in principle, and will never be effective until the law imperatively insists on a complete record of all transactions as to land, or, at least, gives some tangible advantage to landowners, heritable mortgagees, and others, who submit to public registration in order to enable the public to know what rights and obligations attach to particular lands, houses, and tenements.

I will now mention the most important civil and criminal laws passed between 1542 and 1688.

LAWS, CIVIL AND CRIMINAL.

First-Civil.

247. Lands may be entailed.-In 1685 (1 James VII. c. 22) an act was passed by which it was declared to be lawful to entail lands and estates, and to substitute heirs in entails with such provisions and conditions as the owners thought fit, and to restrict the rights of the actual possessor of such lands in such manner as to make it unlawful to the heirs of entail to sell, alienate, or dispone the lands or any part thereof, or contract debt, or do any other deed whereby the same might be appraised, adjudged, or evicted from the other substitutes of the entail, or the succession frustrated or interrupted; declaring all such deeds to be in themselves null and void. If the terms of this act were not strictly observed, neither creditors nor singular successors, who had contracted bonâ fide with the person who stood infeft in the entailed estate, were to be injured. The fines and casualties due to the king and the superior were not to be affected by such entails.

No serious attempt has been made till recent times to abrogate this law. Whatever may have once been the policy of the nation, there is not now any valid reason for protecting land to a particular series of heirs for all ages in such a manner as to compel bonâ fide creditors to lose debts due from persons who have the ostensible means of paying what they owed. The laws as to landed and personal property should be assimilated as nearly as possible.

248. The consent of the superior required where land held by ward and relief.-With regard to the feuing of land by sub-vassals in violation of their lord's rights, an act was passed in 1606 in explanation of an act of James II. which ordained that it should not be lawful to any vassal of any earl, lord, prelate, baron, or other freeholder, possessing lands under the feudal burdens of ward or relief, to feu his lands without the special consent of his superior, or the confirmation of the latter: 14 James VI. c. 12. This act was afterwards extended to the lands held by feudal tenure from the king and prince: Charles I. p. 1. c. 16. Both statutes were swept away by the abolition of feudalism.

249. Forfeiture of land for unpaid feu-duties.It was also enacted in 1579 that feuars who did not pay their feu-duties for two years should lose their feus. But a liberal interpretation was given to this statute by the judges, who always allowed the amount due to be tendered in court: 15 James VI. c. 245.

250. Terce excluded by special provision.-By 3 Charles II. c. 10 (1681), it was ordained that, in all time thereafter, where a particular provision should be

granted by a husband in favour of a wife, she was debarred from all terce, unless it should be expressly reserved in the writ by which she had right to the special provision.

251. The interest of stranger executors in personalty. -In consequence of the ignorance of great numbers of the people as to the effect of making a will or testament in favour of strangers, even although such persons were never intended by the testator to get any part of their personal estates, but merely to act for behoof of their relations in the management and realization thereof, it was enacted in 1617 (22 James VI. c. 14) that strangers who were appointed executors should hold the funds under their charge for the wife, children, and next of kin, according to the division observed by the laws of the realm; and, unless a legacy was given to them by the testator, they should never be entitled to more than one-third of the testator's free personalty. This was a step in the right direction. Subsequently executors did not get even the one-third which they were allowed to retain under this act.

252. The quot to commissaries abolished.—The quot, as it was called, or one-fourth of the free residue of the deceased's personal estate, payable to commissaries on the confirmation of the executors, was finally abolished by William III. par. 1. sess. 9. c. 14; and, in lieu thereof, fair and reasonable fees were to be paid for the future.

253. Reduction of deeds by minors.—It appears from a statute of 1681 that great abuses were practised against minors under twenty-one years of age by causing them to subscribe bonds for borrowed money,

contracts of alienation of their lands, dispositions, discharges, and other writs of importance, and to ratify the same by an oath, whereby they were deprived of the benefit of reduction. It was therefore enacted that no such oath should be exacted; and, in case of contravention, the contracts were to be null and void, the exaction of the oath infamous, and the writ reducible at the instance of any person related to the minor: 3 Charles II. c. 19.

254. Usury. In all civilized states, provision had always been made against the circumvention of the young and inexperienced against the cunning and deceit of others, and even against their own imprudence. Nay more, the principle of protection was carried, in former times, much further, and notably in the case of usury, or the payment of a rate of interest greater than was allowed by law. The laws against usury have been abrogated as contrary to the just principles of commercial dealing, and all persons of full age may now agree to pay interest at any rate they please for the money which they borrow. In the reign of James VI. however, the rate of interest was fixed at ten per cent. and all deeds by which a higher rate was exacted were null and void: 11 James VI. c. 52; Ib. p. 14. c. 222; Ib. p. 15. c. 247; Ib. p. 16. c. 7; Ib. p. 23. c. 28; and Charles II. p. 1. s. 1. c. 62.

255. Bankruptcy and fraudulent alienations.Against fraudulent bankrupts a statute was made in 1621 (23 James VI. c. 18). Strange to say it was a ratification of an act of the lords of council and session. The preamble refers to the frequency of men obtaining the property of others without any intention to pay

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for the same, and afterwards disposing of their means and property to their friends. It is then declared that all alienations, dispositions, assignations, and translations whatsoever, made by the debtor of any of his lands, tiends, reversions, actions, debts, or goods whatsoever, to any conjunct or confident person without true, just, and necessary cause, and without a just price really paid, the same being made after the contracting of lawful debts with true creditors, to have been from the beginning, and to be in all time thereafter null, and of no avail, force, or effect, at the instance of the true and just creditor, by way of action, exception, or reply, without further declarator. This statute also lays down that bonâ fide purchasers from the interposed person shall be good. It then states the manner in which proof of a fraud is to be shewn, and the responsibility of the interposed person to the bankrupt's creditors for any sum he might receive for the rights or property conveyed to him by the bankrupt.

This act is admirably drawn, and reminds me of the praise so justly bestowed by Lord Bacon on the old Scottish acts of parliament, an honourable characteristic which, I fear, was lost in the lord chancellor's own age, and, with few exceptions, has rarely distinguished the statutes of modern times. The explanation of this lies in the fact that this and other ancient statutes were drawn by experienced lawyers, and were not altered by those who did not know what the existing law was when changes were proposed to be made.