The purchaser of lands or houses is, in Guernsey, subjected to a peculiar claim known by the name of retraite, the origin of which seems to have been derived from the laws of Moses. When any person alienates his estate by sale, if any part of the assignment is paid in money, the next of kin, and upon his neglect, the next after, and so on to the seventh degree, is privileged, by the law of retraite or pre-emption, with the right of redeeming it from the purchaser on repaying him the full amount he paid for it, together with all the charges incident to the transfer, and the full treizième or fine payable to the lord of the fief. This right may be exercised at any time within ten years of the transfer, if the purchaser has merely caused his contract to be registered at the record office, but not to be publicly read at the opening of the court of heritage; but only within a year and a day if it have been both registered and read. The purchaser may, however, and, perhaps in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred does, get himself approprié de son marché, or secured in the possession of his purchase, at the next court of heritage, which may be within a week, and never need be more than three months, after the passing of the contract. This is done by his having one of the vendor's relatives within the seventh degree, who does not want the estate, to put in a claim for the retraite, by means of an action in the court of heritage, and, on the action being read, to decline appearing at the bar to demand the property alienated; upon which the claimant is declared a defaulter, and if no other relative steps forward to claim the property, the purchaser is for ever secured in the possession of it. In cases where the estate is alienated wholly for rents, and without any consideration in money, the claim by retraite cannot be made, as the alienation is then considered to be rather an exchange of real property than a sale.

One good effect of the claim by retraite is, that it prevents estates from being sold much below their value. The evident intention of it appears to have been that the estate should either remain in the family of the individual to whom it was first granted by the lord, or else that it should revert to the lord himself; for originally the lord, in the event of the relatives not claiming, was entitled to do so for the same period of time, and on the same conditions as themselves.

The undisturbed possession of an estate, or of any other description of real property, during forty years, secures to the possessor a right to it by prescription, which is equivalent to a title.

Another custom peculiar to Guernsey and Jersey, is the famous Clameur de Haro, or Cry of Haro, which was formerly practised in Normandy, and which has been praised by most writers on the Norman laws. The Clameur de Haro is a summary remedy in all cases of encroachments on landed property, against which it operates as an instantaneous and effectual check. It is thus practised in Guernsey :-When an individual finds that his neighbour, or any other party, is encroaching upon his property by the erection or demolition of a wall or other structure, or by any other trespass, whatever may be its nature, he repairs to the spot, accompanied by two witnesses, in presence of whom he orders the aggressor or his agent, to desist, by invoking the name of Rollo, first Duke of Normandy, in the singular form of exclamation :-" Haro! Haro! Haro! à l'aide, mon prince," and by addressing the words, "je vous ordonne de quitter cet ouvrage,' to the aggressor, upon which he must instantly desist, as in the event of his daring to proceed he is liable to be punished for a breach of the peace and a contempt of king's authority, the property being supposed to be under the king's special protection from the moment the cry is made. The word Haro is compounded of Ha! the ejaculation of a person suffering, and of Ro, a contraction of Rollo, the name of the Duke,-so that the meaning of Ha-Ro! à l'aide, mon prince! is "O Rollo! my prince, afford me thy succour." The party who, supposing himself aggrieved, has thus availed himself of the Clameur de Haro, is bound, on pain of nullifying his proceeding, to appear before the bailiff for the purpose of presenting him with a written declaration of what he has done, in which must be set forth every particular of the case, which declaration being signed by the bailiff, must be deposited for registry at the greffe or record office within twenty-four hours of the crying of Haro. The next step is to bring the matter before the court in the shape of an action. If the party who has cried Haro neglect to bring forward such action, the party against whom it was cried may turn plaintiff, and compel the other to justify his proceedings and submit to the judgment of the court. Upon the action of either party, the court proceeds to the decision of the affair by what is called a vue de justice, in which case the court, composed of at least seven jurats besides the bailiff, repair to the spot, where, after written and oral evidence has been adduced, and counsel heard, the matter is irreversibly decided,—there being no appeal to his majesty in council from decisions given on cries of Haro. The

party against whom judgment is given, whether plaintiff or defendant, is invariably mulct in a fine to the king, and he is, in addition to the fine, sentenced to un regard de château, or twenty-four hours' imprisonment at Castle Cornet-which, however, does not at present take place-the imploring of the prince's aid without cause, and the disturbing of the public peace by the invasion of another's property, being accounted equally criminal. In Normandy the Clameur de Haro extended to cases of personal injury or violence: in Guernsey it is restricted to matters affecting houses or land.

The Clameur de Haro, it is scarcely necessary to observe, was originally an appeal for justice and protection to duke Rollo, who distinguished himself as the founder of the Norman laws, and the preserver of the rights of his subjects. It was used on its first institution only on occasions of more than ordinary importance, but its efficiency being ere long universally recognized, it became, in process of time, quite a popular remedy in almost every case of aggression.*

The laws which regulate the descent of real property in Guernsey are not, it would appear, very dissimilar from those which were observed in England down to the time of Lyttleton.t

No real estate can be disposed of by will: it must descend to the heirs at law, and in default of such heirs, revert to the king or to the lord of the manor on which the estate is situated.

The law of primogeniture does not obtain in Guernsey; but in the division of real property, the eldest son is entitled to a certain portion of the estate, called préciput, which consists of his father's principal house and some of the land attached to it. He makes his claim to this by obtaining a permission from the court to authorize the douzaine of the parish, in which the estate is situated, to levy his préciput. The douzaine proceed to the spot from which he intends levying it, and grant him a certain number of perches of land, seldom less than fifteen or more than twenty, which he has the right of taking in whatever part of the estate he chooses; and the land thus granted, with all the buildings upon it, however costly they may be, he is entitled to take, free of rents and other incumbrances. If, therefore, there are rents or incumbrances due upon it, he is to be compensated to their full amount from the residue of his father's real estate. As the land thus assigned generally makes part of the principal enclosure, the remainder of it is valued by the douzaine as bare land, irrespectively of the buildings that may be on it, and becomes the property of the eldest son on his paying to the estate the value set upon it by the douzaine: he has also the right of taking, at a valuation made by the douzaine, whatever remaining part of the land he pleases, nay, even the whole of it, provided that the enclosures communicate with each other and with his préciput, by means of gateways or stiles, and that it be practicable to go from one part of it to the other without crossing any public road. As the decision or valuation of the douzaine may be contested, and appealed from to the royal court, the eldest son is bound to summon his co-heirs to be present when the douzaine proceeds to the levying and measurement of the preciput.

Besides his exclusive right to the préciput, the eldest son has, in common with his brothers, a right over the daughters to the vingtième, which, as the term imports, is the twentieth part of the estate, which the sons may either claim or abandon, as their interest may dictate. The vingtième, like the preciput, is measured by the douzaine, and rated as bare ground. When the vingtième is taken, the remainder of the estate is divided-two-thirds to the sons and onethird to the daughters; but when it is not taken, the estate, after the preciput taken, is divided among all the children, whether sons or daughters, share and share alike. When, therefore, there are so many sons and so few daughters that, if the vingtième were taken, the share of a daughter would exceed that of a sonwhen, for instance, there are four sons and one daughter, which would give each son one-sixth, and the daughter one-third-it clearly is not the interest of the

A notable example of its efficiency occurred about one hundred and seventy years after Rollo's death, on the occasion of the funeral of William the Conqueror, which is recorded at page 353 of the June number of this Magazine.

+ The statute of wills in England is the 32 of Henry VIII, c. 1, explained by 34 of Henry VIII, c. 5, which enacted that all persons being seized in fee simple (except feme-coverts, infants, ideots, and persons of non-sane memory,) might by will and testament in writing devise to any other person, except to bodies corporate, two-thirds of their lands, tenements, and hereditaments, held in chivalry, and the whole of those held in socage; which now, through the alteration of tenures by the statute of Charles the Second, amounts to the whole of their landed property, except their copyhold tenements. And since that time, by a legal construction given to the statute 43 of Eliza. beth, c. 4, it is held, that a devise to a corporation for a charitable use is valid, as operating in the nature of an appointment, rather than of a bequest.

sons to claim the vingtième; and, in that case, if they study their interest, they waive their right to it, in order that the estate may be equally divided among all the children.

In the division of the vingtième, and also in that of the residue of the estate, the eldest son shares in common with his co-heirs.

The preciput must be taken out of the vingtième whenever the latter is claimed. Neither préciput nor vingtième can be claimed on any property situated within the barrières, or ancient boundaries of the town.

The real estate of the wife descends to her children precisely in the same way, the preciput and vingtième included, as that of the husband, with however this difference-that the husband, if he survive her, enjoys that estate for life; but should she die without having had a child born alive during wedlock, the estate reverts, at her death, to her heirs, in the same manner as if she had never married. The birth of a child with the slightest symptom of life is sufficient to secure the husband a life interest in the property as long as he remains a widower, for the moment he remarries he forfeits all right to the enjoyment of his deceased wife's estate.

The widow, at the death of her husband, becomes entitled to the whole of her own real estate, and also to have as her dower the enjoyment for life of one-third of all the real estate which her husband may have been possessed of at any period since their marriage, even though part or the whole of it should, years before his decease, have been disposed of by him without her participation, or been legally taken from him by creditors, it being impossible for a widow, in any case, to be deprived of her dower, except in consequence of a previous voluntary renunciation of her right and title to it. She has also, in the event of her husband's dying while his father is yet alive, a right of dower when the father dies on all such real estate as he was possessed of while his son, her husband, lived, and which would have descended to him had he survived his father.

A wife can neither acquire property by purchase, nor dispose of it by sale, unless she declare upon oath that she does so of her own free will, without any constraint on the part of her husband.

A widow is entitled, at the death of her husband, to one-half of his personal property, if he leaves no children, in which case the other half is disposable at the pleasure of the testator: if there are children, she is entitled to one-third, the children to the two other thirds, one of which, however, the husband may dispose of by will: a widower without children may dispose of his personal estate in which ever way he thinks proper.

A father cannot by will give a greater portion of his personal property to one child than to another; but the third of it, which is at his disposal if he have children living, or the half, if his children are dead but his wife living, he may bequeath to perfect strangers.

If any of the children receive in their father's life time any property for advancement in the world, marriage portion, or otherwise, they cannot at his death claim their share of his personal estate unless they previously bring back or account for what they have so received; but a daughter marrying in her father's life time, whether she have or have not received any marriage portion, has no claim to his personal estate at his death, unless at her marriage she reserved to herself the right of such claim by a special agreement in writing with her father.

In Guernsey, administration is never granted to the effects of an intestate. The next relative is entitled to take possession of the personal property in the same manner as the heir at law would the real estate, the maxim "Le mort saisit le vif," being as applicable in successions to personal property, as in those to real

estate.

The manner in which property descends in collateral successions is regulated by the nature of that property,-propres, which are one description of real estate, descending one way, and acquets and conquêts, which are two other descriptions of real estate, descending, along with the personal property, another way.

The propre is real property, descended to the deceased either from a paternal or a maternal ancestor, or obtained by retraite.

The acquét is real property, purchased by the deceased, or acquired by him in any other way, than by succession or retraite.

The conquet is real property, purchased by a husband and wife conjointly, or acquired by them in any other manner, than by succession or retraite.

In collateral succession, then, the propre, or patrimonial estate, reverts to the stock from whence and through which it was derived-" paterna paternis, materna

maternis;" and to a brother, or the descendants, whether male or female, of a brother, to the exclusion of a sister, or of a sister's descendants. It descends per stirpes, or stock, and not per capita. Example :

The propre, or patrimonial estate of John, will go one-half to Elizabeth and Anne, and one-half to Thomas, who excludes his sister Jane,-Elizabeth and Anne, as the representatives of their father William, and Thomas as the representative of his father Richard, excluding their aunt Mary, though they are a degree more distant: they will also, as representatives of males, exclude James, Charles, and Catherine, the sons and daughter of Harriet, and Margaret the daughter of Maria, who are representatives of females, the descendants on the male side, though females, being always preferred to the descendants of females, though males.

If there be neither a brother, nor descendants of a brother, and all the descendants are either sisters, or nephews and nieces from sisters, the nephews exclude such nieces as are their sisters, but they exclude neither their aunts nor their first cousins. Example:

The propres of John will go one-third to Mary, one-third to James and Charles, who exclude their sister Catherine, and one-third to Margaret.

But the case is different with regard to acquêts and conquêts, which, together with the personal property, descend per capita or head to the nearest relatives in degree, without reference to stock, whether male or female,-still however to a brother to the exclusion of a sister, though of course not to a brother's children to the exclusion of a sister, but the reverse,-for it is only in equal degrees of proximity that the males inherit to the exclusion of females. Let the case given in the first table above again be supposed, and let the question relate to the right of succession to John's acquêts, conquêts, or personal property. This succession descending to the nearest relatives in degree, representation of stock not being allowed, it is evident that the whole of the property must go to Mary, who is one degree nearer than her nephews and nieces. She therefore excludes them all,-even the children of her brothers Richard and William, though, had either of these brothers been alive, he would have wholly excluded her.

Again, let it be supposed that Mary died before John, the property had then been equally divided between the nephews Thomas, James, and Charles, to the exclusion of the neices Jane, Elizabeth, Anne, Catherine, and Margaret, because the property descending per capita and not per stirpes, representation is not allowed, and because, in the same degree of proximity, males inherit to the exclusion of females. B—. N.B. The subject of garantie, or warranty, which is sufficiently important to require a separate article, will be treated of hereafter.

HARRIS'S ACCOUNT OF GUERNSEY.

IN the course of last month, we received a volume from London entitled "A System of British Geography, arranged upon an entirely new and original, but very condensed and comprehensive plan, dedicated by permission to the Princess Victoria," and which we are further told in the title page "is patronized by the Duchess of Kent, the Marquis of Northampton, Earl Fitzwilliam, and other distinguished personages." It is not our intention to enter upon a critical examination of this work generally, for we do not possess sufficient local knowledge of all the towns in the United Kingdom, to affirm, whether our author has described them correctly or not. Our object, as indicated by the heading of this article, is simply to show that Mr. Harris has most grossly and most ignorantly slandered the people of Guernsey, misrepresented their institutions, and falsified their character. As he sent us his book gratuitously and of his own free will, and accompanied the present with a very polite note, perhaps he may think that we may use him harshly if, however, he reflects for a moment, he must be convinced, that we can have no personal hostility against one, who is perfectly unknown to us, and that we merely censure him for giving to the world, under the patronage of our future queen, (who will never have more devoted and loyal subjects than the Guernseymen, unless they should suddenly abandon the principles of their ancestors, who never swerved in their fidelity to their Norman princes,) we repeat, that we merely censure him for giving to the world an incorrect and malignant statement, which he never could have taken the trouble to verify.

The first paragraph in this libel, to which we shall advert, seems, from the mode of expression, to have been borrowed by Mr. Harris from that scamp Berry, who had the impudence to put forth a huge quarto of twaddle and personal spleen, as a "History of Guernsey," to which was added a fulsome appendix of ancestral honours and pedigrees of a few families, who were his dupes, for every one knows, who has the slightest acquaintance with history, that very many native families, now poor, owing to the subdivision of land, can boast as long a Norman lineage, as the richest fundholders now, or then, living in the island. But let that pass, and let us hear Mr. Harris.

"The merchant and wealthy shopkeeper, Mr Berry tells us, are immersed in business from morning till night; they never relax from the cares of money making, nor does the want of exercise or retirement make any impression on their health. The rural beauties of the island are consequently not improved by art, and the delightful spots which learned leisure would select for a villa, if chosen at all for the abode of man, are occupied by some wretched hovel, or mean farmhouse. The mode of life here described is such as may be expected, wherever the commercial spirit reigns exclusively. The hope of quick gains is generally fatal to the exertions of patient industry, and the inhabitants of small islands but seldom add much agricultural proficiency to commercial enterprize."

Now, people of Guernsey, read over this extract a second time. What will our merchants say of their imputed sordidness, grabbing after filthy lucre "from morning to night," as if they were the manacled slaves of Plutus. What will our country gentlemen say, when a writer, in the year 1836, declares, that their houses "if chosen at all for the abode of man, are wretched hovels, or mean farmhouses," such we suppose, as Candie, or Beau Sejour, or St. George, or Vauxbelets, or the villas in Grange Road and Petite Marche, cum multis aliis. We are next told that Guernseymen have no "agricultural proficiency." This is the best joke of all. It is too coarse a one, however, for serious refutation.—Mr. Harris, if ever you publish a second edition of your book, read the March number of this Maga

Our author is not the respectable proprietor of the Royal Yacht Club Hotel at the Carrefour, who deserves many thanks for his indefatigable zeal in procuring foreign seeds, and improving the horticulture of the island.