In Africa.

In America.

For the United States and the Indian hordes of our continent, we cite our own knowledge.

It seems then to be a principle of universal law that the lands of a country belong to its sovereign as trustee for the nation. In granting appropriations, some sovereigns have given away the increments of rivers to a greater, some to a lesser extent, and some not at all. Rome, which was not feudal, and Spain and England which were, have granted them largely; France, a feudal country, has not granted them at all on navigable rivers. Louis XIV. therefore was strictly correct when in his edict of 1693, he declared that the increments of rivers were incontestably his, as a necessary consequence of the sovereignty. That is to say, that where no special grant of them to an individual could be produced, they remained in him, as a portion of the original lands of the nation, or as new-created lands, never yet granted to any individual. They are unquestionably a regalian, or national right, paramount, and pre-existent to the establishment of the feudal system. That system has no fixed principle on the subject, as is evident from the opposite practices of different feudal nations. The position, therefore, is entirely unfounded, that the right to them is derived from the feudal law; and it is consequently unnecessary to go into the proof of what |[32*]| the grants in that country *exhibit palpably enough, that infeudations were partially at least, if not generally, introduced into Louisiana.

It ought here to be observed however that, so far as respects the beds and navigation of rivers, the right vested in the sovereign is a mere trust, not alienable. It is not like lands, imposts, taxes, an article of public property constituting the revenues of the state, but like roads, canals, public buildings, reserved for the use of the individuals of the nation. See an explanation of this subject, Vattel 1. 235. 239.

| M. Thierry.| I have now to advert, and I do it with extreme regret, to a passage in the very able Memoire of M. Thierry, a Memoire conspicuous for its learning and sound reasoning, and to which I acknowledge myself peculiarly indebted for information on the points he has discussed. He says, p. 30. 'To the ancestors of John Gravier the right of alluvion belonged, not only by virtue of the Coutumes de Paris, which for two centuries back acknowledged the principle of the Roman law, and against which, for that reason, the Ordinances of the kings of France could with no manner of success be pleaded, inasmuch as a royal ordinance specially made that Coutume the civil law of this colony; but also by virtue of the Spanish laws, which from 1769, have been constantly in force in Louisiana.' 1. That the Roman principle of Alluvion was acknowledged by the Coutumes de Paris has not been proved. The adverse counsel, [Dupon. p. 9.] has said indeed, that those Customs were silent on this subject. But I have considered Pothier, Guyot, and Le Rasle as better authority. 2. Mr. Thierry supposes that a Royal Ordinance having specially made that Coutume the civil law of Louisiana, the Ordinances of the kings of France were excluded from the system, and could not control what was Coutume. He had not, I presume, seen the charter of 1712, which makes the edicts and ordinances, with the Coutume de Paris, the law of that province; nor sufficiently considered that had the Coutumes been alone established by one ordinance, another might change them. 3. He supposes the Spanish laws have given Alluvions to the riparian proprietor. But the laws of the province, established by their charter, were not annulled by the change of one king for another, as their legislator. The latter might change them. But has he done so? If he has, his edict must be produced, that we may weigh its words, and judge of its effects for ourselves. And we must guard against admitting that the example of a Spanish Governor, if such example has occurred, occasionally and incorrectly acting on the laws of Spain, amounted to a repeal of the whole system then existing, and a formal establishment of a different one. No such intention on |[33*]| his part, *to make so momentous a change, should be so slightly inferred; and no power of his could effect it, even if intended. Nothing less than an Ordinance of the Sovereign himself, signed with his own hand, and sanctioned by all the solemnities attending their enactment and promulgation, was competent to reverse at once the legal condition of a whole people, and the laws under which their lives and properties were held. Again, even such an ordinance could not change the law as to past rights; and those now in question were vested before the Spanish government took place, and could not be annulled by a subsequent law. These gratuitous admissions, therefore, of Mr. Thierry, not at all necessary to his argument, and therefore probably not well considered, and in opposition to the opinions and demonstrations of an able brother counsellor (Mr. Derbigny), must be disavowed, and the authority of the Ordinance of 1693 insisted on with undiminished confidence. Mr. Thierry himself will perhaps the more readily abandon them, when he sees with what avidity his eagle-eyed adversary has pounced upon them in a letter to some member of the government, in which he considers them as giving up all ground of opposition to his claims.

| Edict of Louis XIV.| To that edict then I shall now recur; and to the cavils raised against it by the advocates of the claims it annihilates. It is idle for them to call it bursal, fiscal, and the act of a tyrant, &c. [Duponc. 10.] as if the authority of laws was to be graduated by the character of the existing legislator; and as if we were to be the judges, for other nations, of the character and obligation of their laws. It is vain to pretend that because the word 'Alluvion,' inserted in the enacting clause of the edict, is not in the preamble, therefore it has no force in the body of the law: as if the preface, giving the general reason and views of the law, was alone to be the law, and its actual enactments a mere nullity. Although the preamble of a statute is considered as a key to open the mind of the makers as to the mischiefs in their view, yet in general it is no more than a recital of some inconveniences, which does not exclude any other for which the enacting clauses provide; nor must the general words of an enacting clause be restrained by the particular words of the preamble. 6. Bac. Abr. Statute. I. 2. and the authorities there stated. So says our law; so says reason; and so must say the Roman law, if it be ratio scripta. But it is further to be observed that the words 'attérrissements and accroissements,' accumulations and increments, used in this preamble are generic terms, of which 'Alluvion' is a species, and therefore strictly comprehended by it. This is proved |[34*]| by the Roman definition, 'Alluvio est incrementum* latens,' 'alluvion est un accroissement ou crement imperceptible,' by the Napoleon code cited by Mr. Livingston:

| Napoleon Code.|