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HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF LOUISIANA.
Its ingredients are derived from various sources, and after being filtered through numerous codes, meet in one harmonious mass.    The
caution, and care was taken neither to shock received opinions, nor to change abruptly institutions which had the sanction of long usage, and to which the inhabitants had become attached. Notwithstanding all these precautions, murmurs and discontents were often heard shortly after the cession of the colony, which the firm and conciliating conduct of Congress and of Mr. Jefferson soon succeeded in appeasing, and which a few years of increasing prosperity wholly effaced.
In the meantime, the territory of Orleans was severed from the rest of the ancient French colony of Louisiana, and erected into a distinct portion of the Union, the executive department of which was under the direction of a governor, the legislative in the hands of a council, and the judiciary under the direction of three judges, elected every four years, and certain inferior magistrates.
The highest court of judicature, called the Superior Court of the territory of Orleans, was composed of three judges, of which one constituted a quorum, and was invested with original and appellate jurisdiction in criminal and civil causes.
The criminal law, which had governed Louisiana prior to its transfer, was entirely abolished, and in its place were substituted certain penal statutes providing for the punishment of offences, which they did not define, but left the definitions to be sought for at common law, in reference to which all future criminal proceedings were to be conducted.
Civil suits were brought by petition, and the practice was simple.
In relation to the civil jurisprudence of the country, the necessity was immediately felt of reducing it to some sort of order, to enable those who had been appointed to govern, as well as to judge, to know what it was, a fact of which, at the time of their appointment, they were profoundly ignorant. The legislative council, having made a vain attempt to "procure a civil and criminal code for the " territory," to use the language of Judge Martin, the first territorial legislature appointed, in the year 1806, Messrs. James Brown and Moreau Lis-let, two members of the bar, to prepare a digest of the laws in force in the territory. These gentlemen, having finished the task imposed on them in 1808, reported " a Digest of the civil laws now in force in the Territory of Orleans, with alterations and amendments, adapted to the present form of government,'' which was adopted by the Legislature, and constitutes what, is at present called the old Civil Code.
The gentlemen thus appointed to prepare a digest of the laws in force in Louisiana, instead of looking to the Spanish colonial law, and consulting exclusively the Partidas and the Recopilacion de las Indias, &c, as they surely would have done had the Spanish law alone been in force, transcribed literally, ami incorporated into their Digest large portions of the proje't of the Code Napoleon. The reasons assigned for this by Judge Martin is, that no copy of the Code Napoleon, although promulgated in 1804, had as yet reached New Orleans. The same learned, and we must add, accurate writer, in all which concerns cotem-poraneous events, speaks of this conduct on the part of the compilers of the Digest as praiseworthy, adding that, "although the project is necessarily much