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many of a mere technical character would disappear by abolition of the three systems I have just rejected. Among the remainder, the estate tail is the most objectionable, both in its existence and the mode of destroying it; for, unlike every other interest, it is scarcely ever suffered to die a natural death. Any mere regulation upon it (as by substituting some less costly bar than a fine or recovery) would only impose the necessity of keeping alive so uncouth an institution. Nothing short of abolition will serve.

'Proceeding to alienation and charge by deed, or other act inter vivos, great havoc will be made by the abolition of tenures, uses, and passive trusts, in the technical regiment I have exhibited of the different assurances depending on these systems-one simple form, but necessarily new, will suffice for each alienation and for each charge.

Testamentary disposition will admit of nearly equal improvement both in its attendant formalities and its substance; and it is singular that the provision which will the most enlarge its operation, namely, the extending it from real property, to which the testator is entitled at the making of his will, to all that he may be entitled to at his death, will at the same time, and in a correspondent degree, abridge the law on this subject. So important and so radical indeed are the improvements, and of a character so variant from the existing laws, that what little might be preserved of the latter would operate but as a foil.

The doctrine of powers, like other existing institutions, will be influenced and simplified by the abolition of tenures. Other peculiar improvements have been hinted at, which cannot be effected by a reference to the present system, but will assume the shape of new and fixed laws and require the entire system to be recast.

The rights of creditors require at the same time both enlargement and simplification. Any reference to a statute of Edw. I. or Car. II., (however excellent each in its day) would not meet the exigency, while it would perplex the remedy.

• If any laws are incorrigible, they are those for the administration of the assets of the deceased. It is sufficient to refer to my exposition of the actual system on this subject.

The like, I think, may be safely said of the laws of limitation of time. A few simple and direct enactments on the subject would surely be far preferable to the inextricable labyrinth of real actions, and to the bar, so circuitously and obscurely deduced, in our chief practicable remedy of ejectment, from the period to which a right of entry is restricted.

The peculiar laws of copyhold, forming a code of themselves, surpassing all the necessary distinctions in an entire system of laws of real property, would be swept away with those of tenure.

The laws of registration and of equitable notice present, instead of a system, an uncouth mass of conflicting institutions. The former demand uniformity and method-the latter utter abrogation.

But an advantage nearly equal to the aggregate of those already enumerated, would result both to the public and to the professors of the law, from sweeping away the ponderous pile of volumes in different ages, various languages, Norman, French, low Latin, and modern' English, in which the laws of real property are to be sought. Viewed as to their

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mere number, (a total of upwards of 600 volumes,) and the expense and time necessary to collect and digest them, they are a sealed book to the public, and even to the bulk of the practitioners. Already have the latter found it necessary to confine their attention to the modern reporters, and occasionally to rely even on the second-hand authority of digests; while the more ancient collections still retain their authority, when explored by those whose narrow but keen views confound laws with justice to entrap or perplex the unwary claimant.'-p. 171–176.

After this vindication of his preference of a new code, the validity or sufficiency of which it is for others than ourselves to determine, Mr. Humphreys proceeds to exemplify its formation, which he proposes to effect by a succession of legislative enactments, thus assuming the decemviral Esto rather than the imperial Videtur.

By a preliminary enactment he at once sweeps away the rubbish of tenures, and their various perplexing incidents, excepting only copyhold tenure, rents service, reliefs in respect of them and heriots. The existence of these also, however, is to be of short duration, his Majesty being authorized to issue commissions for the extinction of them, and also of fee farm and other perpetual rents, forests, chases, and free warrens, and for making compensation to the owners.

This, perhaps, is the boldest of all the author's projected innovations; and one, the execution of which cannot but be attended with difficulties, even in his own conception of it. He defends it however by the various partial acts which the legislature has already passed for effecting one or other of these several objects; and would not (we may ask) the proposed measures, if the difficulties, real or supposed, were once effectually surmounted, prove in a very high degree beneficial both to the public and to individuals? Must not both desire that the discordant tenures of ancient demesne, copyhold, borough English, and gavelkind, with their separate privileges, separate customs, separate modes of descent, and, in some cases, separate courts, should be abolished throughout the land? Would not the abolition of them add to the comforts which attend the enjoyment of real property, simplify its settlements, facilitate its commerce, and, above all things, tend to set it free from the heavy, uncertain and unprofitable tax of litigation, which now hangs over and oppresses it in every stage of its transmission?

The next step is to the abolition of all uses, trusts and charges, legal or equitable, upon land, for the benefit of third persons: retaining, however, those trusts for the owner of the land, which require that the trustee should be actively employed in the execution of them. Thus a trust, whereby an annuity for the benefit

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of B. should be charged on the estate of A. would be void; a trust by which A.'s estate should be vested in B. in trust for A. himself would also be void; but a trust vesting A.'s estate in B. in trust to manage it, and to lease it, and to pay the rents and produce to A., would be good. Neither is the proposed abolition to extend to trusts arising by implication of law.

Having thus divested land of its feudal incidents, and simplified its legal qualities, the author commences his first title with a definition of real property according to his own system. He considers it to be land, with all that (following the old definitions) is above it and all that is under it; together also with such servitudes of light, way, water, &c. as are essential for its enjoyment. Then follow the various modes, by which he would direct that title should be acquired.

The first of these is Descent, under which head he recommends a departure from our existing rules of succession, in order, in some instances, to meet the ends of natural justice, in others for the sake of consistency and simplification. Having rejected the feudal incident of escheat, he assigns the estate, on a general want of heirs, to the crown; and this, in conformity with the law of every nation, which considers the state to be entitled to all property, of which there is no other owner. He obviates one' of our worst anomalies, by admitting the half blood to the succession; with a preference of the full blood, however, in the case of brothers and sisters and their issue; and with a preference also among the half blood itself, of the paternal, to the maternal line of inheritance. On failure of these near relations, the ascending line is admitted by him in preference to the collateral; and, under this last head, he introduces a novelty, borrowed from the Code Napoleon, by interposing a life interest to the father, on failure of lineal heirs, and a life interest to the mother on failure of brothers and sisters and their issue.

Whether the land come from the father or mother, he makes it descend, first in the paternal line; and failing this, in the materual. In this proposal, his great object is simplification; and his calculation is that, although the maternal line will thus be occasionally postponed, as to land strictly descended from a maternal ancestor, yet the maternal descendants will, in the greater number of cases, be gainers.

He allows of no right of representation beyond the issue of brothers and sisters; he proposes that more remote collaterals should take per capita; so that a junior uncle, surviving, would inherit in preference to the issue of his deceased elder brother. This he justifies on the ground, that, in descent, the leading principle of precedence is proximity of blood, which is deviated from,

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estate, I give and dispose (without saying "of the same") as follows;"again, where the charge of debts or legacies is not upon the devisee personally, or upon the land in his hands: in these, and similar cases, the devisee has been held to take for life only.'

He then adds or alludes to various other cases, in which, for different reasons of strong intention, a fee has been held to pass, though words of inheritance were wanting. Constructive estates tail in wills also fall under his consideration. The entire class of these cases evinces, according to him, the systematic disposition of judges, in modern times, to evade technical rules in favour of a testator's intention.

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As they were not prepared, however,' says the author, to go the full length of holding, in cases of implied fees-simple, that the gift of the land was a gift of all the testator's property in it, they have effected their object by distinctions so numerous and so complicated, as to render their decisions of doubtful benefit. The refinements on testamentary estates tail by implication, which have converted a settled formula (namely that by which an estate tail is created by deed) into a series of individual cases, obscurely shading down from a fee-simple to a feetail, and often terminating in a mere estate for life, with remainder to the issue by purchase, amply demonstrate, that rules of law, where they work injustice, should be repealed, not evaded.'

The author next treats of Powers, and of appointments under powers, by means of which a greater interest may be conferred than the alienor himself possesses. After a brief, but lucid exposition of the law on these important subjects, he concludes with a description of the mode in which courts of Equity have thought themselves called on to interfere, in aid of informal or defective, and in avoidance of what are technically termed, illusory, appointments. These he has succeeded in rendering plain to the comprehension of the most unlearned reader; and his exposition is better calculated to expose the radical absurdity of a distinct equitable jurisdiction, than any other text which could be selected for a similar purpose.

We must leave it, however, and pass to the next head of discussion that which treats of involuntary alienation, or the rights of creditors, a subject which the author has subdivided into the liabilities of the living debtor, and those which affect his property or assets, as they are called, when dead. The origin and character of the distinction between legal and equitable assets is curious, as affording another specimen, at least equal in extent and importance, of the early interposition of equity to correct the imperfections and inequalities of the strict legal system, and the consequent glaring anomaly of two conflicting principles, applied to the government and distribution of one and the same description of property. The statement is too long to be transcribed; nor

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does Mr. Humphreys's clear and nervous style admit of compres sion; but the entire subject is peculiarly worthy the attention of those whose minds are employed in the important consideration of the defects inherent in our present system of Equitable Jurisdiction. We must however find space for the author's concluding remarks on this division of his labours.

Such,' he says, 'are the leading rules for the administration of assets in equity, within whose jurisdiction they are now principally drawn. Their two-fold objects, of rendering, by means of marshalling, real property, assets for payment of simple contract debts, and of an equal distribution between creditors of every description, were not only consistent with natural justice, but liberal to a degree, which, had their political effects undergone discussion on their first introduction, would have not only alarmed the prejudices of feudal landowners, but even startled the very framers of the rules. The circuitous means adopted, however, (to some extent unavoidably,) for effecting these purposes, have introduced a discordant and most complicated body of laws. First, we have the harsh, though simple, rule of common law. Then comes equity; not subverting, but undermining it, in changing the character of creditors from simple contract to specialty, by marshalling the assets. Her next step is bolder:-framing a new description of assets, under the title of equitable, and administering these, not according to the rule, (always professed, though seldom respected,) that equity follows the law, but after a new system of perfect equality, both as to persons and property, These assets, however, necessarily require to be administered in conjunction with legal ones. Indeed the distinction being purely technical, the two characters may pervade the same property. Equity, too, is obliged to bend itself, sometimes to the law, sometimes to the legislature; as, in equities of redemption of mortgages in fee, and in trust estates. It, however, generally rights itself and its rule, by giving a new direction to some other property, over which it may have a more absolute jurisdiction.

But, in effecting these objects, what accounts-what classification— what apportionments-what assemblages of party and property into one general mass of litigation-what direction and superintendence become necessary! To such an extent indeed, that a large proportion of the assets of the country are now administered under the direction of the Court of Chancery. The only adequate cure consists in one simple set of rules for the administration of assets of every description. The principle which should pervade it is, that of equal distribution. It is sanctioned both by natural justice, and the long established practice of courts of equity.'

On the subject of Alienation by Adverse Possession-in other words the limitation by lapse of time to the recovery of real property, Mr. Humphreys sums up his statement of the existing law by observing, that the reader, on perusing it, cannot fail to be struck with the obliquity of operation by which the ordinary bar of twenty years is produced.

'But

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