VETERINARY MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE. 11L 
twenty, or even thirty days in his possession; although they ac¬ 
tually existed at the time of sale. I shall presently have occasion 
to adduce examples of these. What can be more equitable or 
just than these arrangements ? What more easy to establish 
than harmony between these grand principles and honourable 
commerce in domestic animals ? 
Nevertheless, I will affirm that, after the publication of the 
Civil Code, usage and custom continued to regulate the war¬ 
ranty. With or without reason, the greater part of the French 
tribunals pretended that usage , far from being abolished, was ex¬ 
pressly preserved by article L648, and they persisted in their old 
method of adjudication. Others, and unfortunately the fewest 
in number, adopted the principles laid down by the code for the 
determination of unsoundness; but, influenced by considerations, 
the folly of which I could easily prove, they rejected a portion 
of the time of the warranty, and preserved that only which usage 
had fixed : among these I may cite, principally, the tribunals of 
Paris and of Lyons, who had been the first to set an example of 
reform. 
In the mean time government had felt the necessity of putting 
a period to a state of things so prejudicial to the great interests 
of agriculture. In the project of the Code Rural , which was 
presented, in 1808, to the Council of State by order of Napoleon, 
that which would constitute unsoundness in animals was deter¬ 
mined through the whole of France ; and the period of warranty 
was fixed for every one of these defects according to their nature. 
But for reasons, into which this is not the place to inquire, the 
Code Rural always remained a mere project . 
On the other hand, the veterinarians proceeding from the 
schools of Alfort and Lyons, penetrated by the principles which 
were there enforced, and well convinced of all the defects and 
injustice which the legislation according to usage contained, en¬ 
deavoured, in every case in which they were concerned, to induce 
the judges of the districts which they inhabited to adopt the 
mode of jurisprudence followed by the tribunals of Lyons and 
Paris. In some places they succeeded ; and, perhaps, with time 
and perseverance, founded as their reasonings were on the prin¬ 
ciples of evident equity, and appealing to the daily decisions of 
the two grand centres of French commerce, perhaps, I say, they 
would at length have produced some useful reform. 
But, by a sudden return to the old system, the motive or the 
propriety of which nothing can explain—derogatory to the rule 
which they themselve had made—to the jurisprudence which 
they had created—and which, by their salutary example, had 
extended on every side, some of the judges of Paris have recently 
