The Express.
London, England, 1848-12-27 00:00:00

81FPOLK.

FATU. COACII litited yesterday
that on Sunday evening the Norwich Union coach, nn its
route to the Beetern Union station, eve overturned in North-
stateosireet, Ipswich, and a lady was killed on the spot,
alum of the other passengers Mi."( mire or leas injured.
—Au inquiet was held on the lemons o Mrs. Parker, on
Saturday, when a shrdict of " Acci•lental death" was re
turned.

'TIC LATE EXPLOSION UN THE RAILWAY.—SOnIe
days ago, we gave the parieular. of the explosion of two
hash of gunpowder at the Witham station on the previous
Sunday morning. Oa the !Acidity it seems that the com-
pany determined to institute proceedings against James
Upton, the night porter having charge of the station when
the explosion took place, and who had placed the powder
upon the line. Accordingly he was apprehended and
taken before the magistrates, where Mr. Richardson
attended on the part of the company to prefer the
charge, which was that of having negligently placed the
said barrel of gunpowder uprn the line, whereby the
liven of the pissengeis, and the property of the company,
were placed in imminent danger, the penalty for which
' unite the act is 101. Upton pleaded guilty to the charge,
but from the statement which he made during the bearing,
it appeared to the magistrates that the company did not em-
ploy a sufficient number of hands during the night properly
to do the work. This circumstance was strongly remarked
upon by the magistrates. Other extenuating circumstances,
such as the darkness of the night, the rain falling at the time,
and his previous good conduct, operated strongly upon them
to mitigate the penalty to the Invest possible sum, namely,
61., and in this sum, tow:thee with the coats, he was fined,
and he was at the same tie:. discharged from the company's
service,

V. Of Civil Injuries.—lncluding the modes of redress.
VI Of Crimes.—lneluding the modes of promcutioe.
The history of our law as detailed in the new com-
mentaries is singularly instructive. It shows how
the determination of our national character has gra-
dually moulded the most heterogeneous and unpro-
mising customs and positive laws into a system of
great practical utility, though encumbered with much
that is us, less and inconvenient. It is curious to trace
the way in which our actual legal system has been
compounded. Wo have the unwritten or common
law which some of die older law writers would de-
rive from the Ancient Britons, but which is probably
itself a mixture of the laws and customs of the Ito-
mane, the Picts, the Saxons, the Danes, and the
Normans ; though it may be broadly stated that
the Saxon laws and customs were highly favourable
to individual freedom and popular rights, while those
of the Normans mainly contributed to the aggrandise-
ment of a powerfulsecuon of the community. Thenwe
have the stringent and positive feudal laws designed
to secure and perpetuate a dominant class, whose
power was based on the possession of land; and,
lastly, there is the judge-made law, the fictions and
subtleties by which the astuteness of the lawyer, then
exerted in favour of civilisation, counteracted and
sometimes defeated the iron hand of feudalism.
Nor is it less useful and instructive to observe the
gradual and often slow, bat always certain, influence
which commerce has exercised upon our legal system.
The towns, the seats of trading industry, became,
first, the refuge of thou oppressed by the tyranny of
the barons, then the strength on which the crown
ri lied to countervail and check the exorbitant power
of the greatlanded aristocracy, and, finally, the source
of that national wealth which has so materially modi-
fied, though it has not yet abrogated, our oligarchical
constitution ; and we see that everything which has
tended to lessen the exorbitancy of the power of the
landed oligarchy has induced great and immediate'
improvements in our law. Thus the Crusade', by
breaking down the fortunes of so many of the peat
barons, as well as by inducing extended amenseree,
became indirectly the cause of the advances made by
our law subsequently to that period. So again, the
wars of the Roses ruined the aristocracy to the exal-
tation of the crown, but at the same time opened the
way to industry, and rendered the laws far more
favourable to the rights of the industrious than they
had ever before been. From the accession of Henry
VII. the improvement in oar law has been constant,
and in a degree mainly coincident with the progrus
of trading industry. The statute of fines which tact-
litated the destruction of entail, passed in this reign,
and was a step towards the free disposal of land. In
the next reign the statute of wills enabled the owner
of laud to devise one-half of his estate,
but the full power to dispose of real pro-
perty by will was not given until after
the Restoration. The statute of uses, too, dates in the
reign of Henry VIII., which, as Blackstone says, pro-
tected estates for years from being destroyed by the
reversioner, that is, the owner of the landsubjecttothe
lease, and introduced new modes of conveyancing,
which at that time greatly conduced to the more easy
and convenient transfer of real property. Further
means were also found for breaking up entails. Bat
LITERATURE. what most strongly denoted the degree in which the
English had become a commercial people, was the
Nero Commentaries el the Late* of Booked (partly founded
o). By Haim, him erirmiN, establisnment of bankrupt laws, by which an unfor-
jeant at-Law. Second minion. 4 vols. innate trader was for the first time relieved from per-
Th. Companion Book end Supplement to Blookitoka's Cots.- petual imprisonment as the consequence of his failure.
~aeries. By J. DINAIWALL WILLIAMS, Bag. These laws received great impro-ements during the
There can be no more decisive testimony to the sub- r, igos of Elizabeth and James I.; so mach so,
stantial merits of Blackstone than the steady place that the statues of lames continued to be the ap-
his commentaries have maintained from the time of naive bankrupt law down to our own time. The poor-
their publication, eighty years since, in public and laws, too, must be considered evidence of program, es
prokeekmal estimation. Mr. Williams, the author of evincing rare not only for the public peace, bat inerened
the second work at the heed of this, designates him- interest in the condition of the most humble Ann
self the editor of the 18th and 19th editions of the But the reign of Charles 11. ratified the more ins-
commentaries, and his present " Companion and Sup- portent ameliorations which had been effected under
element" is intended to continue the statutory enact- the Commonwealth, amongst which especial mention
'tents and judicial decisions from the last corrections must be made of the abolition of all feudal tenures
of Sir William Blackstone to this present time. The (with the exception of the omitted case of copyhold)
work, too, has the advantage of being equally appli- and the conversion of all tenure into common
cable to all and each of the many editions of the coin- or fee simple. King James L had proposed
mentaries, and constitutes besides a digested summary abolition of feudal tenures, and, by way of compare-
of the law fi r the last 70 years. It forms a very use- lion, required that a yearly fee-farm rent, payable out
ful publication, especially so to students, who may of every knight's tee, should be settled and annexed
prefer to nee one of the older edition of s Black- to the crown for ever. Nor was this unreasonable, as
stone." the land had always been subject to various burden-
Mr. Stephen's work is of a bolder and more ambi- some services and paymen:s. A certain money rent
time character. He, taking into consideration the would have formed a great relief to the landowner,
net eke erne which have occurred in our laws and would have been a fair equivalent to the crows.
daring the het 30 years, and the wonderful dews But when military tenures were actually abolished,
lopment of what may be termed the social branch of the equivalent given to the crown was an hereditary
our legal spasm, determined, instead of re-editing emu duty; a tax, in fact, paid not by the land-
" Blackstone.* to write " New Commentaries" on the owners whose estates were relieved from feudal bur-
laws of &Peed, and therein to embody so much of dens, but by the industriouspart of the comainnity.
the text of "Blackstone" as correctly states the law Thus early in the progress of En,,lish industry had
at the present time. And this week, one of no mean the dominant landed interest learned the way to trans-
difficulty, has been well executed, and affords alike ter its own burdens upon the shoulders of the people.
to the professional and non-professional reader a oar- Subsequent changes in oar law belong to modern
red view of our law, in a form not less attractive than juridical history, with the general outline of which
the original commentariee. The arrangement of most readers will be familiar. A more clear and pre-
the various subjects as discussed by Blackstone cise detail of such changes and of the actual law will
has been considerably altered. The main division of not be found than that presented by Mr. Stephen in
municipal law into rights and wrongs has been re- his " New Commentaries"; in which we should men-
tained as beitg founded on a natural and just die- Son he has marked, by brackets, the passages
tinction, and interwoven besides, with the whole taken from Blackstone, so that the readers
fabric of our law and rooted in tae minds of our , e'er see at a glance, if he deems it im-
lawyers." The division of wrongs into those of a portant, whether any particular passage ie by the
civil and those of a criminal nature is also preserved. I hand of the old or the new commentator. We
But Blackstone'd division of rights into rights of eannat part with this work without attempting to
persons and rights of things is departed from. Mr. I elucidate from its pages one of the grant modern ques-
Stephen, in hie preface, thus states his objection to , dons of the day, namely, how the land of this country
that arrangement : is to be made available for the purposes of commerce

TREATMENT OF DEBTORS COMMITTED BT TUE
COUNTY COURT.—At the court at Chelmsford, on Wednes-
day, Mr. Gordon ob,erved to Mr. Neale, the governor of
the gaol, who was present, tha. a person who had been com.
mitred by him from ltochford Hundred had boasted that be
was allowed to smoke in 'he pool, that he was very comfort
able there, and did not care fur the comntittmeut.—Mr.
Neale said it must have been an empty bout; the persons
committed by this court were not allowed the privileges of
common debtors—they were treated as misdemeanants, and
there was a separate flan fur them.—Mr. Gurdon said he
was aware of that, hut he th,ught it ought to be publicly
known —Subseqoently Mr. Neale produced the printed
rules with respect to this elms of debtors, by which it ap-
peered trey had oatmeal gruel and bread for breakfast and
supper, a pint of soup and bread for dinner three days in the
week, and three ounces of meat, halt a pound of potatoes,
and eight ounces of bread on the other four ; and it is add, d
"They shall not procure or receive any tebscoo, wine, beer,
or fermented liquor, except by order of the surgeon, on the
ground of health. They shall be per.nitted to see their relo-
mous sod friends only ono, in the course of each week."

I and a grioalture. At this moment the great obstacle
to the advancement of husbandry and the pr.:4re*s of
improvment in the productive power of our soil is
Med to consist in tte law of real property end the
system of which that law is both a consequee. and a
cause. How the law arrived at its actual ste,e, and
what it now is, we will endeavour to trace. Purely
feudal tenures consisted of land held by vassal., by the
giant of the lord, upon the condition of performing
military services; and in the times of violeneo which
followed the breaking up of the Roman empire,
the owners of land, after voluntarily surren-
dering their land to some powerful ltd re-
ceived it back again in the shape of a fend
for the sake of the comparative security enjeyed by
feudal vassals. In this way, as much as by a positive
alteration of the law' all the land of this cow.try be-
came, soon after the Norman conquest, held by feudal
tenures. Such relation of lords and tenants was to a
great extent a military organisation, and one oerhaps
not ill adapted to the rude and uncivilised dal e of the
people and the times. But one of its princioa" objects
was, that the feudal tenant should be a pers capa-
ble of performing that military service in re, pest of
which his estate was in fact or by fiction of law,
granted to him. Hence the custom of prhoogeni-
tare, and the anxious provisions made for en-
tailing the entire estate on the heir male
of the feudatory. Some other incidents to
feudal tenures became most oppressive to the
owners of land, to redress which the various t carters
of which we read in English history were t xtorted
front the sovereigns by the barons or principal feuda-
tories. But the barons themselves were er-r most
anxious to perpetuate so much of the feudal s 3 dent as
preserved in their own hands the real go :erning
power ; and this was moat effectually done by main-
taining, by means of primogeniture and entb no, the
estate entire in the possession of one membei of the
family. Land was then of necessity the a uree of
subsistence and income, but its ecetionai :al use
Was ever made subordinate and nubservelet to
its political use ; and such, under all the
changing circumstances of English society, has
ever since continued to be the cis,. The
law, however, and its interpreters, always tended
towards freedom, and sought to free land fi um the
fetters of entails. Thus the feudal ;imitation of an
estate to a man and the heirs male of his body was
held to be a conditional fee; that is, a fee subject to
the condition that the grantee should have ..n heir
male, and when that condition had been performed by
the birth of an heir male, the father wa- enabled
absolutely to dispose of the estate. The lauded legis-
lators met this by positive enactment contained in
13 Edw. L e. 1, called the statute De dais condi-
, tionalibus, to the effect that the heirs should take the
estate, notwithstanding any alienation by the grantee;
cr, if no issue, that it should revert back to 'he lord
of the fee. This statute made entailed estates
Intel,. inalienable. The owners of conditional fees by
, this act became tenants in, tail. The operation of this
law, which subsisted for about two hundred veAre, is
thus described by Blackstone;
Thus much fur toe nature of estates tail, the establishment
, of which family law (as it im properly styled by Pigott) oc-
; essioned infinite difficulties and disputes. Children grew
disobedient when they knew they could not be set aside:
farmers were ousted of their leases made by tenante in tail ;
; for if such leases had been valid, then under colour of long
leues the issue might have been virtually disinherited: cre-
ditors were defrauded of their debts; for if tenant in tail
could have charged his estate with their payment, he might
also have defeated his time, by mortgaging it for as much as
it wan worth ; innumerable latent entails were produced to
deprive purchase.. of the lands they had fairly bought, of
, suits in conseauerce of which, our antient books are full:
and treasons were encouraged; u estates tail were nut liable
to forfeiture longer than lot the tenant's life. tie that they
were justly bran•led as the source of new oonteateins and
mischiefs unknown to the common law, and almost univer-
sally considered as the common grievaice of the realm. But
as the nobility were always fond of the statute De (Joni:, be-
cause it preserved their family estates from forfeiture, there
' was little hop of procuring a repeal by the legislature; and
' therefore, by the connivance of an active and politi prase*,
' a method was devised to evade it.

But in the reign of Edward IV. it was openly de-
cided by the Judges that a common recovery—which
was a fictitious suit—suffered by a tenant in tail
would convert his estate into a fee simple absolute,
and her all persons claiming under the entail or any
estate ulterior thereto. This effect had been in part
produced by the operation of a fine, also a fictitious
suit, but in a less complete manner then by a reco-
very. Such fictitious proceeding! were, says Black-
stone, "introduced by a kind alma/raw, to elude the
statute De dome which was found so intolerably
mischievous, and which yet one branch of tha legis-
lature [the Lords' would not then consent to repeal "
Such '• pions fraud," however, in connexion with that
"remarkable rale of construction called the rule in
Shelley's ease" was a final blow to entails as they
were then limited. That rule is thus propounded by
Lord Coke:

That wherever a man, by any gift or conveyance, takes an
estate of freehold, and in the same gift or conveyance an
estate is limited, either mediately or immediately. to kis
heirs in fee or in tail, the word heirs is a word of limitation,
and cot of purchase. In other words, it is to be understood
as expressing the quantity of estate which the v.rty is to
take, and not as conferring any distinct estate on the per-
sons who may become his representatives.

The reason of that rule Mr. Stephen rightly states
to be that "where by the same conveyance land is
given to a person for his life, and afterwards to the
heirs of the same person, it is reasonable to presume
that he is himself intended in both cases as the sole
object of the gift; and that no benefit is designed to
his heirs, except what they may derive by operation
of law from his own antecedent seisin." And this
is the only reasonable role as applicable to settle-
ments, namely that the unborn issue of the tenant
for life, whether called heirs as in the old form, or
children as at present, should be absolutely in the
power of the parent. Our modern system of strict
settlement was Invented by Sir Orlando Bridgman
and Sir Geoffrey Palmer. That system is well stated
by Mr. Stephen :
When land was settled by a limitation to the parent for
life, and after his death to his ant and other sons or children
in tail, and trustees were interposed to priaierve thu contin-
gent remainders, this way called • strict settlement. The
estate tail immediately expectant on the parent's lite estate
was sot only exempt from the danger of being defeats d be.
fore the first son was born, but remained unalienable until
be attained the age of twenty one : at that period, however,
he might. with consent of his parent, if then living, or at his
own pleasure, if his parent were dead, bar both his own issue
and those is remainder or reversion, and convert his estate
tail into a fee simple absolute; and, even without coasent of
hu parent, might is all ca em bar his own issue, leaving the
ulterior estates undisturbed. This state of the law to regards
the position of a child to whom, before his birth, a remainder
in tail has been limited, expectant on a precedent life estate
limited to his parent, is still unaltered, though by the effect
of a late statute, to which we shall have occasion presently
to refer, the interposition of trustees to preserve contingent
remainders is no longer necessary to his security.
Here we see that practically most of the mischiefs
so graphically described by Blackstone, as resulting
from the statute De dons, are revived. By our mo-
dern settlements, eldest eons are "rendered disobe-
dient," "farmers are ousted of their lessee," and
"creditors defrauded of their debts," as effectually as
if the entail was perpetual; for, indeed, a settlement
made by a father on himself for life, then to his eon
for life, and then to the unborn child of that eon—
and such is generally the state of families when settle-
ments are made—is for all practical purposes, and as
regards this generation, a perpetual settlement.