amount upon any single article of freight than $200, unless upon notice given of such amount, and a special agreement therefor. Specie, drafts, bank-bills, and other articles of great intrinsic or representative value, will only be taken upon a representation of their value, and by a special agreement assented to by the superintendent of the receiving road.

The companies will not hold themselves liable at all for injuries to any articles of freight during the course of transportation, arising from the weather, or accidental delays, or natural tendency to decay. Nor will their guaranty of special despatch cover cases of unavoidable or extraordinary casualties or storms, or delays occasioned by low water and ice; and may be stored at the risk and expense of the owner. Nor will they hold themselves liable, as COMMON CARRIERS, for such articles, after their arrival at their place of destination at the company's warehouses or depots.

Carriages and sleighs, eggs, furniture, looking-glasses, glass and crockery ware, machinery, mineral acids, piano-fortes, stoves and castings, sweet-potatoes, wrought marble, all liquids put up in glass or earthen ware, fruit, and live animals, will only be taken at the owner's risk of fracture or injury during the course of transportation, loading and unloading, unless specially agreed to the contrary.

Gunpowder, friction matches, and like combustibles, will not be received on any terms; and all persons procuring the reception of such freight by fraud or concealment, will be held responsible for any damage which may arise from it while in the custody of the company.

It is further stipulated and agreed, that goods shipped to points west of shall be subject to a change in classification and corresponding change of rates beyond those points.

Cases or packages of boots and shoes, and of other articles liable to peculation or fraudulent abstraction, must be strapped with iron or wood, or otherwise securely protected, or the companies will not be liable for diminution of the original contents, and the companies will hold the freighter, in all cases, to bear the loss arising from improper packing.

It is also agreed between the parties that the said companies, and the railroads and steamboats with which they connect, shall not be held accountable for any deficiency in packages if receipted for to them in good order.

All articles of freight arriving at their places of destination must be taken away within twenty-fours hours after being unladen from the cars, each company reserving the right of charging storage on the same, or placing the same in store at the risk and expense of the owner, if they see fit, after lapse of that time.

CHAPTER XXI.

LIMITATIONS.

SECTION I.

THE STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS.

ALL of our States have what is called a Statute of Limitations. It is not exactly the same everywhere; but generally it enacts that all actions of account, and all which can be brought for indebtedness or damages, and all actions of debt grounded upon any lending, or contract without seal, and all actions for arrearages of rent, shall be commenced and sued within six years next after the cause of such actions or suit arises, and not after. In few words, all claims which do not rest on a seal or a judgment must be sued within six years from the time when they arise.

In some States, a statute provides, in substance, that, if a debt or promise be once barred by the Statute of Limitations, no acknowledgment of the debt or new promise shall renew the debt, and take away the effect of the statute, unless the new promise is in writing, and is signed by the party who makes the promise. But this statute expressly permits a part-payment either of principal or interest of the old debt to have the same effect as a new promise. And this statute also provides, that if there be joint contractors or debtors, and a plaintiff is barred by the statute against both, but the bar of the statute is removed as to one by a new promise or otherwise, the plaintiff may have judgment against this one, but not against the other.

Such statutes have been passed in Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, Indiana, Michigan, Arkansas, and California.

SECTION II.

CONSTRUCTION OF THE STATUTE.

FOR the law of limitation there is a twofold foundation: in the first place, the actual probability that a debt which has not been claimed for a long time was paid, and that this is the reason of the silence of the creditor. But, besides this reason, there is the inexpediency and injustice of permitting a stale and neglected claim or debt, even if it has not been paid, to be set up and enforced after a long silence and acquiescence.

Before inquiring into the rules of law which now apply to the case of an acknowledgment or new promise, it should be remarked that a prescription, or limitation, of common law, much more ancient than the statutes above quoted, is still in full force. This is the presumption of payment after twenty years, which is applicable to all debts; not only the simple contracts to which the Statutes of Limitation refer, that is, contracts which are merely oral, or which if written have no seal, but to specialties, or contracts or debts under seal or by judgment of court. Of these it will not be necessary to speak here, excepting to remark, that in a few of our States the Statute of Limitation excepts a promissory note which is signed in the presence of an attesting witness, and is put in suit by the original payee, or his executor or administrator; such a note in those States, as in Maine and Massachusetts, may be sued any time within twenty years after it is due. Bank-bills and other evidences of debt issued by banks, are everywhere excepted from the operation of the statute.

SECTION III.

THE NEW PROMISE.

WHAT is the new promise which suffices to take a case out of the statute? A mere acknowledgment, which does not contain, by any reasonable implication or construction, a new promise, is not sufficient, and still less so if it expressly excludes a new promise. In

the leading American case upon this point, before the Supreme Court of the United States, it was proved, in answer to the plea of the Statute of Limitations, that the defendant, one of the partners of a firm then dissolved, said to the plaintiff, "I know we are owing you;" "I am getting old, and I wish to have the business settled: " it was held that these expressions were insufficient to revive the debt. So, in New Hampshire, in an action on a promissory note, the defendant, on being asked to pay the note, said "he guessed the note was outlawed, but that would make no difference, he was willing to pay his honest debts, always." As he did not state in direct terms that he was willing to pay the note, this was held not sufficient to revive the debt. A new promise is not now implied by the law itself, from a mere acknowledgment.

The new promise need not define the amount of the debt. That can be done by other evidence, if only the existence of the debt and the purpose of paying it are acknowledged. Still, the new promise must be of the specific debt, or must distinctly include it; for if wholly general and undefined, it is not enough. A testator who provides for the payment of his debts generally, does not thereby make a new promise as to any one of them.

If the new promise is conditional, the party relying upon it must be prepared to show that the condition has been fulfilled. Thus, if the new promise be to pay "when I am able," the promisee must prove not only the promise, but that the promisor is able to pay the debt.

As the acknowledgment should be voluntary, it follows that one made under process of law, as by a bankrupt, or by answers to interrogatories which could not be avoided, should never have the effect of a new promise.

SECTION IV.

PART-PAYMENT.

A PART-PAYMENT of a debt is such a recognition of it as implies a new promise; even if it was made in goods or chattels, if they were offered as payment, and agreed to be received as payment, or by

negotiable promissory note or bill. Thus, in a case where one was sued for money due for a quantity of hay, and pleaded that it had been due more than six years, which was a good defence, the plaintiff proved in reply that defendant had given him within six years a gallon of gin as part-payment for his debt; and it was held that this took the case out of the Statute of Limitations, and the plaintiff recovered. But a payment has this effect only when the payment is made as of a part of a debt. If it is made in settlement of the whole, of course it is no promise of more. And a bare payment, without words or acts to indicate its character, would not be construed as carrying with it an acknowledgment that more was due and would be paid.

If a debtor owes several debts, and pays a sum of money, he has the right of appropriating that money to one debt or another as he pleases. If he pays it without indicating his own appropriation, the general rule is, that the creditor who receives the money may ap propriate it as he will. There is, however, this exception. If there be two or more debts, some of which are barred by the statute, and others are not barred by it, the creditor cannot appropriate the payment to a debt that is barred, for the purpose of taking it out of the statute by such part-payment.

SECTION V.

SOME STATUTORY EXCEPTIONS.

THE original English statute, which ours is taken from, also provides, that if a creditor, at the time when the cause of action accrues, is a minor, or a married woman, or not of sound mind, or imprisoned, or beyond the seas, the six years do not begin to run; and he may bring his action at any time within six years after such disability ceases to exist. And also, if any person against whom there shall be a cause of action, shall, when such cause accrues be beyond the seas (which means out of the country, and here, out of the State), the action may be brought at any time within six years after his return. Similar exceptions and disabilities are usually contained in our own

statutes.