important improvements have taken place. The alteration of the law of descent, the limitation of the time within which actions for the recovery of real estate may be brought, the shortening of the time of prescription or legal memory, the abolition of those complex modes of assurance, fines and recoveries, the modification of the wife's claim of dower, the annihilation of satisfied terms, these, among other things, have tended greatly to facilitate the transfer of property, have got rid of endless doubts and difficulties which perpetually arose upon titles, and have materially shortened conveyances. A great improvement has also been introduced into the law of wills, and there is less danger now than formerly of the wishes of a testator being frustrated. A serious, and it is to be hoped successful, attempt has been made to get rid of copyhold tenures, and repeated efforts, hitherto without effect however, to introduce a system of registration of the titles to real estates. The administration of private justice has been greatly simplified by the numerous alterations which have been made in the course of the last fifty years in the procedure of our courts. The abolition of real actions, and of the many fictions which formerly encumbered legal proceedings, was an important and beneficial change. The alteration of the old rules of law which formerly excluded the evidence of the parties to the suit, and prohibited persons who were considered disqualified, either by reason of interest or by crime, from being witnesses, have been attended with great advantage; all practical difficulties in eliciting the truth being now removed. It would be premature to express any opinion on the recent consolidation of the Superior Courts of Law and Equity into one High Court of Justice. The abolition of the remaining Palatine Courts is an unquestionable advantage, and further changes are not improbably imminent. Each judge of the High Court has now all the powers of the tribunals which have been merged in it; the great increase in the number of these judges ought to prevent the possibility of delay in the hearing of causes; and there seems now to be no reason why the obtaining of justice in every branch of this court should not be a speedy and not ruinously expensive process. But these changes have been much less beneficial to the great mass of the community, than the establishment of the county courts, a measure warmly recommended by Sir William Blackstone; and to some extent a return to the ancient Saxon system, restored if not established by Alfred, for securing the administration of justice at every man's door. The cognizance of matrimonial and testamentary causes has been taken from the ecclesiastical, and restored to the civil, courts; the law at the same time recognizing the right of divorce for adultery; and putting that remedy, which was previously only attainable by a private act of parliament, within the reach of all who are likely to demand it. The criminal law has been, as to many of its branches, amended and consolidated; and the severity of punishments at the same time much softened, and adapted more carefully than formerly to the nature and magnitude of the offence. The barbarous sufferings prescribed for those attainted of treason no longer stain the statute-book; and the punishment of innocent parties for ancestral guilt, which often resulted from the doctrine of corruption of blood, can no longer happen; while the offences involving capital punishment, which the convict only escaped by claiming the benefit of clergy, have been gradually reduced in number, until the extreme penalty of the law has become in practice confined to the frightful crime of murder. The trial by battel, and the mode of proceeding by appeal, have been formally abolished; the law relating to principal and accessory has been divested of its niceties; and the forms of the proceedings in the criminal courts so far simplified and improved, that offenders, who have now the advantage of being defended by counsel, rarely escape punishment on purely technical objections. Thus, therefore says the learned commentator at the conclusion of his great work, for the amusement and instruction of the student, I have endeavoured to delineate some rude outlines of a plan for the history of our laws and liberties: from their first rise and gradual progress, among our British and Saxon ancestors, till their total eclipse at the Norman Conquest; from which they have gradually emerged, and risen to the perfection they now enjoy, at different periods of time. We have seen in the course of our inquiries, that the fundamental maxims and rules of the law, which regard the rights of persons, and the rights of things, the private injuries that may be offered to both, and the crimes which affect the public, have been and are every day improving, and are now fraught with the accumulated wisdom of ages; that the forms of administering justice came to perfection under Edward I., and have not been much varied, nor always for the better, since; that our religious liberties were fully established at the Reformation; but that the recovery of our civil and political liberties was a work of longer time; they not being thoroughly and completely regained, till after the restoration of Charles II., nor fully and explicitly acknowledged and defined, till the era of the happy revolution. Of a constitution, so wisely contrived, so strongly raised, and so highly finished, it is hard to speak with that praise which is justly and severely its due:-the thorough and attentive contemplation of it will furnish its best panegyric. It has been the endeavour of these commentaries, however the execution may have succeeded, to examine its solid foundations, to mark out its extensive plan, to explain the use and distribution of its parts, and from the harmonious concurrence of those several parts, to demonstrate the elegant proportion of the whole. We have taken occasion to admire at every turn the noble monuments of ancient simplicity, and the more curious refinements of modern art. Nor have its faults been concealed from view; for faults it has, lest we should be tempted to think it of more than human structure; defects chiefly arising from the decays of time, or the rage of unskilful improvements in later ages. To sustain, to repair, to beautify this noble pile, is a charge intrusted principally to the nobility, and such gentlemen of the kingdom as are delegated by their country to Parliament. The protection of THE LIBERTY OF BRITAIN is a duty which they owe to themselves, who enjoy it; to their ancestors, who transmitted it down; and to their posterity, who will claim at their hands this, the best birthright, and noblest inheritance of mankind. Alfred, his laws, 7 Alien, 78, 169, n., 183 disabilities of, in purchasing land, 78 registration of, 78 denization and naturalization of, 78 præmunire by, 457 Alien priories, 458 Archdeacon, 82 Archdeacon's court, 289 Armies, who can raise, 57 Armour, &c., embezzling the king's, 454 Allenation, history of the laws of, 174, 175, Arms, right of having, 19 Arms and ammunition, exporting, 58 history of, 89 Arraignment, 428 Arrangement with creditors, 253 Array, challenge to the, 395 Arrest by private persons, 520 without warrant, 520 of a defendant, in civil cases, 372 in criminal cases, 518 Arrest of judgment, in civil cases, 409 Arson, 492 Art, works of, destroying, 469 Articles of the Navy, 91 of War, 90 of the Peace, 508 Asportation, what is, 497 Assault, redressed by action, 305 Assembly, riotous or unlawful, 470 Assets, administration of, 259 of chose in action, 244 Assigns, 180 Assize, writ of, 326 of arms, 89 courts of, 288 commission of, 287, 512 of bread, offence of breaking, 473 Assumpsit, action of, 320, 322 Atheling, Edgar, 39 Attachment, or pone, ancient process by, 366 of debts, 422 for contempts, 302, 517 process in Chancery by, 369 Attachments, Court of, 293 |