richmond maintains able as that of a soldier of fortune, who having procured a corn- that these loose words mean that the lands and dukedom of Aubigny, as mission by a lucky chance, advanced himself' to NVC;11t11 and dis- they existed in 1673 and 1684, shall be restored to hint as heir male of , time first grantee. The third Duke, under whom the lands had been sequestered, had been dead eight years before the treaty. II lad he been

living in ISIt, the lands would, no doubt, have gone to him ; and on

his death, unquestionably, they \MUM have descended, not to his heirs male—viz. the on and grandson of his brother—but to the children his connexions appear to have possessed some property. having and grandchildren of his one brother and four sisters, share and share inarried young, and becoming the fitther of a numerous family, he Instead of this, the Duke of Richmond would impose on the apprehended considerable difficulty in providing for his eldest, French nation fiir his own particular benefit the law of primogeniture, GEORGE ; WII0 was at. last stetted in life under singular cireum- which has been abrogated in France for almost tiny years, and which the French people be,y on d any other remnant of feudalism hold in detestation. stances.

If in respect to the estate of Aithiguy the treaty Of 1614 rei1stab1ished for one of his flintily, which had many years before hemi made by Lord George the law of mg:imp:nit lire, it is equally certain that it Must also have re- Sack ville, to whom, whilst at Cambridge, he had afforded protection from the established every other feudal right, such as vassalage, pine-laws, &e., hands of a nbtorions bully of that ',lave. The a ,.t i I c I hUll giVen by Air.

t'llarles's mistress. Even the !hike will not pretend to this. " I

fear not to assert," says :11 . Ithpin, 1 le fiire the Court of Cassation," that the nu interpretation of the treaty pi esented to ns under tit" name of the Duke of Richmond would be aissraceful to him, to England, and to France." cadet in the Royal Artillery was issued to George Harris, then about fourteen " It would be disg,Taeefol to the Duke," says the Procureur-(;eneral, years Of age; but towards the close of this year (175)) Mr. Ii oils died, and with feigned simplicity, " because, in order to procure the insertion of the battle of Minden and eimi,equent dismissal of Lord George Sackville front a secret clause. wholly of a personal character, and derogatory to the the Ordnance, again left our ;.;aing soldier without a patron. Luckily for his fourth clause of the public treaty, he would have apparently dissembled fbture prospects, the new Mitster-t;tint.iral of Ordnance, the Marqtlis of Granby, the existence or the rights of his co-heritors, and would have taken ad- and his brother, Lord Robert Manners, had also hem fellow-collegians of Mr. vantage et' liipissonal influence to seize anon their shares- No ! the Barris. A statement of his circunistanees was tient to Lord Robert Manners,

noble chins:cies of he Duke of Richmond repels the supposition. It is

better to Fuppose that he was ignorant of our laws; but it must be terested might titite their objections. In a word, to remake a dutelly and a duke of Aubigny, something else than silence was requisite, Two conditiom, at least were indispensable—first, that the State was the and here we see him using his whole political influence to deprive his own relatives of property consecrated to them by the prescription or

vernment of their friend Louis Philippe; and while every rood of the favour oc rAreign family, that must for ever continue alien to the office of Lord Palmerston some Swam/, and for our mission at Paris