"The difference in language, customs, and religion, divides the population into two distinct sections, and is a bar to united effort and to the improvement of the country; which nevertheless does improve in spite of this difficulty, though not as rapidly as it might and ought. I did not fully appreciate this until I visited the Superior Law Court, then sitting in Montreal. This court is held, during the erection of the new court-house, in the old, low-walled, high-roofed, building in which the French Government conducted their public affairs a hundred and fifty years ago. In this building, in 1839, the Privy Council decided to place the country under martial law, and the proclamation was issued from it. "The judges sitting when I visited the court were Smith, Van Feloon, and Mondelet, the latter a French Canadian. The first case argued was a long-pending one between Sir John Stewart and an architect, who had superintended the erection of some buildings on one of Sir John's farms. The counsel were not over clever, but sufficiently verbose, and full enough of 'instances,' both ancient and modern. The counsel for Sir John laid great stress upon the erroneous manner in which the action had been laid, and contended that as the English form of' assumpsit' had been taken, in order to get both debt and damages, instead of a single action of damages being brought, all the consequences of the form adopted must be taken by the plaintiff, who, not having proved _damages_, or even stated them, must be held by the court to have made out no case, and be cast accordingly. The counsel quoted the old French law, and a French law-writer of 1700, Chardon, and also English and Canadian authorities. The French Canadian judge having, during the oration, thrown in an observation or two in English, which he did not speak over fluently, at length uttered in French a long comment upon the fallacy of the argument--which sounded strangely. The counsel for the architect went at the argument of his opponent with great vigour, stimulated by the expressed opinion of Judge Mondelet, and went back to the days of ancient Rome to show that forms of action had been difficult even in those days, having once caused a revolt. He declared that even in England they were as unsettled as ever; and wound up by propounding as a dogma, that the Canadian law was neither English, French, Roman, nor of any other precedent, but was founded upon common sense, which was the only guide and authority in the administration of it. In corroboration of this, the little black eye of Judge Mondelet brightly twinkled, and he nodded his head in dignified approbation. Judge Van Feloon, who seemed more phlegmatic, quietly settled the matter by saying, that he supposed if a man _did_ work for another, and the other had agreed to pay him, he was entitled to the money, and that therefore the court would have to see that a bargain had been made, and the work duly performed, and then decide.