of a monarch to whose will and authority it is the most atrocious of crimes to be indocile; who is alone the fountain of all honor and office, justice, law, and mercy, from whom all hold their estates as from his bountiful gift, to be resumed where the conditions are forfeited, upon which they are supposed to be by him granted, and to whose person, all born in his dominion are bound for life by an allegiance which they never can shake off, in whatever region of the earth they may fix their abode, and who cannot even migrate against his will. Without whom, in effect, nothing is that is; for every thing is his; his kingdom, his people, his army, his navy, his high-way, his law, his peace, his treasury, his parliament, his laws; all these are the king's by virtue of his high prerogative. He is moreover, the supreme head of the church; and treason to his person, even in imagination, is punished by hanging, drawing and quartering, émbowelling alive, throwing the entrails in the face, and placing the head and four quarters at his grácious disposal, The wandering stranger would then learn the necessity of different ranks and privileged orders, from the Duke and Dutchess to the howling beggar; of the hereditary legislators and judges in the last resort of the church dignitaries from the Archbishop to the sexton and the parish clerk, and might be tempted to inquire why these doctrines were inculcated so persuasively into the minds, and made to compose the manual of our youth, if it were not intended that they should curse their fathers' names for having traitorously withdrawn thair natural allegiance, and sacrilegiouly overthrown the altars of the common law, and the holy alliance of the church and

state.

In the second book, he would find the whole doctrine of feuds and services and tenures and villeinage, and all the doctrines of barbarous and slavish times dimly distinguished through the mist of agesthe abstruse learning of estates, and the strange fictitious methods of transfering them-the necessity of corporal tradition for the sake of notoriety, and the means invented by the clergy and the judges to defeat that principle-uses and double uses invented in times of mutual attainders in the long and frequent periods of civil wars and bloody usurpations, to prevent forfeitures and confiscations--the construction of men's wills by their intentions, provided the intentions agreed with the rules of law which never did agree with the intentions-and a thousand such subtleties in which it would be more honorable to be unskilled than skilled if the tyrant custom had not thrown his mantle over their deformity.

In the third book he would see the remedies for civil wrongs with all their wonderful changes: the Saxon plaint praised for its unlettered simplicity: the quaint formalities of the Norman writs, and the process growing out of them, requiring seven years to bring a defendant to appear; of which the highest praise was

that by them no wrong was left without a remedy, and yet, such has experience shown them to be, that not one in a hundred is now known or used-and also the doctrine of special pleading by which these writs were almost sure to be quashed or abated to the great augmentation of the king's royal revenue. The stranger would then be informed of the very ingenious fictions by which the king's courts had respectively acquired jurisdietion by supposing that the party had broken a close with force and arins, and also done the real thing complained of ;or that the plaintiff was the king's debtor, and less able to pay his debt if he sued in any court other than the king's exchequer; or that he was a close prisoner in the prison of the court, where he is required to be and appear; wherefore a process is addressed to the sheriff, to have his body if he can be found in the county; and if the sheriff return that he cannot find him, then another writ to another county, informing the sheriff of that other county that he cannot be found in the county where he is in prison, but is said to be lurking and wandering in his; wherefore he is commanded to take him if he can be found. This, with the whole train of the subtleties and vulgar contrivances that constitute the arts of petty litigation, with the statutes of amendments and jeofails, and all the unnecessary war of notices, motions, rules and affidavits, would certainly astonish the traveller after good knowledge, and incline him strongly to the opinion that Astrea did not lurk or wander in our bailiwicks; and that all such contrivances could only serve to give error more diversity and rumor more tongues. And what would he think of the parliamentary magic of the statute of uses; of the frustration of the intentions of a grantor, because it was not expressed in his deed that a dollar was inhand paid, when in truth no such thing was ever done, nor yet intended? Would he believe that such a case could exist in a land of common sense? What would he think of a fine sur cognizance de droit comme ceo qu'il a de son don, or sur cognizance de droit tantum, and all the goings out and comings in and vouching of Jacob Moreland; and what of this Jacob himself, who in spite of rotation in office, has for centuries held the lucrative charge of common vouchee? He might indeed say with Hamlet, "This fellow might be in his time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers. and his revenues; but is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate filled with fine dirt?” - If desirous of knowing how an estate in land was to be recovered from a wrongful possessor, he must first be taught the names of each particular wrong, as disseizen, abatement, intrision, deforcement, and so on: of the formedon in the descender and reverter; of writs of entry in the per, the cui,, and the post. And would he not exclaim, "Oh spare my aching sense, you - craze my brain!" Then he might be consoled with that most

happy and beneficial method called ejectment, invented by the courts for the avoiding the difficulties and impracticable nature of those ancient and bepraised writs, by the representation of a comedy, in which the dramatis persona are as follows:

The lessor of the Plaintiff, a real person, who seeks to recover his land.

James Jackson, an ideal person. who is supposed to take a lease and enter upon the land, and is called lessee of the plaintiff.

John Thrustout, an ideal person, who being of more muscular force, thrusts the other ideal person out; but being sorry for what he has done, writes a letter to the tenant in possession, that he must defend his own possession, as he means to be off.

The Defendant, a real person, who, on receiving the ideal letter from the ideal Thrustout, being much affected by its contents, applies to the court to be admitted to defend his own

cause.

The Judges, real persons, who indulge the defendant, on condition, however, that he will confess three ideal things, viz. lease entry, and ouster.

The most affecting scene is where the defendant balances between his concience and his interest; for if he will not consent to confess the three lies, though the real plaintiff is nonsuited as against him, yet he gets judgment against the ideal person Thrustout, and he, the real defendant, is for that cause turned out of possession. He. therefore, yields to the temptation, complies with the desire of the court, and openly declares the three lies to be three truths, and having so qualified himself to appear in the temple of justice, he is admitted to do so in the place of the ideal

man.

The other ideal persons are, the common law, who enters in triumph, and comes in the front with a train of sergeants, outer and inner barristers, attorneys, special pleaders, prothonotaries, secondaries, masters, clerks, pledges and summoners, amongst whom are the twin brothers John Doe, and Richard Roe, and their twin cousins John Den and Richard Fen.-Truth and common sense are discovered in the back ground in chains, weeping.

As soon as the stranger was made sensible of the superior advantages and benefits of this proceeding, he might be told of the fiction of the action of trover to try the truth of sales by supposing the goods to have been lost and found as the only way to " eviscerate the truth," of the great virtues of et ceteras and videlicits quod cums and obsque hocs, and the nonsuiting qualities of vi et armis, or the necessity of declaring that there was force and arms where there was none, and that a close was broken where there was none to break; why ships are laid up under the charge

of an officer called a scilecet or a to wit in St. Martins in the fields or in the town of Schoharie, and for brevity's sake he might be referred to that indispensable work in every American lawyers library, the ten volumes of Mr. Wentworth's pleadings as a table of reference to the copious stores of precedents. But would he not stand petrified as though he had seen the Gorgon's head with all the twisted serpents of which that on Minerva's shield was but the type?

In the fourth book, he would find a summary of the wars between the ancient and common law and the statutory invaders; how the statute repealed the common law, and the common law undermined the statute; how hardly those acts that protect the life and liberty of the subject, were won from prerogative and despotism, from trembling usurpers and excommunicated monarchs, who in their weaker moments and precarious situations, were reduced to the necessity of granting to their subjects the benefit of the law, the trial by jury, liberty of speech, and the right of petitioning, and such other happy and boasted privileges, for which on one hand a sanguinary code, the denial of counsel to address a jury for a prisoner standing at the bar for life or death; and on the other guilt and atrocity after the fullest proof and conviction, exultingly, triumph over the justice of the law, by the misspelling of a word, or the leaving out of a letter, as, for instance, the writing of undestood for understood, and other such things, passing all understanding. He would see in every page the vestiges of ancient bigotry, ignorance, crafty superstition and ruthless persecution, against Jews and Quakers and Dissenters, Non-Conformists, Heretics, Witches and Papists, and many running sores not yet closed nor cicatrised, and evils yet menacing and "potentially existing," which bad times, and corrupt judges may again call into activity, and as he contemplated" the dreadful accidents by flood and field" to which the most favourable changes have been due, and all the wounds and gashes which are visible upon the body of this common law, some before, and some behind, as the honor of the day happened to be lost or won, would he not say, this may have been a champion grim, but not a leader sage"? and might not this disappointed Greek return at length somewhat reconciled to the dominion of the Turk? For though he might with truth be told, that the great abuses of past times had through the wisdom of our legislature, and of upright, patriotic and enlightened judges, (and to that truth we subscribe with all our hearts) been gradually corrected, and that gradual reformation would still farther proceed, and in time effected through succeeding decisions of the bench, as questions may arise before them, yet would the philosophic stranger be satisfied with such an answer? Would it appear wise or safe to a philosophic mind to have the law afloat, and its perfection depending upon the accidental occurrence of doubtful litigation, or that par

ticular cases should make the general law, and that some victim must be devoted to the establishing of every principle, and, Codrus-like, throw himself into the yawning gulph. It is for these reasons that we feel ourselves bound to declare in favor of the written code. And since we have judges of such tried worth, let them bé put in requisition to do that which the people require.

We shall conclude by strongly recommending the reading of "The English Practice," the first work at the head of this article where many practical abuses very easy to be remedied, are pointed out with candour and precision. Its being imputed to the pen of Mr. Henry Sedgwick, is in itself the highest recommendation.

WILLIAM SAMPSON.

EXTRACT FROM THE LETTER OF A MASONIC FRIEND.

Oct. 22. 1825.

DEAR SIR, I RECEIVED the manuscript and Jachin and Boaz safe. Your exposition of masonry is excellent. The three first degrees and Royal Arch are all that I know any thing about, and you have handled them well, you have only omitted some trivial ceremonies which are probably not used in all lodges. In the Royal Arch you have not given the mummery of the exultation as it is called, particularly the ceremony of making Noodle wrench the key stone from the arch, and that exquisite piece of child's play in leading him under the arches!

ANOTHER EXTRACT.

I HAVE found a note in Maclaine's translation of Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History Vol. 5. p. 78 about the Rosicrucians, who are there defined to be those, who, by means of Dew (Ros) supposed by them to be the most powerful solvent of gold, sought after gold, or light, in latin, lux, the three letters of which last word form a cross X (vir. Ly X.) This seems fanciful; but nevertheless may perhaps be true. Fancy may also combine there with the Crux ansata or Triple Tau.