and leave him engrossed with the clear style
and cold comprehensive views of

BLACKSTONE'S COMMENTARIES.

Allowing the foreign student a reasonable
time to consider the theories of this excellent
work, we return to hear what he has to say.
The intelligent foreigner runs to meet us with
delight, and with his finger on a curious passage:
"Mon Dieu! Le drole! Quel galimatias!"
and other exclamations of a comic astonishment.
He is infinitely delighted with a sort of legal
pantomime, called " suffering a recovery," an
elaborate trick for disposing of an estate, in
which seller and buyer take sham parts; the
seller, calling in a party known as " the common
vouchee," craving leave of the court to
"imparl" with him "in private," which is, as usual,
"allowed him." And " soon after the demandant
or buyer returns to court, but the vouchee"
(played always by the crier) " disappears, or
makes default; whereupon judgment is given for
the demandant," &c. Then the aggrieved seller,
for whom the absent vouchee vouched, has indeed
a remedy for his lands thus lost by the default of
the crier, in the shape of a judgment to recover
lands of equal value off the crier alluded to, &c.

For many centuries, as our intelligent foreigner
will find, this little drama was regularly set on the
boards and played out when a particular sort of
estate had to change hands. It is quite in tone
with the spirit of the laws; it is bound up with
their essence. There are treatises, reports,
cases: the theory is sacred, and ramifies over
the country in every muniment room—in deeds,
family settlements, and what not. Our
bewildered stranger is anxious to know about this
sacred principle, and with serious embarrassment
we have to inform him that the whole
sacred mystery was by the stroke of a pen
abolished one day in a year of our Lord within
the memory of many a flourishing "Junior," with
all the sacred cases, reports, and decision which
hung by it. And, more remarkable still, its
disappearance was unattended with the slightest
inconvenience; people who wished to dispose
of an estate merely setting down on paper that
they wished so to dispose of it. We therefore
send back our foreigner to his studies with this
caution: to eliminate all such theories and
statements as he may light on in reference to
fines and recoveries. This will clear away from
the shelves a great many ancient volumes— dicta
cases and reports. How much, no unprofessional
person can form an idea of: it being one of the
pillars of English conveyancing, and has actually
grown into a common-place of conversation.

Presently he comes to us again, bewildered
by what the great Blackstone calls " the mutual
altercations" between parties at law; that is,
the wonderful system of pleading, singular and
intricate. Thus he finds the plaintiff begins with
his Declaration or Count, voluminous and wordy,
and spread over many skins of parchment,
to which the defendant answers by a Plea,
equally voluminous and wordy, and spread over
many skins. Then, if plaintiff has more to say,
or thinks defence insufficient, he replies with a
replication in many skins; and if defendant
takes the same view of plaintiff's replication, he
rejoins in a Rejoinder of many skins. If,
again, the rejoinder is unsatisfactory, plaintiff
has a fresh stroke in the shape of a surrejoinder,
which is met again by a rebutter; and for this
Roland Rebutter, defendant is of course entitled
to an Oliver in the shape of a surrebutter.

These little exercises, all spread over a certain
acreage of skins, are voluminous, bristling with
points, rocks, shoals, dangers, niceties of all
sorts, and requiring the most exquisite pilotage
and legal seamanship on the part of the pleader.
The exquisite distinctions, fine drawings, hair-
splittings, dancings on the points of needles,
fill volumes and series of volumes. Brains have
gradually worn away by detrition in pleaders'
offices; grand and splendid suits have stood,
or fallen, or been lamentably shipwrecked on
"points of pleading;" years and years of
precious public time have been consumed in
discussing their exquisite subtleties. In short, if it
had been put to Lord Mansfield, or to Mr. Charles
Butler of Lincoln's Inn, or to their spirits,
by the intelligent foreigner, what they deemed
the weft and tissue of British law, which could
not be separated without destruction of the
whole fabric, they would have answered
reasonably— pleading! It turns up in every corner.
Regiment after regiment of reports deal with it.
It is the salt of the law. And yet we have the
mortification of being obliged to tell the intelligent
foreigner that of another morning in the
year of our Lord eighteen hundred and fifty,
another stroke of a pen swept away the whole
gigantic system—rejoinders, surrejoinders, sur-
rebutters and all. Mr. Charles Butler of
Lincoln's Inn, and all his excellent refinements;
the shelves of reports, the talkee-talkee of finesse
of judges the learning, the hair-splitting, the
dancing upon needles, the breaking of flies
upon wheels the whole embodying some tons
of text books, precedents, and reports all went
overboard in a second. Somebody made the
extraordinary discovery that it was, on the
whole, simpler that the plaintiff should set
down clearly on a small sheet what he
complained of, and that the defendant should set
down as clearly, and on as small a sheet, what
he had to say in reply. Wonderful to relate,
our legal system survived this dislocation, and
within a few months was running smoothly
before the wind. Again must the intelligent
foreigner be directed not to burden his mind with
this lumber; again must he avoid certain shelves,
and winnow out of reports and text books all
allusions that bear on that defunct matter.

But the truth is, there is nothing that has
been so changed, and shaped, and altered, as
this wonderful imperishable law of ours.
Portions of the structure that seemed essential,
and to touch which would bring the whole
edifice down, have been removed with as little
ceremony as a whole house is " underpinned,"
and a shop-front taken out. If there was
anything that we took our stand upon, it was