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BURIAL, LAW OF. 



operation of the Ottoman authorities. The dis- 

 trict around Sofia was infested with robbers, 

 and was scoured with gendarmes, who captured 

 some. A band was surrounded by troops near 

 the Macedonian frontier, and fourteen were 

 captured and straightway hanged. 



Seizure of the Bellova Railroad. On July 15 the 

 Bulgarian Government, alleging the necessity 

 to guard the line in consequence of the attack 

 of brigands on the station at Bellova, took 

 possession of the Bellova - Vakarel Eailroad. 

 The concessionaires of the Porte had already 

 been refused permission to operate the line, on 

 the ground that a Bulgarian law forbade a for- 

 eign company from working a line over Bul- 

 garian territory without special permission, 

 which the Government could not see its way 

 to accord. The Porte appealed to the organic 

 statutes of Eastern Roumelia, but the Bulgarian 

 Government refused to recognize this as being 

 longer in force after the Tophane convention 

 and the retrocession of the Rhodope villages. 

 Finally, in order to clear away the complica- 

 tions arising from illegalities on its own side, 

 the Porte decided to tarn over the administra- 

 tion of both the Bulgarian junction and the 

 Vranja-IIskub line to Baron Hirsch. The Sofia 

 Government still insisted on a preferential 

 right to work the Eastern Roumelian section 

 in connection with the rest of the Bulgarian 

 line, to the advantage of both the international 

 and the local service, and offered to assume all 

 responsibilities for the operation, the interest 

 on the bonds, and the purchase of the road. 

 A truce was agreed to, whereby the Oriental 

 Railway Company assumed the administration 

 of the Constantinople line, and provisionally 

 of the Bulgarian junction line. When Baron 

 Hirsch's company attempted to take over also 

 the Vranja-Uskub line difficulties were invent- 

 ed, and the Franco-Servian company was left 

 in possession. The Bulgarian Government ar- 

 ranged through an English syndicate to pur- 

 chase the Varna-Rustchuk Railroad, with the 

 proceeds of an issue of bonds, the total sum 

 amounting to nearly 47,000,000 francs. The 

 road, which continues temporarily its mail and 

 through passenger service, was transferred to the 

 Government administration on August 26. A 

 new line, 200 kilometres long, passing through 

 Rasgrad and Tirnova, and joining the southern 

 railway, is determined upon. 



BURIAL, LAW OF. The due protection of the 

 dead engaged the earnest attention of the great 

 law-givers of the polished nations of antiquity. 

 The laws of the Greeks carefully guarded the 

 private rights of individuals in their places of 

 interment, and a similar spirit shows forth in 

 the clear intelligence and high refinement of 

 Roman jurisprudence. Upon the common law 

 of England (from which the large body of 

 American jurisprudence is deduced) the Roman 

 civilization, laws, usages, arts, and manners 

 must have left a deep impression, have become 

 intermixed and incorporated with Saxon laws 

 and usages, and constituted the body of the 



ancient common law. For about four hundred 

 years England, under the name of Britain, 

 formed a part of the Roman Empire; and 

 there is no reason to believe that, when the 

 Roman domination came to an end, the Roman- 

 ized Britons abandoned with political allegiance 

 the civilization and jurisprudence they had so 

 long enjoyed; still less that they would seek 

 or desire in any way to withdraw from the 

 sepulchres and graves of their dead the pro- 

 tection that those laws had so fully afforded. 

 On the contrary, it is distinctly shown by 

 Scandinavian historians that the partially civil- 

 ized Saxons had been specially taught to rever- 

 ence their places of burial. Nor do we find 

 in the history of the occasional inroads of the 

 Danes any evidence that these invaders ob- 

 literated in the slightest degree the reverential 

 usages in the matter of the dead coming down 

 from the Romans or from Odin. The early 

 laws of that rude people, carefully collected 

 in the twelfth century by the learned anti- 

 quarian, Saxo Grammaticus, speak with abhor- 

 rence of those who insult the ashes of the 

 dead, not only denouncing death upon the 

 " alieni corruptor cineris" but condemning 

 the body of the offender to lie forever unburied 

 and unhonored. The law of the Franks (near 

 neighbors of the Saxons) not only banished 

 from society him who dug up a dead body for 

 plunder, but prohibited any one from relieving 

 his wants until the relatives of the deceased 

 consented to his readmission to society, thus 

 distinctly recognizing the peculiar and personal 

 interest of the relatives in the remains. Nor 

 was the right to protect the dead abrogated 

 by the Norman Conquest. It is true that the 

 swarm of Roman Catholic ecclesiastics that 

 poured into England with the Conqueror ex- 

 erted themselves actively and indefatigably to 

 monopolize for the Church the temporal au- 

 thority over the bodies of the dead, and finally 

 succeeded in ingrafting upon English common 

 law that curious and subtle distinction which 

 still exists in Great Britain and her colonies, 

 viz., that the heir can invoke the civil courts 

 to protect (or give compensation for an injury 

 to) the monument, coffin, or grave-clothes of 

 his ancestor, while the ecclesiastical authorities 

 alone have the right of property in the remains 

 and the disposal of the body of the dead person. 

 This distinction has never been fully recognized 

 by common law in the United States; and be- 

 cause the American and English cases differ 

 on this point, it is necessary that the student 

 of the law of burial should acquaint himself 

 with the history of burial law as above briefly 

 recounted. When the United States adopted 

 the English common law as the law of the 

 land, they eliminated from it the ecclesiastical 

 element, and thus the right to protect the 

 bodies of the dead reverted to those who had 

 previously possessed it. But to this day the 

 taint of ecclesiastical interference in civil affairs 

 is observed in some States. Thus, it has been 

 held that neither the heir nor the executor nor 



