The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1871-07-15 00:00:00

LANDLORD AND TENANT IN PARIS.

M. Frederick leniaitre, the great actor who more
than thirty years ag., delighted the frequenters of
French plays at the Olympic Theatre by his perfor-
mance of Hobert Macitire, and who now, although in
his " chair I lays,- isstill oqnpelleil with ihecaveql piwers
to strut his hour in the stage, has appeared as a Plain-
tiff against his landlord, in the Arbitral Court of the
third arrondissement, to ask for a remission d ap.rtuiin
if rent inconsequence of the rilnorjor which annihilated
his professional earnings during the siege if Paris
(writes a correspondent if the Lindy ow). It being
desired that the jurisdiction Id these ileitis should be
rapid and summary, it is expressly enacted that sunset
shall not appear before them. The consequence is
that a very low class of limbs of the law, who ad-
vertise themselves leoi.dex, or komnirs d'offioires, have
the monopoly of the business. M. Lemaltre's land-
lord AVM represented by me of these. The veteran
actor pleaded his own cause. In an early stage of
the case, a juryman manifested sympathy for the plain-
tiff by observing that the theatrical profession had
suffered more than any other from the war. This is
very true. Not only did General Trochu shut up all the
theatres during the siege, but for a long period after.
waists it was the fashion to deprecate all public anmse-
ment because the "country was in mournmg." M. Fre-
derick Leutaltre's ease is a type of hundreds of others
now going on. The landlords assume that their rights
are as sacred a., those of the throne and the altar,
and that nothing lint a humiliating confession, sup-
'sated by evidence of extreme poverty, can entitle the
tenant to any mercy. The notion does not enter
into the mind of the Paris landlord that he should
in any degree share the losses of the tenant, who, by
the fact of the siege, was prevented from earning his
living. The main argument of the landlord's advocate
—a lawyer of the calibre of Pell, the Lord Chancellor's
friend in Dieken's novel—was that M. F. Lemaitre
had been seen to eat a chicken on Jan 15, ergo he must
be rich. Moreover, he had bought sonic potatoes
when the current
-price of them was a shilling a piece.
He further alleged that the recalcitrant tenant had
30,000 francs in coppers concealed in his cellars, and
that he never went abroad without as much as 20,0001.
in his pocket. M. F. Lemaltre at once took issue
upon the impossibility of his carrying such a large stun
in copper about him. A witness for the landlord de-
posed that the tenant was in the habit of spitting about
the apartment, and in that way alone had I lone damage
to the extent of 600 f. Witnesses for the plaintiff said
he was too generous and tao prodigal to have saved
any money. The jury, under the directiost of the
foto de poe, gave an out and out verdict for M.
Frederick Lemaitre. Scores of cases of this kind, the
numbersof which set reporters at defiance, are now being
11?.ily decided in Paris very much upon the toss-up prin-
ciple. The juries, however, lean against the rapacity of
the landlord to an extent which M. Dufaure, who Is a
leviathan if the landlord class, certainly did not contem-
plate when he framed his very illil ieral Bill. In many cases
a remission of two quarters' rent has been granted. The
juries have extended to professions of all sorts the im-
munity which M. Dufaure only meant to grant sparingly
to tradesmen. Why, indeed, should barfiwters physic-
ians, painters, artists, and a host of members of the
lidera' professions, whose business was wholly or in
great part suspended during the siege, be forced to pay
the uttermost farthing, while his landlord, a drone,
bees nothing ? It is very strongly felt, and the juries
show this feeling by their verdicts, that to make the
landlord class submit to a fair share in the common
I—, is no infringement of the rights of property.