hanging on the tenter-hooks during the two last sessions of parliament, owing to the rejection of the Reform Bill by the Lords.

AGREEMENTS FOR LEASES AND CONVEYANCES.-A pregnant source of legal suits is the law with respect to sales, leases, and other conveyances. Thus, if you agree with a person to give him a lease, though he, under the agreement, becomes your tenant, he is your equitable tenant only, but not your legal tenant. He may be possessed of a written agreement, signed and sealed, for a lease of ten years, and may occupy under it, but he has no lease which a court of law can take notice of; and, if an ejectment is brought, he must go out. He may go into a court of equity on his agreement, if that is any comfort to him; he may apply for a decree against you to perform your agreement; but till then his claims are not recognized in a court of common law. If an injunction be brought, the expenses are further multiplied. Why, it may be asked, should not the agreement, such as here described, be as good as a lease; when, in substance, it is the very same thing, and only wants a word added or left out to make it the same in legal effect? A case, illustrative of this subject, happened to lord Brougham, on the York circuit. An agreement had been entered into, and possession given; but, because it did not contain words of present demise, it was no lease, and therefore the tenant could not stand a moment against the ejectment that was brought, but was driven into the Court of Chancery, where the other party could just as little stand against him. How much inconvenience, expense, and delay, then, might be saved, if such an agreement were pronounced equivalent to a lease!

Again, on the same principle of avoiding multiplicity of suits, why, in ejectments, should two processes be requisite to give the plaintiff his remedy? As things now stand, after a man has succeeded in one action, and established his title to the possession, he must have recourse to another, to recover that which he ought to have obtained by one and the same verdict that established his title the mesne profits. Why could not the same jury settle the matter at once? Why is an individual driven to maintain two actions for the purpose of obtaining one and the same remedy? Or why should not the jury that tries the right also assess the damage? Mr. Tennyson's bill, which was intended to remedy some part of this evil, is only permissive; it ought to have been compulsory. It is partial, and it is only recommendatory, and its recommendations are not always attended to, because the lawyers, having the choice, do not think fit to pursue that which is the least profitable; they choose the two actions, when one would suffice for the interests of justice-for the interests of the plaintiff and defendantfor all interests, except those of the practitioners.

ARREST FOR DEBT.-Unless in cases of grossly improvident conduct, or fraudulent concealment of property from the just claims of creditors, imprisonment of the person for debt, either on mesne process or in execution, seems not defensible. In practice, the power of arrest is often perverted to purposes foreign to its ostensible object. It has been

resorted to as a means not of recovering a just claim, but to prevent a just claim being preferred; and the same artifice of a false allegation of debt has been frequently employed to remove a person out of the way who happened to be troublesome, or that some criminal intention might be effected during his incarceration. But, however wicked or spiteful the motives of any one in so employing the process of the law, there being a probable cause of detention, and the process not being abused, no action lies against the wrong doer. If he have no accomplices, so as to fall within the charge of conspiracy, he is safe. To the wealthy all these inconveniences are trivial; but how does such a proceeding operate on a poor man, or a tradesman in moderate circumstances? He has no facilities for obtaining bail; if he has, he pays one way or another afterwards for the favour; and, if he cannot procure it, he must go to prison. And on what ground of common sense does the law in this matter rest? Why should it be supposed that a man, owing twenty pounds, will leave his house, his wife, his children, his country, his pursuits, and incur, voluntarily, the punishment awarded for great crimes, by banishing himself for life? Yet the law always proceeds on the supposition that a man will run away the moment he has notice given him of an action for debt. Some men might possibly act thus, but their conduct forms the exception, not the rule; and it is neither wisdom nor humanity to denounce a penalty against all men in order to meet a case not likely to occur once in a thousand times. Nonpayment of debt, if a crime at all, is a crime against property only: and, perhaps, it would be enough to allow property to answer for it: and there is this peculiarity between it and other crimes against property, it is committed with the mutual consent of the parties. Goods sold on credit are mostly charged extra; this extra charge is the premium exacted by the creditor on account of the risk of repayment; and, having thus fixed the equivalent for his chance of loss, it seems supererogatory in the law to grant him, in addition, the power of ex post facto punishment, of the amount of which he is the sole judge, merely because he has failed in a voluntary adventure, into which he had been tempted to embark, from the prospect of reaping a greater profit than is charged by the ready-money tradesman. Creditors rarely derive any advantage from imprisonment beyond the indulgence of vindictive feeling, which it is inconsistent with the true ends of public law to encourage. Those who do benefit by it are usually the most unfair and ungenerous, who, by a sudden arrest, often embarrass and prejudice all the other parties interested. To the debtor, the consequences are peculiarly hurtful-personal degradation -augmented incapacity and diminished inclination to satisfy his prosecutor-and the contraction of habits inconsistent with future intregrity and industry.

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INCONSISTENT LIABILITIES OF PROPERTY FOR DEBTS.-In proportion as, before the debt has been proved, the person and property of the party charged should be free from all process not necessary to prevent evasion; so, after judgment, ought the utmost latitude be given to obtain satisfaction from all the defendant's property whatever--

land, goods, money, and debts-for to himself they no longer belong. To allow any distinction between one kind of property and another seems the height of injustice. Yet this is of hourly occurrence in the frustration of a creditor after he has obtained judgment, and taken out execution. His debtor has a landed estate; if it be copyhold, the creditor cannot touch it in any way whatever; if it be freehold, he may take half by elegit, and receive the rents and profits, but no more, in the lifetime of his debtor. The debt for which he has received judgment may be such that the rent of the land will not even keep down the interest; still he can take nothing more; he cannot turn the land into money: so that, when a man sues for a thing detained unlawfully, (a horse, for instance,) you give him money which he does not ask; and when he asks for money by suing for a debt, you give him land which he does not want. But if his debtor die before judgment can be obtained, unless the debt is on bond, he has no remedy at all against any kind of real property of any tenure; nay, though his money, borrowed on note or bill, has been laid out in buying land, the debtor's heir takes that land wholly discharged of the debt!

But not only is land thus sacred from all effectual process of creditors, unless the debtor be a trader, the great bulk of most men's personal property is equally beyond reach of the law. Stock in the public funds-debts due in any manner of way-nay, bank-notes, and even money—are alike protected. A man may owe a hundred thousand pounds in any way, and judgment may have passed against him over and over again; if he have privilege of parliament, live in a furnished house or hotel, and use hired carriages and horses, he may have an income from stock or money lent, of twenty thousand a-year, and defy the utmost efforts of the law; or if he have not privilege, he may live abroad, or within the Rules, and laugh at all the courts and all the creditors in the country. So absurd are the laws in this respect, that if a person borrow a thousand pounds, and the creditor has obtained judgment, the sheriff's officer appointed to levy upon his personalty may come into his room, and take a table or a desk; but if he sees the identical thousand pounds lying there, he must leave it-he touches it at his peril:-" For this quaint reason," says Lord Mansfield, " because money cannot be sold, and you are required, by the writ, to take your debt out of the produce of goods sold."

Lord Brougham, in concluding his observations on these barbarous, absurd, and aristocratic laws, eloquently apostrophises" who is the innovator-he who would adhere to such rules in violation of the manifest intent and spirit of our old law, or he who would re-adjust them so as to give it effect? In ancient times there were none of those masses of property in existence which are exempt from legal process. When the law, therefore, said, "Let all a man's goods and chattels be answerable for his debts," it meant to include his whole personalty at the least. Things have now changed in the progress of society; trade has grown up; credit has followed in its train; money, formerly only used as counters, has become abundant; bankers' accounts have been

invented; paper currency and the funds have been created. Threefourths of the debtor's personalty, perhaps nine-tenths, now consist of stock, money, and credit; and the rule of law, which leaves those out of all execution, no longer can mean as before-" Let all his personalty be liable"-but, "Let a tenth-part of it only be taken." Can there be a greater change made upon, or greater violence done to, the old law itself, than you thus do by affecting to preserve its letter? The great stream of time is perpetually flowing on; all things around us are in ceaseless motion; and we vainly imagine to preserve our relative position among them, by getting out of the current and standing stock still on the margin. The stately vessel we belong to glides down; our bark is attached to it; we might " pursue the triumph, and partake the gale;" but, worse than the fool who stares, expecting the current to flow down and run out, we exclaim-Stop the boat!-and would tear it away to strand it, for the sake of preserving its connexion with the vessel. All the changes that are hourly and gently going on in spite of us, and all those which we ought to make, that violent severances of settled relations may not be effected, far from exciting murmurs of discontent, ought to be gladly hailed as dispensations of a bountiful Providence, instead of filling us with a thoughtless and preposterous alarm."-Speech on the present State of the Law, p. 109.

But the imperfect recourse against the debtor's estate, although the grand opprobrium of the debtor-laws, is by no means its only vice: the unequal distribution, in case of insolvency, is scarcely a less notable defect. Only traders, or those who voluntarily take the benefit of the act, are compelled, when insolvent, to make an impartial division of their property. All others may easily, and with impunity, pay one creditor twenty shillings in the pound, and the others sixpence, or nothing. So, when a man dies insolvent, his representatives may, by acknowledging judgments, secure one creditor his full payment at the expense of all the rest. Thus, lax and impotent as the law is against property, wide as are its loop-holes for fraud and extravagance to escape by, utterly powerless as is its grasp to seize the great bulk of the debtor's possessions, against his useless PERSON it is powerful and unrelenting. The argument used is, that the concealed property may thus be wrung from him: the principle, however, of the law, and on which all its provisions are built, is, that the seizure of the body works a satisfaction of the claim; and this satisfaction is given alike in all cases-alike where there is innocent misfortune, culpable extravagance, and guilty embezzlement. "Surely," says the great Advocate, whose words we are copying," for all these evils the remedy is easy. Let the whole of every man's property, real and personal-his real, of what kind soever, copyhold, leasehold, freehold; his personal, of whatever nature, debts, money, stock, chattels-be taken for the payment of all his debts equally, and, in case of insolvency, let all be distributed rateably; let all he possesses be sifted, bolted from him unsparingly, until all his creditors are satisfied by payment or composition; but let his PERSON only be taken when he conceals his goods, or has

merited punishment by extravagance or fraud. This line of distinction is already recognised by the practice of the Insolvent Courts; but the privilege of the Rules is inconsistent with every principle, and ought at once to be abrogated as soon as arrest on mesne process is abolished."*

INSECURITY OF PROPERTY.-Our aristocratic legislators have always manifested the greatest repugnance to admit the slightest change in existing institutions, under an alleged apprehension it might endanger the security of individual possessions. Nothing, however, can be imagined less secure than the condition of real property, as explained by the Law Commissioners, in their report to Parliament. It staggers one to comprehend how the law of any country could get into such a state, or how it has worked or been so long tolerated. The deeds, it seems, are endless, countless, and exceedingly complex, and, after all, do not give a legal title to the subject. A lord chancellor has been heard declare that there was scarcely a legal title to an estate in England. This defect appears to be remedied by a system of trusts, under which every thing, if not actually in the stomach, is at least within the jaws of the great Leviathan of Chancery. Then there seems to be no way in which the exact tenure of any piece of property can be ascertained, except by getting and studying all the deeds which may have ever been executed respecting it. And, after all, a flaw may be overlooked, and a flaw once is a flaw for ever: for time cures little or nothing in a legal title.

LAWS OF MARRIAGE.-The contract of marriage can only be lawfully entered into by strictly complying with certain religious ceremonies. Unless a special license has been obtained, banns must be previously published, and the nuptials must be solemnized in a church or chapel of the establishment, and by a minister of the establishment. These obligations sometimes entail great hardship on parties by whom they have been unintentionally violated. Parents may rear families, and honour them as legitimate, and afterwards discover they have been living in concubinage, and nourishing a spurious offspring, merely from having been mistaken in supposing a priest to have been ordained, or a chapel to have been licensed. No allowance is made even for Dissenters, though their faith is tolerated; they must join in the ritual of the privileged worship, however repugnant to their conscience, on pain of their marriages being invalid. But mark the inconsistency of the law: parties have only to cross the border to Scotland, where marriages may, with impunity, be contracted in contempt of English ceremonies -without publication of banns-or the payment of surplice-fees, and such marriages are recognized as lawful in an English court of justice.

This arrest, the end of which, it is to be hoped, fast approaches, was not generally given by the common law. The capias ad respondendum is given in Debt and Detinue, by West, 2 (13 Ed. I.) cap. 11, in case only so late as 19 Hen. VII. c. 9.

+ Edinburgh Review, No. 101, p. 129.

Lord Stowell's judgment, in Dalrymple v. Dalrymple.