most literal sense), created by the sugar legislation, unbearable. The principal character of feudalism was the confusion of property and sovereignty. The taxes levied by feudal lords were not used for public services but for their own purposes. When a protective duty, which is paid by consumers, goes to guarantee or to increase the income of a landowner or a manufacturer, it does not then serve for public purposes but for the private advantage of this selfsame landowner or manufacturer. It is therefore nothing else but a feudal tax. Economists, who are called by their protectionist and socialist opponents, "the agents of financial feudalism," are in favour of the suppression of that feudal duty when they say "No duty must be paid to anybody but the State.'

Economists, looked upon as the foes of the people, insist that the employee shall get full value for his wages, that he shall not have to pay an additional 0.60 fr.—which is more than an hour's wage-for his kilogram of sugar, to the sugar manufacturer who has condescended to make it.

It has come to this, that in France the production is centred in 339 factories and 36 refineries. Electors, characteristically blind to their own interests, give their votes to representatives whose economical policy is as bad if not worse than that of the représentants censitaires of the Restauration and the Government of July. Whereas the whole of the legislation tends to give the monopoly of the sugar industry to a few, great indignation is felt when one Parisian factory closes its doors, and transfers its production to other refiners.

The Offence of Buying.

III.

SOME members of the Chamber of Deputies, and some journalists, who have tried by every possible means to cause high prices of sugar, wheat, meat, textiles, boots, iron and steel, become suddenly indignant if buyers, according to the law of demand and supply, bring about an increase of price of the first-mentioned commodity.

In July, 1900, M. Brabant-(a speculator-a bear)— seeing that he was a heavy loser, surrendered his estate whilst trying to bring before the court his buyer, whom he looked upon as an excellent man as long as he thought he could make money out of him.

He might have been told when presenting his complaint, that "the right to sell implies the right to buy," instead of which an inquiry was held with great circumstance, brokers' and commission agents' books were seized, and an expert had to write a report of 1,200 pages, in which he asserted, however, that "he has been unable to detect in the broker's letters any proof of an understanding or a coalition with regard to the rise in prices which has taken place."

But would not the agriculturists, the 339 sugar manufacturers, and all those who consider that France's wealth rests upon agriculture, hail such an increase in prices as a boon?

It was said that on the 31st of July, 1899, out of 1,706,000 bags of sugar stored at the general warehouses, 1,653,000 belonged to the Henry Say Company. A year after, in 1900, M. Jaluzot had in his possession 945,000 out of a total general stock of 1,165,000 sacks. Where is the article in our code which fixes a limit to

the stock of a private concern in relation to the total stock on the market?

Those buyers should be hailed as the sugar's liberators, and they should be carried triumphantly on the shoulders of those who favour the industry; for it was indeed very brave of them to buy and store goods which are produced in France at an increasing ratio, while their consumption remains almost stationary.

M. Jaluzot caused the price of sugar to go up 38 fr. per 100 kilog.! All those who are in favour of dear bread, dear sugar, all the protectionists should acclaim him and M. Ribot, who was the reporter of the law of 1884, as well as M. Méline, who was the author of it, they should congratulate M. Jaluzot on sending up the price of sugar in spite of a legislation which contributed to keeping it down.

The inquiry was opened in virtue of article 419 of the penal code, an article which dates from a century hence, and which ought to have been abrogated long ago. It runs thus:

Anyone who by falsely and calumniously spreading facts, who wilfully offers a higher price than the one asked by the sellers themselves (sur offres), who, by a trust or coalition of the principal owners of certain goods or commodities, stops the sale of the same, or sells them only at a certain price, or by some fraudulent deeds or means of any kind, will cause a rise or a fall in the prices of commodities, goods, public securities, or bonds, either above or below the rate which would have been determined by free and natural commercial competition, shall make himself liable to a month's imprisonment as a minimum, and a year's imprisonment as a maximum, and to a fine ranging from five hundred to one thousand francs. The convicted person may also by the judge's or court's decision be kept under high police supervision during two years as a minimum and five years as a maximum.

In reality the article is composed of two parts: the first is, sur offres (bear sales), trust, or coalition of the principal owners of certain goods or commodities, in order to stop the sale of the same, or to sell them only at a certain price.

But these are the usual business methods. Bear sales are of daily occurrence at the Exchange.

Every day possessors of merchandise or commodities will come to an arrangement upon the price they mean to sell.

Let us remark here that it is only a question of selling. But what is complained of by Brabant is the offence of buying, so that, literally speaking, the charge has nothing to do with article 419. When during the ancien régime and during the Revolution those who bought up and stored foodstuffs were mobbed, it was not because they had bought the commodity, but because they would not sell it. Nowadays one does not object to the price at which those so-called cornerers sold their goods, but to the price at which they bought them. And in spite of economists the whole trend of our political economy makes for higher prices. This article 419 seemingly aims at defending "free and natural commercial competition;" but, as Joseph Garnier rightly says, “what is the good of such a competition if people are denied the right of coming to a common understanding to sell or not to sell, to send prices up and down by selling or not selling according to one's own or other people's ideas?"

As a matter of fact, article 419 in the Penal Code has been abrogated by the law of 1884 dealing with trades' unions. "Coalitions" were aimed at by the Penal Code. And the law of 1884 authorizes associations "who will study and defend economic, industrial, commercial, and agricultural interests."

We are able to judge them by their work; the majority of them have only come into being in order to send up prices and to obtain protective, even prohibitive tariffs, securing prices "higher than would have been established by natural and free commercial competition.'

Article 419 ought to have been abrogated at the time when the law of 1884 recognised the right of coalition. For what is a strike? It is the cornering of labour: the workmen, the holders of it, withdraw it from the market. Logically, those who wish to maintain articlę

419 and see it applied to holders of goods or commodities should ask its application to the holders of labour; logically, all those who are in favour of liberty of trade and labour should insist on its abrogation.

In short the article is antiquated and obsolete.

In the Recueil Encyclopédique du droit français of M. Fernand Labori (article, Liberté commerciale et industrielle, paragraph 75) the same opinion is held by M. Georges Maillart.

Article 419 of the Penal Code, which has but seldom been applied, stands to-day like an isolated figure amidst new laws and ideas, ever since the repeal of the law of 14th-27th June, 1791, and of article 416 of the Penal Code. In his conclusions, before the first divisional chamber of the Court in a law-suit pending between a M. Livelyn and the liquidators of the Société des Métaux on the one hand, and the liquidators of the Comptoir d'Escompte on the other, M. Falcimaigne, then Public Prosecutor, now a Councillor in the Cour de Cassation, contended that 'article 419 was now a very blunt weapon, though it has never been much used." Now and then when speculation is so rashly carried on as to become a notorious scandal, when public order is shaken by an accumulation of ruined persons which very often follow some madcap transactions, then the public prosecutor tries to wake up article 419 from its slumber, and does his best to obtain from the court the punishment he considers necessary. But he does not always succeed. It might even be said that he very rarely succeeds, and it would be quite easy to ascertain how many times article 419 has been applied since it took its place in the Penal Code.

The same arguments are to be found in Dalloz (Supplément au Répertoire, Industrie et Commerce, paragraphs 533, etc.):

The law of March 28th, 1885, recognizes as legal the term markets, even the payment of differences. While this law was under discussion, an incident happened which plainly shows how obsolete, as far as ordinary coalition is concerned, article 419 has become. According to that law, as passed in the Chamber of Deputies, article 419 was also made applicable to Exchange securities, even the private ones which were not subject to the legislation of that time. This part of the law was rejected by the Senate, who deemed it unnecessary, as a recent decree had altered the jurisprudence in that respect, and as it was feared, so said M. Naquet, the reporter of the law, that it might seem to revive a text of law which was partly (so far as it applies to non-fraudulent coalition) obsolete, and absolutely antagonistic to the needs of the French commercial market.