Holy Orders as Disqualifying for the House of Commons or the Bar.-International General Average.-The Rights, Disabili- ties, and Usages of the Ancient English Peasantry.-The Machinery of Legislation.-The Science of Civilization.-On Equitable Interests in Ships.-The Law of Judgments.-On Charitable Trusts.-On Insanity and Prodigality. Decrees The Laws Controlling or Regulating the Perpetual Dedication of Property for Public or Charitable Purposes.-The Rights, Disabilities, and Usages of the Ancient English Peasantry.- The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States.-The Custom of Apprenticeship in the City of London.-Private Bill Legislation-Local Statute Law.-On the Liability of Master to Servant in Cases of Accident.-County Court Legislation.- The Social Science Congress.-Tudor on Charitable Trusts.- The Bar of New York and Mr. Edwin James.-Action of De- II. THE RIGHTS, DISABILITIES, AND USAGES OF THE ANCIENT ENGLISH PEASANTRY 338 Stephen's New Commentaries on the Laws of England.- Marsden's Influence of the Mosaic Code upon subsequent Legislation. Owston's Highway Act, 1862.-Oats' Bleach and Dyeworks Acts, with Notes, Forms, &c.- Arundell's Practical Treatise on the Law relating to Mines and Mining Companies.-Moulton's Analysis of American Law.-Howitt's Letters on Transportation and the Game Laws.-The Legal Examiner.-The Student's Guide to the University of Cambridge.-Maclachlan's Supplement to a Treatise on the Law of Merchant Ship- ping.-Brande's Chemistry.-Every Man's own Lawyer. -Yool's Essay on Waste, Nuisance, and Trespass.- O'Dowd's Merchant Shipping Amendment Act, 1862.— Sikes's Testament of the Law.-Lindley's Supplement to Contents of No. XXVI. (AUGUST, 1862.) The Laws Controlling or Regulating the Perpetual Dedication of The Rights, Disabilities, and Usages of the Ancient English Peasantry. Part IV.-General Services.-Prison Discipline: The Present State of the Question.-General Average.-The Office of Lord Lieutenant and his Deputies.-Extract from Lord Brougham's Letter to the Earl of Radnor.-The Glasgow Murder.-The Patent Law.-Franck on Bodmeria.-The College, Doctors' Commons. The Metropolitan and Provincial Law Association THE Law Magazine and Law Review: OR QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE. No. XXVII. AND ENGLISH ART. I. THE RIGHTS, DISABILITIES, PEASANTRY. PART IV.-General Services. THE want of intelligent workmen, without the concurrence of other causes, might have destroyed the old English predial polity, if that system had not failed through its own nature; having been essentially rude and awkward and uncommercial. Under the Plantagenets, service could in general be reduced to money at the discretion of the lord or the option of the tenant.* The service often cost the tenant more than it was worth-he found it cheaper to pay than to work: on the other hand, money must have been at all times welcome to the lord, and he did not at all times require labour. In the course of time agricultural service went out of use altogether, and money was regularly tendered and accepted instead of it: so that the * Eorum consuetudines redacte sunt in redd' assis' ad voluntatem domini. (2 Hundred Rolls, 668.) Ista debent facere tenentes vel dare pecuniam si domino placuerit. (Add. 6159, f. 37, 38.) VOL. XIV.NO. XXVII. B improved rent, as it has been called, now paid by a farmer, appears to be a compound-historically considered-of the ancient mail or gable, and of a great variety of petty charges, which were originally compensations for tributes of corn, malt, poultry, bacon, and eggs-or fines for the non-performance of acts of tillage, carriage, porterage and the like. The elements of rent were recognised in Scotland longer than in England, because petty charges subsisted in Scotland for some time after they had been abandoned in England. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, David Deans-the tough true-blue Presbyterian farmer-still paid "mail duties, kain, arriage, carriage, dry multure, lock, gowpen, and knaveship, and all the various exactions now commuted for money, and summed up in the emphatic word RENT.” * In our opening paper we divided agricultural tenants into two classes-observing that superior tenants only worked occasionally, and only performed the more important acts of husbandry; while pure villeins worked constantly for their lord, and were liable to all kinds of labour. But servile works were peculiarities attached by long usage to the tenement, and did not always follow the person of the tenant. Any freeman might come into the occupation of a tenement in pure villenage, and might perform the services due from such a tenement without degradation, because the services were done on account of the nature of the tenement, not on account of the personal condition of the tenant.† When we read that the chaplains of Palgrave hold one acre and render fifteen pence and one seam and two bushels of oats . . . also three ploughings and three weedings and three harvestings with meat unum averagium ad terga per xii leucas circiter villam de Redgrave . . . et implebunt carectam fimo per dimidiam diem .. we are not to believe that the reverend gentlemen actually filled dung-carts with their own hands, or that *Heart of Mid-Lothian, ch. viii. Add. 14850, f. 69. |