The Partidas, however, though by far the most important legislative monument of its age, did not become at once the law of the land.[68] On the contrary, the great cities, with their separate privileges, long resisted any thing like a uniform system of legislation for the whole country; and it was not till 1348, two years before the death of Alfonso the Eleventh, and above sixty after that of their author, that the Partidas were finally proclaimed as of binding authority in all the territories held by the kings of Castile and Leon. But from that period the great code of Alfonso has been uniformly respected.[69] It is, in fact, a sort of Spanish common law, which, with the decisions under it, has been the basis of Spanish jurisprudence ever since; and becoming in this way a part of the constitution of the state in all Spanish colonies, it has, from the time when Louisiana and Florida were added to the United States, become in some cases the law in our own country;--so wide may be the influence of a wise legislation.[70] [68] Much trouble arose from the attempt of Alfonso X. to introduce his code. Marina, Legislacion, §§ 417-419. [69] Marina, Legis., § 449. Fuero Juzgo, ed. Acad., Pref., p. xliii. [70] See a curious and learned book entitled “The Laws of the Siete Partidas, which are still in Force in the State of Louisiana,” translated by L. Moreau Lislet and H. Carleton, New Orleans, 1820, 2 vols. 8vo; and a discussion on the same subject in Wheaton’s “Reports of Cases in the Supreme Court of the United States,” Vol. V. 1820, Appendix; together with various cases in the other volumes of the Reports of the Supreme Court of the United States, e. g. Wheaton, Vol. III. 1818, p. 202, note (a). “We may observe,” says Dunham, (Hist. of Spain and Portugal, Vol. IV. p. 121,) “that, if all the other codes were banished, Spain would still have a respectable body of jurisprudence; for we have the experience of an eminent advocate in the Royal Tribunal of Appeals for asserting, that, during an extensive practice of twenty-nine years, scarcely a case occurred which could not be virtually or expressly decided by the code in question.”