First Report of the Commissioners on Practice and Pleadings; Code of Procedure (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1848 Excerpt: ...of the courts in finding means of evading its beneficial operation. It was plainly meant as an act of peace and quiet. My noble friend, (Lord Plunkett, ) who presides in the court of common pleas of the sister kingdom, once said, with his usual felicity of expression, that time is armed with his scythe to destroy the evidences on which titles rcsf, but the lawgiver makes him move with healing on his win-s to stay the ravages of his weapon. To thwart the designs of the legislature, the courts have been setting up their rules of presumption. At one time they seemed really to hold that any thing, even the simplest expression, would take a debt out of the statute of limitations; for instance, if a defendant had said--" 1 have paid the debt," he was taken as admitting it, unless he could prove payment. Again, if he said, ' I owe you nothing, ' the assertion was taken as an acknowledgment; and he was also required to prove an acquittance of the plaintiff's chum. The reply--' Six years have ex pired, ' was equally dangerous, though it was only saying out of court, what the statute itself allowed him to say in pleading. In fact, so deeply did Lord Erskine fee.1 the difficulties which encompassed the defendant under these efforts of judicial acuteness, that he said the only safe course a defendant could take, when his adversary sent a fishing witness, was to knock him down; for though he might be proceeded against for the assault, he retained the benefit of the statute as regarded the debt. Although of late, the current of decisions (as it is pleasantly termed, ) has set in more in an opposite direction, there is still abundant room for a provision to give this wholesome law effect. The means are obvious. Let nothing but an acknowledgment in writing take ...