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But passing the mode, and supposing the period a suitable one,' he continues, it is very far from being general. It is exceeded in the instance of an heir, who may enforce his claim, where grounded on the mere right of his ancestor, at any time within sixty years, while a devisee is confined to twenty; so also where the remedy of the claimant is not grounded upon his right of entry, but rests, though with forlorn chance of success, upon either the mere right of himself, or the possessory title of his ancestor, in which cases the periods of limitation seem to be, in some cases thirty, and in others fifty years; and again, in the instance of incorporeal hereditaments which, not requiring an entry, may be recovered at any time within fifty years; with the exception of advowsons and tithes, which are not subject to any limitation. On the other hand, the period of six years, at the end of which all present rights may be concluded, by means of a fine with proclamations, is brief beyond all analogy and reason; and is confined, capriciously in principle, to freeholds, leaving the inferior tenure of copyhold unaffected by it.'

He further remarks, that

'the present law of entails forms a great impediment to any uniform limitation of time; since, although one line of heirs in tail may be barred by adverse possession, yet, on its failure, a second has a new and similar period within which to make its claim; and so in succession, as long as the different limitations endure, which may possibly be for a century or more.'

Of our author's exposition of the law of copyholds, and their arbitrary and often oppressive incidents of fines and heriots, we can afford space only for the conclusion, in which he points out the modes which present themselves for the extinguishment of this servile and anomalous tenure.

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This,' he says, may be effected either by the tenant releasing to the lord; or, which is by much the more frequent occurrence, by the lord releasing his seignory and services to the copyholder; who thereby acquires the freehold, and ceases any longer to hold of the manor. Each of these two modes is voluntary, and assumes, that both the lord and the tenant are respectively entitled in fee; or that the former, if only tenant for life under some settlement or will, or his trustee, has a special power to enfranchise. Another most salutary mode, and well worthy of general imitation, is, where power is given by inclosure acts to commissioners, to enfranchise the copyholds within their district, at the instance of the lord and tenant in possession. Here no regard need be paid,” either to the quantum of their estates, or to their titles.

In the preceding system of copyholds, retaining, in the nineteenth century, constant traces of its primitive villeinage, three classes are concerned: the copyholder, (who owns the soil,) the lord, and the public. Of these, the first has a property, governed by a peculiar and complicated body of laws, embarrassed with expensive forms, which keep multiplying with each successive division of the tenure; affected by a different title, and often by a different mode of descent, from any freehold property with which it is held; frequently exposing the copyholder's personal

estate

estate to an offensive seignorage, in the shape of heriots; and, above all, incapable of improvement, unless on the unthrifty and galling terms of effecting it for the lord's benefit as well as his own. The lord's gain is far from commensurate to his tenant's loss. His only material benefits are his fine, and (where it exists) his heriot; both yielded with reluctance, and evaded by every possible stratagem; but capable of ready compensation, either in land or money, on well-known terms. The public, without any advantage whatever, sustains a double loss; first in the impediments which are opposed by fines arbitrary to the improvement of the land, and particularly to its circulation, by the fine on alienation; and next, in the injustice sustained by creditors, from copyholds not being either extendible by elegit, nor assets for payment of debts.'

The seventh title, which relates to the Registration of Legal Assurances, and exhibits, for the first time, the numerous crudities and inconsistencies which now pervade that important subject, embraces also the strangely involved and complicated head of equitable notice, which, in all its subtle ramifications of 'actual' and 'constructive,' furnishes another signal example of the ill consequences of the intermeddling spirit already adverted to, and a most forcible illustration of the so often repeated and so much disregarded maxim- Summum jus summa injuria.'

In his eighth and last title, the author enumerates the sources of the laws of real property. Our readers will probably be appalled by the catalogue. We will give it in his own words.

'The result is, that our laws of real property are to be sought for in the copious library of six hundred and seventy-four volumes, exclusive of Indexes to the Statutes. If, from this collection, we make a liberal deduction for obsolete and redundant treatises, and works of slight esteem, or only occasional relevancy, there will still remain a total of six

HUNDRED VOLUMES.'

The importance of the subject, and the novelty with which it is discussed, have induced us to depart from the modern usage of reviewers, and, for the present, limit ourselves to a fair exhibition of our author's work in the form by which he has himself chosen to convey his impressions. This, indeed, we take leave to think, is but justice to the public in cases so very grave as the present; and, if we have been induced to extract from the first and more exegetical part of the work, more copiously than is our usual habit, or than may prove agreeable to some classes of our readers, we can only say, that we have given no more of the author than appeared to us a necessary introduction to the second and more original division of his treatise. We cannot however dismiss the preceding statement without observing, that it is composed in a style of equal conciseness and perspicuity; and that we know of no chart of any thing like the same dimensions in which the legal

modifications of real property in this country are so clearly and accurately delineated.

In the Second Part of his work, Mr. Humphreys treats Or THE REMEDY FOR THE DEFECTIVE STATE OF THE LAWS OF REAL PROPERTY.

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There are two modes (he says) of effecting this-one, by applying partial remedies wherever the institutions are inconsistent or deficient; the other, by framing an entire new code of laws of real property.'

Mr. Humphreys introduces his own view of this momentous question by some apt citations from Lord Bacon's treatise De Augmentis Scientiarum, Lib. viii.

There are two modes,' says Lord Bacon in his fifty-fourth aphorism, ' of enacting new statutes; one confirms and strengthens the former statutes upon the same subject, with some additions and variations; the other abrogates and expunges all former enactments, and substitutes an entirely new and uniform law. The latter appears to us preferable. The former renders the provisions complicated and perplexed; it provides a remedy for the case which presses, but vitiates the general body of the law: the latter requires greater deliberation in framing the enactment; but excellently provides for the future uniformity of the laws.' And again in his fifty-ninth aphorism:

If heaps on heaps of law have swelled into so many volumes, or labour under such confusion that it is become necessary to reduce them into a healthy and active body, let this be a paramount concern; let it be considered an heroic work; and the authors of such a work should be solemnly and deservedly numbered among the legislators, among the founders of society.'

So in the seventy-eighth :

Nothing contributes to the certainty of law so much as confining writings of authority within certain bounds, and keeping off an enormous multitude of legal authors and doctors. By these the doctrine of the law is frittered away; legal process becomes perpetual; advocates, from their inability to read and master the works themselves, have recourse to abridgments and glosses, tolerably executed perhaps. A few writers of acknowledged weight, or rather some portions of their writings, are adopted as authority.'

This, be it remembered, was written at a time when the English lawyer's library did not amount to a twentieth part of its present portentous dimensions; and Mr. Humphreys has done well to fortify his own decided preference of an entire new code of laws for the regulation of landed property, over any plan for the adhibition of partial remedies, by the sanction of a name so high and venerable. His next appeal is, to the examples set before us by several among the continental nations; Here the Code Napoleon necessarily occupies a pre-eminent station; This is followed by the payment of a high, and (we believe) a just, tribute of applause

to

free warrens; the numerous fruits of tenures, as fines on death and alienations, heriots, profits of courts, &c. common of pasture; being a privilege to the tenants of depasturing over their lord's waste.'

The profits of tenure he proposes to discuss under the head of copyholds, to which they are now principally confined. And, as to rights of pasture,

the opinion,' he says, both of the legislature and the public, upon the policy of this privilege, has been already expressed by the general Inclosure Act of 41 Geo. III. and the numerous local inclosure acts which have passed and been acted upon both before and since; to such an extent, indeed, as to have materially diminished the general quantity of waste land.'

The author then briefly alludes to the peculiar servitude (still following his own mode of classification) of tithes ; but refers us to a subsequent division of his work as containing his reason (which is of a prudential character) for declining a full discussion of it.

His third title embraces the different modifications of interests in real property, as at present acknowledged. Of these the first is a fee-simple; the greatest estate known in our law. The

second consists of estates tail and other modes of settlement. The operation of the law of entail for this purpose, though traced through all its singular obliquities, is scarcely so curious as another and more modern mode of settlement which he has thus characterized.

'It is effected by what are called springing uses in deeds, and executory devises in wills. The rigid law of tenures allowed of no limitations after a fee; but uses, adapted as they were to the exigencies of more recent times, and devises, which foliowed them in their modifications, admitted of this fee being rendered defeasible on certain events, and another being substituted for it. After much uncertainty as to the extent to which these substitutionary estates might be carried, they were finally limited to the period of a life or lives in being, and twenty-one years afterwards, with a further allowance for the gestation of conceived issue (about ten months). This limit was fixed by an alleged analogy to settlements by entail on the parent for life, with remainder to his unborn eldest son in tail, and with any extent of remainders over for life and in tail; but all of which might be barred by the son, either alone, or concurrently with the parents if living, suffering a recovery on attaining his majority, to which period the above limitation of twenty-one years was meant to relate.

'An essential variance was, however, in time discovered between the two modes; inasmuch as, in springing uses and executory devises, the lives were not required to take corresponding interests, or to be otherwise connected with the estate, but might be introduced as mere nominees, for the purpose of protracting the power of alienation. This defect was taken advantage of to an extraordinary extent by the late Mr.

Thellusson,

Thellusson, who in his will directed the produce of his estates, both real and personal, to the amount of about 800,000l., to be accumulated and laid out in land, during (in effect) the lives of all his descendants, however numerous and remote, who should be living at his death. At the end of that period, the estates, as well devised as directed to be purchased, were to be divided in lots between the eldest male lineal descendants, then living, of his three sons. The trust, after having been contested in chancery, and on appeal in the lords, was finally established, and is in operation while I write; but it occasioned an act restrictive of accumulation, which will be noticed hereafter.

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The rule, however, is still in full force as to capital. In its defence it is often urged, that all the candles are burning at the same time. Luminous as may be the illustration, it is somewhat defective in exactness: the candles are of equal length-but among a number of lives selected, a few will probably occur who far outlive the ordinary period of mortality. So calculate the life insurance companies; and so did the testator, or his legal adviser, in a cause of Bengough v. Edridge, which now awaits the judgment of the Vice-Chancellor, on the following singular will, which I shall cite somewhat at length, as strongly illustrative of the extent of perversion to which the defective terms of the rule in question exposes it. The object of an opulent testator, who had no issue, was to give his landed estates, and those which might be purchased with their produce during twenty-one years (the period still allowed by law for accumulation), to his collateral relations, consisting of five nephews and grandnephews, a niece and a grandniece, and their several male de scendants, for successive life-interests, as far as the restrictions of the law against perpetuities would allow. For this purpose, all such estates were vested, and directed to be vested, in fee-simple, in trustees, who were to hold the same for a period of 120 years from the testator's death, if twenty-eight persons therein named (of whom the first seven were the above relations, and the other twenty-one strangers), or any of them, shall so long live; and then for a further period of twenty years, from the determination of the first term. These terms were intended as nearly commensurate with the periods during which estates might be tied up viz. any lives in being and twenty-one years; and might be termed the machinery of the contrivance. Then followed its working, or the beneficial interests carved out of the terms. They consisted in a series of trusts for a term of ninety-nine years, if each successive donee should so long live, for the nephews, greatnephews, niece, and grandniece named, and the respective heirs male of their bodies in succession, forming, in effect, successive estates for life; and finally, failing the whole of these, for the individuals successively answering the description of the testator's right heirs, during similar derivative and determinable terms of ninety-nine years each, until the above technical terms of 120 years and twenty years should be exhausted, either by lapse of time, or the deaths of all the nominees. As to the reversion expectant on the above two terms of 120 years and twenty years, testator directs it to be conveyed on the determination of these two terms, and not before, to his nephews and greatnephews, niece and greatniece before specified, and their respective issue male, in the like order of succession in a course of

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