the independence, the commercial courts and the mining tribunals were suppressed, but the former are now being restored, and the latter are about to be re-constructed. These ordenanzas, or mining laws, have continued to be in operation, though limited to the province of the ordinary tribunals. They have been revised and dissected with great discernment, and seem now to be little needing ameliorations; however, we must observe, that there is no abrogation of that article which limits the possession of the mines to natives-that is to say, which excludes those who are not naturalized from having the entire possession, who may, however, have a partial interest in any of the mines. Every new mine belongs to him who denounces it, provided that, during the sixty following days, he has constructed a shaft in the vein of the mine at least of ten varas in depth. The concessions consist of a square of 200 varas. The abandoned mines, or those looked upon as such, by the works being suspended during a period of four consecutive months, can also be denounced. The metallurgical workshops (haciendas de beneficio) may also be considered as abandoned, and become the property of him who denounces them, whenever no works are carried on; the buildings are taken to pieces, and all the machinery withdrawn, but the proprietor has an extent of four months to preserve his property, if he prefers once more to renew operations. With a view to avoid disputes, a great many very proper regulations are established, amongst which are to be observed, those affecting the cost of exhausting the neighboring mines, and for the sharing of the mineral extracted on the concession of a stranger, by means of subterranean works which did not then exist at such a depth by the means of the proprietor. Useful precautions are also imposed as to the mode of exploring, and the safety of the workmen, but it is to be regretted, that too generally this interesting portion of the ordenanzas is not regarded, as respects the good management, and the hours of labor, with all that exactitude which the general interest demands, though the infringement is attended with the loss of possession. These same ordenanzas granted to the miners certain peculiar rights, some of which, as that of nobility, have ceased to exist, whilst others, relating to the rights of creditors, still exist the same as before. A miner, or proprietor of metallurgical workshops, cannot be dispossessed by his creditors, whose only course is to seize on the works, and conduct them on their own account, taking of the produce to the extent only of their demands; at the same time, furnishing to the debtor a sufficient sum over his indispensable expenses, and those of his family.

Under the Spanish government, which placed the military and the clergy under a peculiar jurisdiction, (fueros) these prerogatives are little surprising, and it is doubtful whether the class they were destined to protect, have derived any very great advantages; they have had, under all circumstances, this inconvenience, of obliging the miner to procure for himself the capital he found necessary, on conditions the harder in proportion as the reimbursement became the more fettered from his position. In Spain, the mines belonged to the crown, and could not be worked without special permission, which stipulated the part of the produce which should belong to the treasury; in 1504, shortly after the discovery of America, an ordonnance fixed this tax at a fifth of the value, which from that received the name of quinto; the booty collected by Cortez and his army was subjected to this regulation. After 1525, the working of mines of gold and silver, was permitted to all those who wished to undertake them, with the under

standing that they should pay the ordinary tax on the produce. In 1548, this tax on the silver was reduced to a tenth of the value, for an extent of six years, but they still continued to receive it on this footing, by successive adjournments of the question, till the year 1572, when the tenth, instead of the fifth, was agreed upon without any other restriction; but this reduction of impost, which only applied to certain districts, did not become general till 1723. A law of Charles the Fifth fixed the rights of fusion, assay, and mark, at 1 per cent on the value of the metals. In 1584, Philip the Second decreed, that in future the mines of America should not be merely concessions subject to provisions, but that they should be the property of those who discovered them, provided they complied in other respects to the mining regulations. Some other supplementary imposts, established at different periods, and amounting together to 2 per cent, were abolished in 1777, and there only remained but the tenth of the value, and the right to 1 per cent on the fusion, the assay, and the mark. These rights, which existed on this footing until the emancipation of Mexico, were abolished, or rather modified, by a decree of the 20th February, 1822, which fixed equally what should be demanded on gold and silver, as to the different operations of assay, fusion, refining, &c. By this decree, all the duties are reduced to 3 per cent on the value of the metals. Since then they have added a right to 1 real each mark of silver of 11 deniers, valued at 8 piastres to 2 reals, or 66 reals (which is about 11 per cent,) for the establishment de mineria-so that the total of the actual demands on the ingots is 4 per cent for silver, and 3 per cent for gold. The expenses of fusion and assay are no longer a fixed duty, but are regulated on a footing which exceeds very little their real cost, which is of small importance. In Mexico, the assayers are required not only to settle the title of the ingots and the money, and to stamp the silver and jewels, but are also to see executed by themselves, the fusion of silver and gold, in that condition in which they are found at the close of the metallurgical labor necessary to separate them from the gangues. This precaution has been taken with the double view of avoiding any falsification of the ingots, and to insure the recovering of the duties. The general law requires the silver, in marquetas, to be brought to the laboratory of the assayer of the mining district in which the works are situated, such as it is after the volatilisation of the mercury, or the pieces of silver obtained by the treatment on the dry method. Some of the great works, such as those of Fresnillo and Real del Monte, for instance, have obtained the privilege of presenting their produce already converted into ingots at their establishments. It must be added, that there is great liberality as to the execution of this law, and that often the assayers mark, without referring them, blocks of silver of great weight, when they come from such establishments as are thought to be unimpeachable. This tolerance may, however, appear to be injurious some day when it is least expected; but in the present day, any frauds in ingots are unknown in Mexico, and the small number of differences which present themselves occasionally are due, either to some want of exactness in the assay, or rather, to some effects of liquation, difficult to be avoided, and which are very sensible on the ingots, which the law admits to a weight of 136 marks. The disputes between two assayers on the title of the same alloy, are decided by the assayador mayor, whose laboratory is established at Mexico. This is also the officer who issues, after examination, the diplomas to the assayers.

the

ABIJAH FISK was born at Waltham, Massachusetts, in December of year 1785. His father, also named Abijah, was a respectable farmer, a man of great moral worth and patriotism, who served his country for more than five years, during the revolutionary war of 1775, as a soldier in the army and navy of the United States-in the latter, on board the Oliver Cromwell, a vessel of war from the state of Connecticut, on board of which vessel he was taken prisoner, after a desperate action, in which she was captured by a British ship of war, and carried into New York while that place was in possession of the British forces. Notwithstanding he was severely wounded, which disabled him in a great degree for life, he was carried on board the prison-ship, and there confined many months, suffering almost every hardship which can be conceived possible for any one thus circumstanced to endure. Yet he recovered, and once more, after the close of the war, returned to his farm at Waltham, where he was married to Miss Alice Adams, one of the descendants from the ancestors of the late John Adams, formerly President of the United States, where he continued for many years to till the ground with his own hands. When his son Abijah, the subject of this sketch, was seven years of age, he removed to Weston, the next town adjoining, in the same state, where this son continued to labor with his father in the field, except at short intervals, during which he attended the public school about ten or twelve weeks per annum, mostly in the winter, and which was the only opportunity he ever had of attending any school whatever until he was nearly eighteen years of age, when he left his father's roof, poor and friendless, with nothing to recommend him but the proud consciousness of integrity, energy, and persevering industry, for a residence in Boston, in a store or commercial house doing bu siness mostly with the country, as a salesman and general attendant in the store and out of it, as occasion required his services. He soon attracted the attention of some of the neighboring establishments, from his activity and good management in the establishment in which he was employed; and in two years, when he was but twenty years of age, he was offered a capital of five or six thousand dollars and the credit and use of the name of a house of large means, to go into business in his own name, dividing the profits with them. He accepted the proposition, and in one year he found he had doubled the capital, and his credit was good for any sum he required. In this way he went on for several years, when he found he had made a pretty handsome sum. He separated from those who established him, paying them off in full most honorably the half of the profits. He continued to prosper in business at Boston, with occasionally heavy losses, laboring very hard in his store with his own hands, until about the year 1820, when he had accumulated a capital of $200,000, and upwards. About this time, or earlier, he had commenced some heavy operations at Savannah, in Georgia, by establishing a young man who had been a clerk of his for some time, (and he was remarkable for aiding others,) who soon involved his principal in great losses, and in the summer of 1822, owing to many losses in various ways, on shipments, endorsements, and the failure of about eighty or ninety houses in Boston at that time, his losses were

* We are indebted to the editor of the New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, for this brief but instructive memoir of an enterprising merchant of that city.

immensely heavy, and he stopped payment with the general crash, for about six hundred thousand dollars. He however quickly closed up his affairspaid off all of his small creditors with interest-and with the larger ones he compounded, and paid eighty-one cents in the dollar on those who came upon him with paper on which he was only endorser, but ultimately paid up every one, or nearly every one, every dollar, with interest. There was not, it is believed, more than one or two exceptions to subsequent full payment, and if any, it was for cause. In one instance, one creditor put him in prison, and kept him there in a little room of eight by twelve or fourteen feet, for six months, in close confinement, refusing to take eighty-one cents in the dollar; but finding at length that his debtor could not be driven in that way, he came to terms, and received what he might have had at first.

After settling up with all, he sailed for Havana in 1823. Having some friends, he commenced operating there and in Rio de Janeiro, in coffee and sugar, and shipping largely to New Orleans principally, but frequently to European ports, to St. Petersburgh, and other places.

Having carried on a successful course of operations for about seven years, he came at length and settled in New Orleans, in the early part of 1830. It may have been remarked that Mr. Fisk was the founder of the very valuable trade in coffee between Rio de Janeiro and New Orleans. He in fact first introduced this article into consumption in that part of the country.

From the time of establishing himself in New Orleans, his operations and course of business are known to have been very large; that he has made and lost immense sums of money. His losses in 1839 and 1840, in about eighteen months, were more than $400,000, of which about $320,000 were in cotton; yet he stood up manfully under them, never faltering, but paying up reclamations without suffering himself to despond, although nearly crushed. He lost by a single individual, for whose family he felt a great sympathy, and desired for their sakes to assist the head of it, although admonished that he was unworthy of his confidence, the sum of $75,000.

When we look at this stripling youth of eighteen years, emerging from the humble pursuits of the farm, and wending his way to the metropolis, and from the thoughts of how to realize the best return from the cultivation of a few acres, to the immense commercial operations of millions in a single year, we are lost in wonder and surprise. This is the result of free school education, and the inculcation by his parents, in childhood, of religious and moral principles, which have been the foundation and polar star of his actions and success under the kind guidance of Providence, through life. Although his operations have been bold, and generally of the largest class, yet he has ever been retiring in his habits, desiring to be unnoticed, and saying but little in regard to what he was doing. He was but little known in reality; all his feelings and impulses were generous and kind, when properly understood; and he has done much in his unobtrusive way to promote the happiness of very many persons, and in several instances, to a large extent. His word was universally appreciated as truth itselfand no man's honor stood fairer. He is gone, we trust, to where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.

During his last illness, the same manly firmness continued to the last moment of his life; never uttering complaint, and when all hope had fled, the day before his departure, giving directions about the disposition of his body; and a short time before the final close, saying he was going, bidding farewell to those around him, asking the hour, and then taking his flight forever.

MERCANTILE LAW CASES.

CASES DECIDED IN THE SUPREME COURT OF LOUISIANA, AT THE CLOSE OF THE LAST TERM, 1845.

THE following cases, decided in the Supreme Court of Louisiana, at the close of the last term of 1845, were prepared by the reporter of the Supreme Court of that state, and are published under his supervision.*

LAUGHLIN, et. al., v. GANAHL.

Plaintiffs having sold to defendant a quantity of cotton, delivered it to him on receiving only a part of the price. The purchaser shipped the cotton, consigning it to a house of which the intervenor was a member, for sale on account of the shipper; and, in consequence of advances made by the intervenor, had the bill of lading made out in the name of the latter. Plaintiffs having sued to recover the balance of the price, sequestered the cotton; and the party who had made the advances intervened, claiming a privilege on its proceeds. Held, that by delivering the cotton before payment in full, the venders authorized defendant to consider himself its absolute owner; that by suffering the intervenor to take the bill of lading in his name, defendant gave him the same right to the cotton from the date of the bill, as if he had endorsed to him a bill of lading filled up in defendant's own name, which would transfer the property; that the privilege of the vender, under art. 3,194 of the Civil Code, exists only so long as the property remains in possession of the purchaser; and that under art. 3,214 of the Civil Code, the intervenor was entitled to a privilege on the proceeds of the cotton, for the advances made by him.

The intervenor appealed from a judgment of the District Court of the First District, dismissing his intervention, and decreeing to the plaintiffs the proceeds of the property sequestered in this suit. The judgment was reversed, and one rendered in favor of the plaintiffs.

SELLICK V. KELLY, et. al.

Under art. 275 of the Code of Practice, or under the 9th section of the act of 7th April, 1826, to obtain a sequestration, the applicant must make oath that he fears that the party having possession of the property may remove it beyond the limits of the state during the pendency of the suit. It is not any privilege of mortgage which the creditor has on the property, but the circumstance which causes him to apprehend that its removal may deprive him of his recourse upon it, that gives the right of sequestration. The requisites for obtaining a sequestration under the act of 1826, where the party has a lien or privilege on the property, are the same as under section 6 of art. 275 of the Code of Practice, in cases in which the creditor has a special mortgage.

Where a sequestration has been illegally issued, the true standard of damages is the probable loss sustained by the defendant in consequence of having been deprived of the free use or disposal of his property. He should be placed as nearly as possible in the situation he would have been in, had the sequestration not been issued.

This was an action before the District Court of the First District against the principal and sureties in a sequestration bond, for damages for an illegal sequestration. There was a judgment below against the defendants for $50, from which they appealed. The judgment in the Supreme Court gave the plaintiff $800, the penalty of the bond.

HYDE v. HEPP.

Action to recover of defendant the value of certain carriages, consigned by plaintiff to a third person for sale, and sold under a fi. fa. by defendant, and pur

* Commercial Bulletin.