his children with regard to his pecuniary settlements, or disposal of his fortune, for the legislature to have dreamt of drawing his fetters any closer; and should the children living with him at his death, find fault with the annual apportionments made to their married co-heirs, these on the other hand might rejoin by calling them to account for their maintenance, which would often have the effect of turning the wealthy parent's abode, as well during life as after his death, into a complete counting house, where each member might instal himself judge of his parent's annual disbursements, or apportionments among his children.

CHAPTER III.

OF INHERITANCE IN THE COLLATERAL AND ASCENDING LINES.

It would be difficult to conceive any part of the law or constitution which called for more serious investigation than the system which heretofore prevailed in collateral and ascending inheritances; it would indeed be hardly possible from the innumerable systems which have prevailed from the rudest ages to the present time, to find one more incongruous in principle, or more barbarous in its consequences, than that which to the 3rd of August, 1840, existed here. Though during the reign of feudalism the system of inheritance was as replete with injustice as might be well imagined, from the constituted authorities sacrificing every principle of affection, justice and honour, to the ruling passion of perpetuating a family name; at least had they some ostensible end in view. But what could possibly be the object of selecting and continuing here, the very worst of systems; where the sister was treated as illegitimate in presence of her brother in all collateral inheritances; where, again, if he died and left children, these too were treated as illegitimate in presence of either their uncle or aunt; where representation, that remover of injustice by drawing closer the ties of parentage and relationship, so eagerly sought after by all nations claiming any pretension to

the qualification of civilized, existed in some instances, whilst it was arbitrarily rejected in by far the greater number, for no other reason apparently, than because uniformity in legislation ill accorded with the notions such rulers had formed of a sound system ;* and where, finally, parents were treated as 'criminals, by their inability to inherit from a child, whose whole fortune, whether consisting in real or personal property, -property which he frequently owed to their natural and most commendable desire to secure him during their own lives a competent maintenance,-in return went to a more distant relative, and, in default of such relative, to the crown, as if the parent had been fairly convicted of some heinous offence. That such abuses in reality once prevailed could hardly be credited, were it not for the existence of the order in Council of the 13th of July, 1840, expressly abrogating them; but that they should have met with official supporters to the 38th year of the nineteenth century can only be accounted for, by referring to that blind attachment to an existing system of things, merely because it does exist, which, more than any other cause, obstructs the course of improvement and legitimate reform.

With such a system any change could not but be an improvement, and though in ascending inheritance it is as advantageous as could be expected, yet in collateral inheritance to personal property and real property purchased, or in other terms to acquêts, it might have been still further improved by allowing in all cases REPRESENTATION, or inheritance PER STIRPES among nephews and nieces, whether they inherit with uncles or aunts, or whether they come with other nephews and nieces, the descendants of uncles or aunts, to their relative's inheritance. This would have rendered the law in Collateral successions more uniform, by assimilating more than ever the system which prevails in the propre, or inherited real property, to that of the acquêts, or purchased real property, as well as to personal property of every description, which in reference to the subjects of Inheritance and Wills, should ever exist on the same footing.

Before the changes introduced by the new law respecting

* Vide Appendix, letter A, p.p. 7 and 8.

Collateral inheritance are reviewed, it may be proper to point out the mode of determining heirs to such property either by the lines of parentage, or the degrees of relationship,-the difference which exists in inheriting by branches per stirpes or by heads, per capita, and also the effects of Representation, by means of which children no longer deprived, in certain cases, from inheriting from their relations, in consequence of the death of their parents, are by representing them, enabled to derive the same advantages as themselves would have done, had they survived the person whose property is to be divided.

A line in Inheritance is the order or series of persons descended from a common ancestor, and is either direct, collateral, or ascending.

It is said to be direct when descending immediately from a common ancestor, and is said to be so many degrees distant according to the number of generations there is between the person reckoned from and him concerning whom reference is made; thus the son is ONE degree removed from the father, Two degrees from the grandfather, THREE from the great grandfather, and so on, ad infinitum, reckoning according to the number of generations. Those persons may however be said to be united to each other by a common stock ;-the great grandfather, by a line or link which may be defined a series or chain of persons descended from a common ancestor, vinculum personarum ab eodem stipite descendentium. Persons thus united by descent, are properly speaking those only which are entitled to the name of parent, because from them alone are they issued or sprung; the term parent being derived from PARERE, to produce, the extent of degree is therefore reckoned by the distance of parentage between them. In the collateral line, as the parties are not descended one from the other, however closely allied they may be, the ties which unite them can only be those of relationship, and the distance between each is said to constitute so many degrees of relationship, not of parentage.

The only difference existing between the ascending and descending line is, that in the former, generations are reckoned from the son upwards, and in the latter, from the common

ancestor downwards; the degrees in both being necessarily determined by the distance there is between the ancestor and the party referred to.. When the distance between them is very great, from the length of time which must have elapsed, the parents are then called ancestors or MAJORES; the line that separates their persons quite as effectually as it unites their descent, having insensibly dissolved all those ties of affection and friendship, which so powerfully attach parents to each other; indeed the Romans at such a distance no longer bestowed upon them the revered name; and apparently not without reason, experience proving that mankind commence to set forth their claims to ancestry as the ties of personal attachment towards them insensibly die away: Parentes usque ad tritavum (the sixth generation upwards) apud Romanos proprio vocabulo nominantur; ulteriores qui non habent speciale homen, majores appellantur. So that the claims to ancestry commenced, where the feelings of attachment ceased.

f

As in the past or ascending line, reference is made to our ancestors, or majores, so in regard to the future or descending line, reference is made to posterity, or our descendants, who assumed the qualification of posteriores, when removed six generations, so that ancestry and posterity commenced at equal distances from a common stock : Parentes usque ad tritavum majores appellantur : item liberi usque ad trinepotem (the sixth generation downwards) ultra hos posteriores vocantur.*

The Collateral line is so called from a latere, sideways, because the relatives, though not descended from each other, yet spring from a common ancestor, as brothers who come on the same line side by side, and who, though not descended from each other, yet spring from a common stock or root, the same parents; or as uncles and cousins who descend from the same grand parents, and on that account were styled Cognats or quasi CONGENITI, all having the same origin: Cognati appellati sunt quasi ex uno nati, aut ut Labeo ait, quasi commune nascendi initium habuerint. A reference to ROUILLE OF CHABOT's Genealogical Table, will easily clear

L. 10. Sec. 3. ff. De Gradibus. + L. 1. Sec. 1. ff. unde cognati. 19 Table, Vol. 1. p. 247, according to the civil mode of computation.

up any difficulty which may arise respecting the mode of computing the degrees of descent, in all cases of Inheritance.

There are two modes of computing degrees in a Collateral line, the civil and the canonical. By the civil the relationship is traced from the party seeking his degree to a common ancestor, and from thence down to the person sought: thus by the civil law the brother is in the second degree of relationship to his brother, because it must be first traced up to the father the common stock, and then down to his son, which makes two,* * whereas by the canonical law, where degrees are reckoned by generations, he is in the first degree of, relationship.

The canonical is the mode followed in Guernsey, the number of degrees here being reckoned in the longest line, whereas by the civil law the number of degrees in both lines is taken to the common ancestor, as the following instance in ascertaining in what degree JOHN is removed from his cousin germain Nicholas will show when it will be found that he is in the fourth according to the civil, and only in the second according to the canonical mode of computation; thus James-the grandfather and common ancestor. Robert-Henry-his two sons, father and uncle to John. John-Nicholas

John's first cousin.

J

From John to his father, is one degree, from Robert to the grandfather James, the common ancestor, is two degrees, from James to Henry is three, and from Henry to Nicholas is four; whereas in the canonical mode, where the computation is only made in the longest line, from the common ancestor there would be only two generations from either John or Nicholas to such common ancestor; it would therefore be said that there are only two degrees ; thus between John and his father Robert would be one, between whom and his father James would be two.t

* Superior quidem cognatio et inferior a primo gradu incipit; ex transverso sive a latere nullus est primus gradus, et ideo incipit a secundo. L. 1. Sec. 1. ff. de Gradibus.

† See for the mode of computing degrees under the fourteenth article.