become so far infatuated with some of these systems, as to question both the right and power of posterity to unrivet the very manacles by which in those days it had been attempted and hoped to retain their persons and property in universal bondage. Hence arose the system of retraites, or abuse of redemption, with its usual concomitants, perjury and fraud; escheats, with its cries and lamentations; wardships, primer seisins, reliefs, with their innumerable extortions, and last, though not least, the inability to will real property, which destroyed the main attributes of ownership; all which constitute irrefragable proofs, how, during many centuries, "les tours d'imagination et la fantaisie, pour ne pas les qualifier l'ambition et la vi cupidité des législateurs ont présidé à la confection des lois."

On reviewing the source of so much iniquity and crime, and on examining what has been done by the amended law to remove them, one cannot help thinking that more might have been accomplished, by further restraining the abuses of retraites, and limiting them solely to the sales of inherited real property; that parents should have been entitled, under any circumstances, to enjoy the real property inherited by their children, to the prejudice of more distant relatives, particularly, as observed in the Report of the Court's Committee, that in these days the ties of relationship only subsist between near relatives.*

Should, in fact, another case similar to that of Miss De Rozel occur to-morrow, that is to say, of a person dying intestate possessed of real property inherited from the paternal line, neither her mother nor her maternal relatives, however closely united, such as her maternal uncles or aunts, could inherit any portion of it-it would escheat to the crown; and were the owner a minor, no will could be made; and thus again would be renewed the scenes which the Petitioners had fervently hoped might have been banished for ever from this bailiwick, of the mother having, through the visitation of HIM whose ends are inscrutable, not only to mourn the loss of her offspring, but likewise to deplore the loss of her fortune. The same rule will also apply to the father and his relatives similarly situated; and all these abuses must be perpetuated * Appendix, letter C, p. 37.

for no other purpose than that of maintaining the puerile and impolitic distinction between the inheritance of real property purchased and real property inherited! Such nevertheless continues to be the reformed legislation of a free and religious community in the nineteenth century, emanating too from constituent authorities elected by the people, as their fittest representatives to fill the most important and arduous municipal and judicial offices!

That instances of great hardship have occurred, and may yet occur, will be seen from that part of the order in Council registered here on the twenty-fourth of October, 1840, by which Miss De Rozel's estate is ordered to be sold for the benefit of the crown, with a proviso that one-third part thereof, should it not exceed one hundred pounds sterling, should be given to the Misses Le Roy, who were intimate with the deceased, and who had petitioned the government to grant them the property thus escheated.

This property consisting of a house and garden, situated at Havelet, is supposed to be worth about twenty quarters, or four hundred pounds. The claims of the heirs, who petitioned, have been set aside, though upon what ground has not transpired. Yet with such an example before their eyes, the local authorities of this said-to-be-privileged community countenanced this horrible law of escheat, rather than allow the heirs of the other line to inherit respectively from each other, on the extinction of heirs in either line.

Neither the Court's Committee, nor the States, would listen to the proposition, that the heirs of one line should inherit from the other on the extinction of all its members; indeed it cannot be said that ever the proposition was fairly submitted to the States, who, in their present defective form, have only to deliberate on what their President deems proper to submit to them, and which, in the present instance, was the project of the Court's Committee, who had rejected the proposition, without substituting any other in its stead. It was in vain that the Petitioners, in their second Report, entreated the authorities to submit this important proposition before Her Majesty in Council, in a proper form. But without * Appendix, letter C, p. 40.

their share of representatives in the local legislature how was it possible they could expect that their propositions on this subject, or indeed upon any other, should meet with that attention they deserved? The members of the Court's committee having declined noticing the thirteenth article, not conceiving themselves competent to entertain it, the Petitioners, trusting that their benevolent Sovereign would deem it the glory of her reign to entertain the peace of families, by granting them the right to succeed to each other's property so long as the ties of relationship subsisted between them,* again besought the Court to submit the matter to the States; but to no purpose.

In the mean time Miss De Rozel's property was disposed of. The claims of her heirs having been rejected, and the petition of the Misses Le Roy so far admitted, as to obtain for them one hundred pounds out of the proceeds; and the law officers of the Crown, with the Queen's Receiver, deeming it advantageous for the public revenue that the real property escheated should be publicly disposed of, the Procureur, the Comptroller, and Receiver, on the twenty-fourth of October, 1840, presented to the Court, to be registered on the public records, an order in Council which had been obtained so far back as 1838, setting forth-that a house and garden situated at Havelet, forming the real estate of the late Miss Charlotte Mary De Rozel, containing thirty perches, not quite a third of an English acre of land, had escheated to the Crown in the year 1835, in default of heirs,-that they were so much in want of repairs that they had ever since been untenanted, and that it would be advantageous to dispose of the same for money or rents, or partly for money and partly for rents,they were authorised to dispose of them accordingly, as also to dispose, in the manner prayed for, of the Queen's Mill, with two vergées of land, situated in the Catel parish.†

* Appendix, letter D, p.p. 53 and 54.

That part of the order authorising the Crown Officers to dispose of these various kinds of property runs thus :

At the Court at Buckingham Palace, the 26th of February, 1838. WHEREAS there was this day read at the Board a report from the Right Honorable the Lords of the Committee of Council for the affairs of Guernsey and Jersey, dated the 23rd of February instant; in the words following:

L

This order was registered as a matter of course, and thus was again consecrated one of the worst principles inherent in the legislation of the dark ages, the more disgraceful that the contrast between the public feeling of the age when the doctrine of escheats originated and the present, is the greater. Will it be credited that within a few short months, the same officer registered on the public records of this island, the munificent donation of £300 from Peter Martin Carey to the De La Cour fund, and an order in Council debarring the natural, though not legal, heirs to the owner of real property to a similar amount? After this well may learned gentlemen talk of laws being the images of the feelings, ideas and manners of the people they govern.

Let it not be assigned as a reason that a person leaving no relatives within the degree of first cousins may always bequeath even his real property inherited. Many persons may not even then have the power or faculty of doing so; they may be prevented from some legal incapacity; they may be minors, or prevented from mental incapacity; they may besides be taken off suddenly without having had an opportunity to provide suitably for their most deserving parents, relatives or friends. Besides, has not a parent greater claims on its child, than a first cousin, without any regard as to the source whence

[Here follow the particulars respecting the nature of the real property sought to be disposed of, with suggestions as to the mode: after which is the following authority :-]

Her Majesty having taken the said report into consideration, was pleased by and with the advice of Her Privy Council to approve thereof and to authorize Charles De Jersey, Esq., Her Majesty's Procureur. John Thomas De Sausmarez, Esq., Her Majesty's Comptroller, and Daniel Tupper, Esq., Her Majesty's Receiver General, in the said Island of Guernsey, to sell, dispose, alienate altogether or separately, either for money or perpetual yearly wheat rents, or partly for money and partly for perpetual yearly wheat rents, the said Mill and Garden called the Queen's Mill, and the said House and Garden late belonging to the said Charlotte Mary De Rozel, on the most advantageous terms, for the benefit of Her Majesty's revenues in the said Island, and to invest the money arising from such sales, save and except the third part of the proceeds of the said Charlotte Mary De Rozel's estate or the sum of one hundred pounds sterling, as the case may be, in the purchase of perpetual yearly wheat rents for the benefit of Her Majesty's revenues in the said Island and to pass all necessary contracts or deeds for the same, and to pay over the one-third part of the proceeds of the said Charlotte Mary De Rozel's estate, provided such third do not exceed the sum of one hundred pounds sterling, or the sum of one hundred pounds sterling, as the case may be, in equal proportions to Martha Le Roy and Margaret Le Roy; Whereof all persons concerned are to take notice and govern themselves accordingly.

his property sprang? Under any circumstances it can never be politic to interdict the willing of real property, whether inherited or purchased, under a system which allows the crown to succeed before a parent to a child's property.

Under all these circumstances, it is evident that nothing could have been more just or politic than to have made no distinction whatever between the right of bequeathing real property inherited, and the right of bequeathing real property purchased; and to have admitted the heirs of the paternal line, according to proximity of degree, to inherit from those of the maternal on the extinction of heirs in such line, and vice versâ, the heirs of the maternal line to those of the paternal, on the extinction of relatives in that line.

SECTION 3.

On the right of parents to succeed in certain cases in preference to all other heirs to certain properties which they may have bestowed upon their children or relatives.

The fourth clause of the thirteenth article referring to a subject totally unconnected with the three preceding, it has been deemed right to make it the subject of a distinct Section; it is indeed one whence many important consequences flow, and has found a place in the legislation of ancient and modern states, being in strict conformity to those rules of justice and humanity, which among a civilized people should ever form the basis of their laws of Inheritance. It was introduced with a view of soothing in some measure the affliction of parents who had been bereft of their children, that they should not at the same time lose the property they had generously bestowed upon them, by beholding it pass into the hands of strangers to their own detriment, or, as the Roman legislator so emphatically observes, "in case the donee leaves no descent, such property shall return to the parent donor whence it sprang, not only that he may recover his own, but that the munificence of parents towards their children, may not be impeded by the fear of their property reverting to strangers"-Jure succursum est patri, ut filiâ amissá solatii loco cederet, si rederetur ei dos ab ipso profecta, ne et filiæ