In the meaty of commerce between I d and France, in 1606, the Jas as it is termed, was to be aban doned as related to the English : " Ita ut in posterum align° modo jute Albinatils Saco addici non possint." (Rym. Fay/. tom. xvi. p. 650.) Letters-patent of Louis XIV., in 1669, confirmed in the parliament of Grenoble in 1674, exempted the Savoyards ; and this exemption was confirmed by the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713. The inhabitants of the Catholic cantons of Switzerland were exempted by treaty in 1715. The particulars of numerous other conventional treaties are recorded in M. Gaschon's work, in the speech of the Duc de Levis already re ferred to, and in the Rapport' from the Marquis de Clermont-Tonnerre to the French Chamber of Peers, printed in the Monitene for 1819, pp. 96-98.
Louis XV. granted exemptions, first to Denmark and Sweden ; then, in the treaty called the " Family Compact," to Spain and Naples ; to Austria, in 1766; to Bavaria, in 1768; to the noblesse of Franconia, Suabia, and the Upper and Lower Rhine, in 1769 ; to the Protestant Cantons of Switzerland, in 1771; and to Holland, in 1773. In Louis XVI.'s reign, other treaties of the same kind were made with Saxony, Poland, Portu gal, and the United States. The abolition of the Aubaine, as it related to Russia, was a distinct article of another treaty ; and, finally, by letters-patent, dated January, 1787, its abolition was pro nounced in favour of the subjects of Great Britain.
The Naticnal Assembly, by laws dated August 6, 1790, and April 13, 1791 (con firmed by a constitutional sot, 3rd of September, 1791), abolished the Droit d'Aubaine entirely. It was nevertheless re-established in 1804. (Moniteur for 1818, p. 551.) The treaty of Paris, 30th of April, 1814, confirmed the exemptions from the Aubaine as far as they were acknowledged in existing trea ties. The final abolition of the Droit d'Aubaine, as already mentioned, was proposed by the Duo de Levis, April 14, 1818, and passed into a law, July 14, 1819, which confirmed the laws of 1790 and 1791. Foreigners can now hold lands in France by as firm a tenure as native subjects.
The Droit d'Aubaine was occasionally relaxed, by the kings of France, upon minor considerations. In the very early
part of the 14th century, an exemption was obtained by the University of Paris for its students, as an encouragement to their increasing numbers. Charles V. granted the privilege in 1364 to such Castilian mariners as wished to trade with France. In 1366 he extended it to Italian merchants who traded to Nismes. The fairs of Champagne were encou raged in the same manner; and exemp lions to traders were also granted by Charles VIII. and Louis XI. Francis I. granted the exemption to foreigners who served in his army; Henry IV. to those who drained the marshes cr worked in the tapestry-looms. Louis XIV. extended the exemption to the particular manufacturers who worked at Beauvais and the Gobelins ; then to the glass.
manufacturers who had come from Venice ; in 1662, to the Dunkirkers, whose town he had acquired by purchase from England ; and, lastly, to strangers settled at Marseille, that city having become the entrep5t of products from the Levant.
Ambassadors and persons in their suite were not subject to the Droit d'Aubaine; nor did it affect persons accidentally pass ing through the country.
That the Droit d'Aubaine existed in Italy, in the papal states, in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, seems established by Muratori, Antiq. Ital. Medii foL MedioL 1739, tom. col. 14.
An extensive treatise on the Droit d'Aubaine has been already quoted in the works of Jean Bacquet, avocet de Roi en la Chambre de Thresor, fol. Paris, 1665. See also Memoires du Droit d'Aubaine,' at the end of M. Dupuy's Traitez tou chant le Droits du Roy tres-Chrestien,' fol. Par. 1655; and the Coutumes du Balliage de Vitry en Perthois,' par Estienne Durand, fol. Chalons, 1722, p. 254. But the most comprehensive view of this law, in all its bearings, will be found in the ` Repertoire Universel et Raisonne de Jurisprudence,' par M. Merlin, 4to. Paris, 1827, tom. i. p. 523, art. Aubaine ;" torn. vii. p. 416, art. "Heider." The Moniteurs of 1818 and 1819 contain abstracts of the discussions while the abolition was passing through the two Chambers at Paris. See the latter year, pp. 314, 315, 509, 510, 728, 729. The chief passages in the former year have been already quoted.