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Precatory Words-Executory Devise.-Where the language of a testator shows a clear intent to devise the fee of his lands to his wife, words of recommendation or suggestion or advice as to the management or occupation thereof by the family, contained in other clauses, will not limit her estate: Hoxsey v. Hoxsey, 37 N. J. Eq.

Where the first taker of an interest in lands has an absolute estate therein, a limitation over, by way of executory devise, is void: Id.

Devise in Trust without Words of Limitation-Rules of Construction. -Where a devise was to trustees for the use and benefit of two of the testator's daughters, without any words of limitation or perpetuity, it was held: 1. That it made no difference whatever, in construing the devise, that the property was left in the hands of trustees. The same rules of construction to determine the quality of the estate, whether for life, or in fee, are applicable to estates placed in trust and those which are not, except so far as the creation of the trust may throw light upon the intention of the testator. 2. That since the Act of 1825, ch 119, a general devise in which words of limitation or perpetuity are omitted, will pass the whole interest of the testator, upon the assumption that he so intended. That assumed intention is however liable to be controlled by evidence of a contrary intention found in the will. 3. That there being no devise over of the property, it was not to be presumed that the testator intended to die intestate, and the will must clearly manifest an intention to pass only a life estate, before his children could be deprived of the fee: Fairfax v. Brown, 60 Md.

LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL NEW LAW BOOKS.

BENJAMIN.--A Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property, with reference to the American Decisions and to the French Code and Civil Law. By J. P. BENJAMIN. 4th American, from latest Eng. ed., by E. H. BENNETT. 8vo., pp. 1153. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

BROWNE.-Elements of the Law of Domestic Relations and of Employer and Employed. By IRVING BROWNE. 8vo., pp, 162. Boston: Soule & Bugbee.

BROWNE. The Law of Carriers of Goods and Passengers by Land and Water. By J. H. B. BROWNE, with notes and References to American Cases by H. G. WOOD. 8vo., pp. 771. New York: Banks & Bros.

BURROUGHS.-A Supplement to a Treatise on the Law of Taxation, as imposed by the State and their Municipalities or other Subdivisions, and as exercised by the Government of the United States, particularly in the Customs and Internal Revenue; being a Digest of Cases decided between August 1877 and January 1st 1883. By W. H. BURROUGHS. 8vo., pp. 126. New York: Baker, Voorhis & Co.

CHALMERS.-Local Government. By M. D. CHALMERS. 8vo., pp. 160. London: Macmillan & Co.

COLERIDGE.-The Law of Blasphemous Libel. The summing up in the case of Regina v. Foote and others. Revised and with a Preface, by the Lord Chief Justice of England. 8vo., pp. 32. London: Stevens & Sons.

DONOVAN.-Trial Practice and Trial Lawyers. A Treatise on Trials of Fact before Juries, including Sketches of Advocates, Turning Points, Incidents, Rules, Tact and Art in Winning Cases. Condensed Speeches, a brief Summary of the Law of Actions, Evidence, Contracts, Crimes, Torts, Wills, &c., &c. By J. W. DONOVAN. 8vo., pp. 315. St. Louis: Wm. H. Stevenson.

FIELD.-A Treatise on the Constitution and Jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States, on Pleading, Practice and Procedure therein, and on the Powers and Duties of Commissioners of the Circuit Courts, with Forms for said Courts and Commissioners. By GEO W. FIELD. Svo., pp. 918. Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson & Co.

GRAY.--Restraints on the Alienation of Property. By J. C. GRAY. 8vo., pp. 217. Boston: Soule & Bugbee.

GREENLEAF.-A Treatise on the Law of Evidence. By SIMON GREENLEAF. 14th ed., revised with large additions by S. G. CROSWELL. 3 vols. 8vo.. pp. 2013. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.

HARRIS.--Chronological Register of American Law and Equity Reports of the Supreme Court of the United States, Circuit Courts of the United States, Supreme Courts of the States and Territories, Courts of Admiralty, Bankruptcy, Municipal Reports, the Court of Claims, Surrogate Courts, Orphans' Courts, and Opinions of Attorneys General, giving the dates of the decisions of cases reported, from the earliest American Reports to the present date, including the independent reporters, as far as practicable. To which is added Explanations of Abbreviations used in citing American Reports and English, Scotch and Irish Law Books. By GEORGE E. HARRIS. 8vo., pp. 88. Washington: The Commercial, Book and Job Printers.

HIRSCHL.-The Law of Fraternities and Societies. A book of interest to Masons, Odd Fellows, Red Men, Druids, Chosen Friends, Foresters, Knights of Pythias, members of A. O. U. W., Royal Arcanum, K. of H., L. of H., and of all similar organizations, with special reference to the insurance feature. By A. J. HIRSCHL. 8vo., pp. 74. St. Louis: Wm. H. Stevenson.

JAMES.-Curiosities, Law and Lawyers. By CROAKE JAMES. Svo., pp. 514. New York: Banks & Bros.

MERWIN. The Patentability of Inventions. By HENRY CHILDS MERWIN. 8vo., pp. 759. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.

SIMONDS.

Forms. & Co.

A Summary of the Law of Patents for Useful Inventions with By W. E. SIMONDS. 4mo., pp. 360. New York: L. K. Strouse

SPEAR.-The Law of the Federal Judiciary: A Treatise on the Provisions of the Constitution, the Laws of Congress, and the Judicial Decisions relating to the Jurisdiction, Practice and Pleading in the Federal Courts. By SAMUEL T. SPEAR. 8vo., pp. 872. New York: Baker, Voorhis & Co.

STEPHEN. A Digest of the Criminal Law (Crimes and Punishments). By Sir J. F. STEPHEN. 3d ed. 8vo., pp. 420. London: Macmillan & Co.

WAPLES. A Handbook of Parliamentary Practice. By RuruS WAPLES. 8vo., pp. 275. Chicago: Callaghan & Co.

THE

AMERICAN LAW REGISTER.

DECEMBER 1883.

SOME POINTS OF COMPARISON BETWEEN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LEGISLATION, AS TO MARRIED WOMEN'S PROPERTY.

THE English law on the property rights of married women is to us only less important than our own. We do not, indeed, look to it for authority-in this department of law the mother country has followed us, and not we the mother country-but, not to speak of the special ties between us, the attitude of England towards this as yet unsolved social-not less than legalquestion, must be interesting; for it is England which now more than any other nation unites a cautious radicalism and an enlightened conservatism in the treatment of the questions with which the time is grappling.

According to a contemporary writer on jurisprudence, (Prof. Sheldon Amos, Science of Jurisprudence), there are three methods which laws relating to married persons may pursue:

1. Where married persons retain the same property rights and capacities as before, subject to the duty of maintaining the household and family. "This," he says, "seems to be the method to which the best European legislation is constantly tending, and which has nearly been completely developed in some of the United States of America."

2. Where some artificial relationship is created by the marriage. An instance of this is afforded by the English Common Law of Husband and Wife.

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3. Where the artificial relationship is created, but the parties. are left a discretion to qualify the nature of this relationship. The equity "Separate Estate" and some Continental systems are examples.

The first of these methods is that to which England, by the Act of 1870, and still further by the Married Woman's Property Act of 1882, has, like ourselves, given adherence.

Now though the two nations have reached the same point, the conditions from and through which they came to it differed widely. The common law as to baron and feme prevailed, indeed, in both countries, but here the parallel ceases. Not to delay upon the origin or present rules of the equity separate estate, suffice it to say, that it has been for a long time possible in England, for property to be held by a married woman with almost full power of control and disposition. The doctrines of a wife's equity to a settlement, and the settlement required at the marriage of a ward of chancery, show the solicitude of that court to protect a wife's rights.

Few marriages among the upper classes, or where much property is involved, take place without a careful settlement of that property. It is upon married women in the poorer classes whose scanty earnings are their all, that the common law bears hardest. In America, the separate use has never been universal. Fully grown in England only at a period subsequent to the settlement of this country, it was administered in certain states, as New York, New Jersey and portions of the South. In New England it was hardly known. (Schouler, Husband and Wife, 248 ff). Some states had no equity system. Nor was the separate estate so necessary in a new, poor, rapidly-growing country, the needs of which required that money should be tied up as little as possible.

Thus in America, for a time, there was not need enough of married women's laws to overcome old doctrines, and in England the class which most required protection had least power to make itself heard.

Our purpose does not admit of any examination of the American married women's acts in general, or of any state in particular. They have been fully commented on by courts and text writers, and, as has been said, "to attempt a useful summary of laws so incongruous, so purely local and so constantly changing, is useless." (Schouler, Husband and Wife 254.)

Although some older states, even in the last century, had "feme sole trader" laws, or the germs of them, the movement really began about the year 1850, by several states passing general acts which have since, year by year, been added to, attended meantime by a judicial construction often unfriendly to the actual, if not the legal intention of the framers, until all the states have joined the movement, the last to follow being Virginia, in 1877.

England began later than America, and, has proceeded with less legislation and more indication of some definite plan. Her first step was similar to ours. A clause in the Matrimonial and Divorce Causes Act of 1857, gave to a woman deserted by or judicially separated from her husband, power to act as a feme sole, obtaining in the former case from a court or magistrate a so-called protection order against her husband's creditors. A curious statute in 1878 allowed the same privilege in cases of aggravated assault upon her by her husband. (41 & 42 Vict. c. 19, s. 4.) But the first real Married Woman's Act was that of 1870, which, though how repealed, calls for some notice. This act gave a married woman her earnings and the right to trade; allowed her to deposit in banks, and to hold and transfer stocks, loans and so forth, as if sole; suffered her to hold to her separate use any property descending to her from an intestate, and money coming to her by deed and will, not exceeding in amount 2007.; and empowered her to sue or be sued alone in matters relating to her separate property. (Her powers extended to a suit for libel: L. R., 10 Q. B. 147.) She might insure her husband's life; he was not liable for her ante-nuptial debts except (by an amendment in 1874) as far as he had got assets of hers. She was liable to the parish for support of husband and children. An excellent feature of the act was the provision for a summary and private settlement of disputes between husband and wife as to her separate property. (See on this act a Treatise on M. W. Prop. Act 1870, Griffith.) Now this act was evidently intended to supplement, not to supplant the equity separate use. The right to earnings and to embark in trade, was a measure of relief to the poorer classes to whom the doctrine of separate use was of no real benefit. The same is true of the 2007. taken under deed or will. Large amounts under deed or will could only be held separately by a regular settlement, as before. In cases of intestacy she was given the benefit of the

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