commend this example to the consideration of our national legislature.

From the narrative before us, from Mackenzie's travels, and from the outline oflord Selkirk's 'Sketch of the Fur Trade, &c.' contained in the Review already referred to, we gather the following history of the origin and progress of the dispute between his lordship and the North West Traders. Previous to the year 1806, the earl of Selkirk was engaged in several schemes of colonization in the British possessions in North America. He first formed a settlement at Prince Edward's Island-and on a visit to Canada, becoming acquainted with the nature and extent of the fur trade, projected a plan for monopolizing it. At that period this trade was principally carried on by an association of merchants called the North West Company, which had recently been organized by the individuals who had formerly pursued the same traffic on their separate accounts. The stock of this company is divided into a hundred shares, and each share confers a vote. Thirty of these shares are owned by a single house in Montreal, and eighteen or nineteen by different houses in Montreal and London. The remaining shares are held by the wintering partners, who manage the affairs of the company in the interior, and who after having served a certain term of years, are permitted to retire with an annual allowance, and the vacancy is filled by the election of a clerk who must have performed a previous tour of duty. Such a system is admirably calculated to stimulate all parties to activity. This company has in its employ about 2000 voyageurs, who transport merchandise and provisions to the various posts and depots, and collect the returns of furs and peltries. These returns amount annually to about 106,000 beaver skins, 2100 bear skins, 5500 fox, 4600 otter, 17,000 musquash, S2,000 marten, 1800 mink, 6000 lynx, 600 wolverine, 1600 fisher, 100 rackoon, 3800 wolf, 700 elks, and 2000 deer skins. The distance of the Red River, on which this company had a post, from Montreal, is 2300 miles by the nearest route, that of Lake Superior. This post is about equidistant from Lake Superior and from Hudson's Bay, and appears to be the nearest point of the contested territory to the inhabited parts of Canada. His lordship having possessed himself of various information in regard to the establishments of this association, and perceiving its greater facility of access from Hudson's Bay, was induced, on his return to Eng

land, to look into the charter of the Hudson's Bay Company, which was incorporated by Charles the II. He found in this charter a grant to this company of an indefinite extent of territory bounding on Hudson's Bay. He found, too, that the nominal stock of this company was £100,000, and that the shares had fallen from 250 per cent. to 50 or 60 per cent. His lordship purchased shares to the nominal amount of £40,000, and ohtained the virtual control of the Company's affairs. He next procured a grant to himself of about 116,000 square miles of the company's supposed territory, commencing at Lake Winnipic, and running some hundred miles into the territory of the U. States. His lordship now began to advertise for settlers, and soon obtained a number of Irish and Scotch families, which he shipped off to Hudson's Bay, under the conduct of Mr. Miles Macdonnell, whom he appointed governor of the Colony. The detachment arrived at York Fort, and proceeded to Red River, which it reached in the autumn of 1812. Gov. Macdonnell's first care was to make due provision for the subsistence of his people. This he was not immediately able to do, but was obliged to distribute them in the winter in the company's forts. The next winter he issued a proclamation in his quality of governor of 'Ossiniboia,' prohibiting the exportation of provisions of any kind from the countries within his jurisdiction. This province is thus meted and bounded in this document-" Beginning on the western shore of the Lake Winnipic, at a point in fifty-two degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, and thence running due west to the Lake Winnipiquarhish, otherwise called Little Winnipie; then in a southerly direction through the said Lake, so as to strike its western shore in latitude fiftytwo degrees; then due west to the place where the parallel of forty-two degrees north latitude intersects the western branch of the Red River, otherwise called Assiniboin River; then due south from that point of intersection to the height of land which separates the waters running into Hudson's Bay from those of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers; then in au casterly direction along the height of land to the source of the River Winnipic, (meaning by such last named river, the principal branch of the waters which unite in the Lake Sagingae); thence along the main streams of those waters, and the middle of the several lakes through which they flow, to the mouth of the Winnipic

River; and thence in a northerly direction, through the middle of the Lake Winnipic, to the place of beginning." It will be perceived that this new Island of Barataria' extends considerably into our Missouri and North Western Territories. The effect of gov. Macdonnell's proclamation was to interdict the usual supplies to the North Western Company's Voyageurs. His excellency, however, granted a partial supply out of the seizures made under it, so that their business was not brought to a stand. Lord Selkirk sent out a small body of recruits to his colony, which arrived in the fall of 1814. The North-West Company about the same time procured a warrant from Montreal for the arrest of gov. Macdonnell and his sheriff Mr. Spencer, the execution of which was committed to Mr. Cameron, one of the partners. Gov. Macdonnell refused to submit to this process, and formally warned Cameron to quit the premises' of his landlord the Earl of Selkirk. Macdonnell's men, however, soon began to desert him, and he at last yielded himself up a prisoner. After his departure, one hundred and forty families of the colonists removed to Canada.

Lord Selkirk in the mean time had projected a settlement in what is called the Athabasca (Athapuscow) country, another immense and still more remote district, included in the obsolete claim of the Hudson Bay Company. A Mr. Robertson was intrusted with the execution of this project, and collected a party for the purpose in Canada. His lordship was equally active in London, and having fortified himself with the opinions of learned lawyers, obtained from the Hudson's Bay Company the appointment of a governor and council, with paramount judicial and executive powers over all the Company's territories. Mr. Semple was nominated governor, and embarked for York Fort on Hudson's Bay. Robertson proceeded from Montreal, and despatched a Mr. Clark with about 100 men for Athabasca, whilst he remained with some of the Red River settlers who had set out in the spring for Hudson's Bay, and whom he fell in with in the vicinity of Lake Winnipic. Semple advanced with his reinforcement from York Fort, and being joined on his route by Robertson and his party, proceeded to Red River and reestablished the colony. Soon after an attack was made upon Fort Gibraltar, the North West Company's post at the forks of the lower Red River, where Mr. Came ron and his people were taken prisoners. The harsh proceedings of gov. Semple,

led to retaliatory measures on the part of the North West Company. Gov. Semple fitted out a gun-boat on Lake Winnipic to interrupt the communication with the Company's remoter establishments, and erected batteries, with the same view. The Company attempted to open a communication by land, between Riviere Qu'Appele and the Lake. About fifty Indians and half-breeds were employed for this purpose. In the prosecution of this enterprise, a skirmish took place, in which the governor and about twenty of his men were killed. The rest of the colonists once more dispersed.

In his

Whilst things were in this state in the interior, lord Selkirk had arrived in Canada, and after receiving a commission as a Justice of the Peace for the Indian Territory and Upper Canada, had enlisted 150 disbanded soldiers of De Meuron's regirent, principally foreigners, with whom, in addition to about 180 canoe-men, and a sergeant's guard granted for his lordship's protection by the governor of Canada, he prepared to enter upon his seignorial rights and magisterial duties. progress he received intelligence of the disaster which had befallen his Colony. He immediately pushed on to Fort William, the principal depot of the North West Company, where he arrived the 11th of August, 1816. His lordship took possession of this post--no resistance being made, although the company's servants there, at that time, amounted to nearly 500. Having thus far effected his object, by military power, his lordship next assumed the character of the magistrate, and in this capacity put all the partners, whom he found there, in confinement, and afterwards sent them off as prisoners to Upper Canada, where they obtained their enlargement by a writ of Habeas Corpus. Unfortunately one of the canoes in which these gentlemen were conveyed, being overloaded, sunk, and Mr. Mackenzie, a partner of the North West Company, and eight other persons, were drowned. The Company's property at Fort William amounting to £60,000, was retained by his lordship as an indemnity for the expenses of the war, and their servants were taken into his own employ. Sir John Sherbrooke, governor general of the Canadas, was applied to in behalf of the company, in this emergency, to order the arrest of lord Selkirk-but his excellency found, upon due consultation, that the scene of these outrages was situate in the Western District of Upper Canada, and the applicants were referred to Mr. Gore, the civil go

sanctuary. This diffusion of knowledge may present, perhaps, fewer heroes in science; but it produces a stronger phalanx of disciplined scholars: we are more seldom dazzled with scientific hardihood and adventure, but the march of improvement is more steady and uniform: the literary state is subject to fewer revolutions, is less influenced by the authority of particular names and experiences; in short, all the advantages which arise to both literary and political bodies from having the mass of its citizens well informed and enlightened.

The student of English law is particularly indebted to system and arrangement. He has no longer, indeed, the honour of mining his way through undigested matter and obscure language, and drawing light from sources which ordinary enterprise and industry were insufficient to explore. He has the elements of science exhibited in the comprehensible and methodical commentaries of a Blackstone, and the body of principles, maxims, and decisions digested by a Cruise or a Bacon, or in the various treatises which modern times have produced on the different topics of the Law. The viginti annorum lucubrationes, if still necessary, are at least less irksome and laborious; and the path of inquiry, with due attention to method, is practicable to moderate talent and application.

This method is, indeed, the principal defect of legal education; and for this reason, among others, we with pleasure find announced a work so well adapted as the present, to remove the fault we complain of, and at once indicate to students the best sources of knowledge, and the regular order in which they are to be consulted. Innumerable questions must present themselves to the mind of the lawstudent in the onset, and during the whole course of his career, which either his instructor has not leisure to explain, or the student himself is too diffident or too indolent to ask, or finds it difficult to reduce to any precise phraseology. All these embarrassments it is the aim of Professor Hoffman, as far as possible, to obviate; and in many parts of the manual which he has presented to the law-students of the country, we have remarked, moreover, an amiable desire to cheer them in their progress, at once consolatory to the student, and indicative of a minute acquaintance with the obstacles and the despondence peculiar to the sedentary and the studious. The following has reminded us forcibly of the doubts and delays of our legal novitiate, and we

recommend it to the consideration of all resolving and procrastinating readers.

"There is nothing," says he, "which we more earnestly inculcate on every tyro in law, than to observe scrupulously the hours which he has allotted to the study of his profession. Whatever may be the temptations of other and more pleasing literary pursuits, or whatever the allurements of idleness or pleasure, this should be a permanent object from which his attention should never be long diverted. In all studious enterprises, (if we may be allowed the phrase,) he will be found to proceed on a very erroneous plan, who thinks to make the extraordinary efforts of to-morrow supply the deficiencies of to-day. The mind which contemplates with pleasure a short exertion of its powers, which, though it must be regularly made, will, it knows, be regularly relieved by the period for relaxation or for rest, is apt to shrink from the long and uninterrupted exertion which the student often imposes on himself, by way of compensation for past indolence. It will therefore diminish his toil, as much as it will advance his progress, to allot to every day its just labour, and to perform this with all the scrupulosity which circumstances will permit. If, however, accident has deranged his plan, or idleness and dissipation have made inroads into the seasons set apart for study, we would warn him against the common mistake of neglecting to employ the fragments of time thus produced, in the expectation and design of more methodical exertion for the morrow. How much might be gained by the studious occupation of the moments thus idly and unprofitably thrown away, is incredible to those who have never calculated the days, the weeks, and months to which they rapidly amount. He that would not experience the vain regret of misemployed days, "must learn, therefore, to know the present value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to the ground." Whoever pursues a contrary plan will for ever find something to break that continuity of exertion, in looking forward to which, he solaces himself for his present supineness; and at the expiration of the period allotted for the completion of his legal apprenticeship, will generally find a mighty waste of time to have proceeded from the trivial value he attached to its fragments.

"The sedentary and the studious have, indeed, to contend with obstacles peculiar to themselves. Secluded of neces