between general tail and special tail. It is the word body that makes the intail: there must be a body in the tail, devised to heirs, male or female; otherwise it is a feesimple, because it is not limited of what body. Thus a corporation cannot be seised in tail. For example, here is a young woman-what is your name, my dear?' — 'Dolly,' answered the daughter, with a courtesy. 'Here's Dolly I seise Dolly in tail-Dolly, I seise you in tail.'

'Sha'n't, then,' cried Dolly, pouting. I am seised of land in fee — I settle on Dolly in tail." For the continuation of this discussion, see the original report.

At a later period, Ferrett observed that Greaves was a common nuisance, and ought to be prosecuted on the statute of barratry. "No, sir,' resumed Mr. Clarke, 'he cannot be convicted of barratry unless he is always at variance with some person or other, a mover of suits and quarrels, who disturbs the peace under color of law. Therefore he is in the indictment styled, communis malefactor, calumniator, et seminator litium.'-'Prythee truce with thy definitions,' cried Ferrett, 'and make an end of thy long-winded story. Thou hast no title to be so tedious, until thou comest to have a coif in the court of common pleas.'

"Taking

said he, and personal owner, is furtum and

Tom also laid down the law of robbery. away another man's movables,' goods, against the will of the felony according to the statute; different, indeed, from robbery, which implies putting in fear on the king's highway, in alta via regia violenter et felonice captum et asportatum, in magnum terrorum, etc.; for if the robbery be laid in the indictment as one in quadam via pedestri, in a footpath, the offender will not be ousted of his

clergy. It must be in alta via regia; and your Honor will please to take notice that robberies committed on the river Thames are adjudged as done in alta via regia, for the king's high-stream is all the same as the king's highway.'"

Capt. Crowe and Tom, suspected of being highwaymen, were set upon and beaten, their horses and money were taken from them, and they were dragged before a justice, who committed them for vagrancy. Tom thus delivers himself on this complication: ""As there was no just cause of suspicion, I am of opinion the justice is guilty of a trespass, and may be sued for falsum imprisonamentum, and considerable damages obtained; for you will please to observe, sir, no justice has a right to commit any person till after due examination: besides, we were not committed for an assault and battery, audita querela, nor as wandering lunatics by the statute, who, to be sure, may be apprehended by a justice's warrant, and locked up, and chained if necessary, or be sent to their last legal settlement; but we were committed as vagrants and suspected highwaymen. Now, we do not fall under the description of vagrants, nor did any circumstance appear to support the suspicion of robbery; for to constitute robbery, there must be something taken : but here nothing was taken but blows, and they were upon compulsion. Even an attempt to rob, without any taking, is not felony, but a misdemeanor. To be sure, there is a taking in deed, and a taking in law: but still the robber must be in possession of a thing stolen; and we attempted to steal ourselves away.'"

Mr. Gobble, the justice, is also a great character. Sir Launcelot being brought before him, he thus addresses

him: "The laws of this land has provided — I says as how provision is made by the laws of this here land, in reverence to delinquems and manefactors, whereby the king's peace is upholden by we magistrates, who represents his Majesty's person better than in e'er a contagious nation under the sun; but howsomever, that there king's peace, and this here magistrate's authority, cannot be adequably and identically upheld, if so be as how criminals escapes unpunished. Now, friend, you must be confidentious in your own mind; as you are a notorious criminal, who have trespassed again the law on divers occasions and importunities: if I had a mind to exercise the rigor of the law, according to the authority wherewith I am wested, you and your companions in iniquity would be sewerely punished by the statue; but we magistrates has a power to litigate the sewerity of justice,'" etc.

Mrs. Gobble, the justice's wife, pronounces the knight “a vagram, and a dilatory sort of person," and says if she was her husband, she would "ferk him with a primineery.”

In the "Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom" is an amusing account of a lawyer's bill, in which the count found himself charged with three hundred and fifty attendances. "He could not help expostulating with him on this article, which seemed to be so falsely stated with regard to the number; when his questions drew on an explanation, by which he found he had incurred the penalty of three shillings and fourpence for every time he chanced to meet the conscientious attorney, either in the park, the coffee-house, or the street, provided they had exchanged the common salutation: and he had great reason to believe the solicitor had often thrown himself in his way, with a view to swell this item of his account."

FIELDING.

In "Amelia," Fielding has some observations on the British laws and their administration. He speaks of the absurdity of appointing, as constables and watchmen, decrepit old people, who from want of bodily strength are incapable of getting a livelihood by work. "These men, armed only with a pole, which some of them are scarce able to lift, are to secure the persons and houses of his Majesty's subjects from the attacks of gangs of young, bold, stout, desperate, and well-armed villains. If the poor old fellows should run away from such enemies, no one, I think, can wonder, unless it be that they were able to make their escape." He also makes the startling statement, that he has "been sometimes inclined to think that this office of a justice of the peace requires some knowledge of the law, for this simple reason: because in every case which comes before him, he is to judge and act according to law. Again, as these laws are contained. in a great variety of books, - the statutes which relate to the office of a justice of peace making of themselves at least two large volumes in folio, and that part of his jurisdiction which is founded on the common law being dispersed in above a hundred volumes, I cannot conceive how this knowledge should be acquired without reading." He depicts the character of Justice Thrasher, who was never indifferent in a cause but when he could get nothing on either side." To one who is accused of assault and battery, he says, "Sirrah, your tongue betrays your guilt. You are an Irishman, and that is always sufficient evidence with me." True British justice that, even to this day! Justice Thrasher proposed to commit an

66

accuser, who failed to make out his case, for perjury: but his clerk dissuaded him, by suggesting that he could not do it before indictment; "because it is not against the peace till the indictment makes it so." "Why, that may be!" cries the justice: “and indeed, perjury is but scandalous words; and I know a man cannot have a warrant for those unless you put for rioting them into the warrant." This refers to the state of the law by which abusive words were not punishable by the magistrate, and to the practice which had grown into vogue of construing a little harmless scolding into a riot, and of committing scores of old women to prison for the licentious use of their tongues, which is the natural prerogative of their sex. Fielding also animadverts with severity against the distinction then drawn between perjury and larceny; the former being a misdemeanor only, and therefore bailable, and the latter a felony and non-bailable. He also refers to the law of Charondas, the famous law-giver of Thurnim, by which men who married the second time were removed from all public councils; it being deemed unreasonable "to suppose that he who was so great a fool in his own family should be wise in public affairs." He denounces the injustice of the law which declares a larcenous breach of trust to be no crime, unless it be committed by a servant, and then only in case the goods taken amount in value to forty shillings, and in this connection makes the magistrate say, "Such are the laws, and such the method of proceeding, that one would almost think our laws were made rather for the protection of rogues than for the punishment of them." He makes another magistrate deny an application for a search-warrant to discover stolen title-deeds, on the ground that they "savoured of