THE QUESTION OF RENTS IN PARIS.
AT the close of the war with Prussia, and at the end of the second siege of Paris, France had many curious legal problems to solve. The old formulm made for ordinary sea- sons and events gave way under the strain of the exceptional circumstances. The old files afforded no clear precedent ; the old bottles could not hold the new wine ; and the Courts of France are at this moment, and have been for some time back, dealing with questions of novelty and curious difficulty,—of questions which lie far off the highways of ordinary law. In look- ing over the trials reported in the French journals, one is struck with the fact that there are discussed almost daily abstruse points quite out of the beat of the ordinary jurist. A visit to the CJour d'Assise is in these days a lesson in jurisprudence, given by a teacher conversant with the rarities of his science. Laws, too, have been passed in order to remedy the anomalies created by the war ; and there has been little legislation in recent times so curious as that relating to rents and negotiable instruments, legislation which carries one back to seine of the most famous events of Roman history, and which enables us to join hands, so to speak, with some mythical-looking stories of antiquity. The liquidation de la situation, to quote a favourite phrase of the countless pamplets which, with gross caricatures of the leaders of the Commune and with histories of their doings, form the staple of the present wares of the Parisian book- shops, was thus accomplished : In April, virtually the war ended, and a host of law-suits were about to be begun. Land- lords wished for rent long over-due, and the poorer tenants could not pay. They had earned little during the siege. Endless misery would have been produced by Shylock Theataires, and yet it was difficult to say whether Peter or Paul could best endure robbing—whether the proprietors or tenants ought to suffer. Accordingly, the Assembly on the 21st of last April passed a law giving large immunities or advantages to the poor of the department of the Seine, which had, of course, suffered the horrors of war most severely. Special juries, each composed of a juge de paix and four members, two of them proprietors and two tenants, were
formed in the quarters of Paris. Everything was to be done simply ; and the law expressly stated that the business must be transacted sans proce'dure n plaidoirie. It may seem a terrible sarcasm that in a desperate emergency the employment of lawyers was discouraged. But so it was ; and these juries were empowered to settle definitely all disputes relating to rents running between October, 1870, and April, 1871. They could also, according to discretion, make reductions on rent, supposing a man's house had really been injured, say by a shell or an obus. The juries might also, in certain circumstances, grant the debtor delay, not exceeding two years. Even more striking, however, than these provisions was that which allowed the department of the Seine to pay to all proprietors whose rents amounted to at least £24 the third of what was due, on condition that they waived their claims to the remainder ; and £400,000 could he spent in this way. But it was a condition of payment that the landlord should allow his tenant to remain in possession until July. As to bills of exchange, a law passed in last March gave four months' respite to the acceptors of bills maturing during the war. Another law, passed a few weeks ago, gave an additional respite of four months to all bills maturing between August 13 and November 12, 1871. The former laws had been extended to all France ; but the latter was confined to Paris and the commune of Fevres and Meudon. These are the main provisions ; and perhaps we have gone far enough into details when we add that, though there have been complaints as to the exceptional favour accorded to Paris, though 25,000 tenants whose rents fell due in July thought themselves badly treated, and though we hear of the Bank receiving from the country boxes full of protested bills, there are found none to question the wisdom of the principle of the measures. We have mentioned these details for several reasons. In the first place, these laws form one of the largest and boldest constructive acts of statesmanship accomplished for some time. Without much noise people set them- selves to grapple with a serious evil, and it is not easy to see how the interests of all could have been more tenderly cared for. The arms of France had been sadly unsuccessful. Frenchmen seemed pithless and unprac- tical in the field and council. It ie pleasing, therefore, to note this streak of light in the somewhat dark and bleak horizon,—to note how measures almost rivalling those of Stein and IIardenberg have been accomplished without fuss. And if it be true that all subjects, save the lot of the poor and the means of ameliorating it, are in these days coming to be viewed by thoughtful men as more or less pardonable di- gressions from the main business of life, this, not the least among the experiments of the age, ought to be viewed with some little interest ; and it is a pity that our Paris correspond- ents tell us so much about that red-legged, blue-bellied insect which is the curse of the country, and have been unsatisfac- torily vague about these measures of silent beneficence.
And then, too, there are many other reasons why the history of this subject should be examined pretty carefully, and the truth once for all printed on the memory. It has been the luck of all the Republican Governments of France to suffer from calumnies possessed of much vitality. For in- stance, it is the fashion to accuse the first Republic of intro- ducing numerous socialistic innovations. Every one knows De Tocqueville's refutation of the notion that the Revolution produced territorial morcelionent in France ; and yet how often is not this fallacy still repeated! Still more frequently is it said that the Revolution was the author of the re- striction on the right of bequeathing, and that it first in- corporated in legislation the socialistic maxim that a man's power of bequeathing his property should be subjected to and bound by the duty to leave a certain minimum portion of his fortune to his children. The reproach is still echoed even by educated people with astonishing frequency and persistency. Really it is surprising how few know that the Constituent Assembly had not the dishonour or honour of broaching this principle, which has been incorporated in the legislation of more than one civilized country, which was practised more than two thousand years ago in Rome, and which in one form exists in a neighbouring country little addicted to socialism. In Scotch law there is the legitim or "bairns' part," which the father cannot divert. In England only, and that, too, only in recent times, is it esteemed heinously socialistic to compel a father to provide, in the first instance, for his children. Yet economists without number have railed against the French law as a mad innovation. Mad or not—and the ground on which the Romans set aside testaments conceived in a different spirit was the assumption that the testator who made so unnatural a will must be insane—the innovation did not take place in France, Perhaps another such calumny may spring up, and the Commune be the sufferer. There is much proneness to be mendacious about the Commune. It is the youngest of the competitors for rule in France, and the cup is always, somehow or other, found in the sack of Benjamin. In truth, the sight of the black- ened walls of the Hotel de Ville and of historic statues stand- ing grim, melancholy, and smoky among the ruins, seems to dispense absolution from truthfulness towards the Coin- inune, and to give a commission to all the Parisian journalists who lie with ease to invent what fables they please of their old masters. So we may as well recall the above facts, if only to show that the largest socialistic law of our time was passed by the enemies of the Commune, and that if the Commune did think of "considering rent in the interest of the tenant," they had precedent and authority. We have mentioned these facts partly also because the transition from the state of matters in which a contract is regarded as sacred, a transition costing the ordinary lawyer so harsh a wrench, was facilitated by the intimacy of Frenchmen with the Civil Law. The Code Napoldon speaks of no such abatement as was made in the case of bills of exchange. But the interpreters of the Code were familiar with the principle. They perhaps knew by heart the loci classici. And so, smoothly and easily, this reversal of the literal terms of contracts, and driving coaches-and-six through solemn documents, were accepted as matters of course. No one shouted "Property, property!" Here, on the other hand, there would have been metaphorical tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth before the principle was accepted. Mr. Gladstone would have had to fight with wild bankers at the Treasury, or would have been gored by enraged bill-brokers. Such laws would have been called a revolution, and the modern sign of the end of all things, the modern analogue of eclipses and celestial prodigies, Consols would have fallen. Now, if we are not mistaken, there is here revealed a curious defect in our law. As regards carriers by land or sea there is shown a sense of the possibility of the letter of contracts being broken without culpability. "Acts of God" are specially excluded from the category of losses which a carrier makes good. But it is never thought apparently that the same circumstances might be reproduced with respect to rent or the maturing of bills of exchange. In all other departments the law is atheistic. And yet there have occurred instances in which the principle might with advantage have been applied, and similar instances may again occur. It has been suggested that had the Irish been living under the Civil Law instead of the benign English law, they could have obtained in 1847 during the potato famine release from or abatement of rent. The Lancashire millowners, who were obliged to meet bills which they had accepted at a time when they thought they could rely upon a supply of the staple of their industry, might perhaps have put in a claim for abatement. The rule of Roman law was that when a farmer's crops were destroyed by inundation and when, say, the Tiber in some unexpected way flooded his fields, or when war came his way, and he suffered from vis cui resisti non potest, as the " Digest " says, he was released from his obligation. Money-rent was not exacted at the time when it fell due, if the farmer had been a victim of an extraordinary accident or series of accidents. Of course, everybody will say that this rule was right. The peculiarity of the Roman law was that it enforced the obligation to be indulgent. "And why did not Equity, that worked BO much of the Civil Law into our own, work in this principle also ?" This is one of the acci- dents of English law. What more can one say ? Another set of circumstances, say the elimination of Lord Eldon from the list of Chancellors, and the English law would have been very different from what it is. Lord Eldon was not well- acquainted with Roman law. He sometimes misap- plied it ; and had his advent been postponed the pre- cocious systematizing of equity would not have taken place, and Chancery law would have absorbed the best portions of the Civil law. In that event there would have been no omission of so valuable a principle as the above, justified as it is by the clearest grounds of equity. This, how- ever, opens a wicket leading far away from the subject, and the excuse of any reference to the Civil Law is, that acquaintance with it, the equity of all nations, helped the French at a trying moment.
Previous page
