Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/195

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A D Y M A C 179 France there is a distinction between avocats and avoues. The latter, whose number is limited, act as procurators or agents, representing the parties before the tribunals, draft and prepare for them all formal acts and writings, and prepare their lawsuits for the oral debates. The office of the avocat, on the other hand, consists in giving advice as to the law, and conducting the causes of his clients by written and oral pleadings. The number of avocats is not limited; every licentiate of law being entitled to apply to the corporation of avocats attached to each court, and after presentation to the court, taking the oath of office, and passing three years in attendance on some older advocate, to have himself recognised as an advocate. The Facility of Advocates is the collective term by which the members of the bar are known in Scotland. They professionally attend the supreme courts in Edinburgh ; but they are privileged to plead in any cause before the inferior courts, where counsel are not excluded by statute. They may act in cases of appeal before the House of Lords ; and in some of the British colonies, where the civil law is in force, it is customary for those who practise as barristers to pass as advocates in Scotland. This body has existed by imme morial custom. Its privileges are constitutional, and are founded on no statute or charter of incorporation. The body formed itself gradually, from time to time, on the model of the French corporations of avocats, appointing like them a dean or doyen, who is their principal officer. No curriculum of study, residence, or professional training was, until 1856, required on entering this profession; but the faculty have always had the power, believed to be liable to control by the Court of Session, of rejecting any candidate for admission. The candidate undergoes two private ex aminations the one in general scholarship, in lieu of which, however, he may produce evidence of his having graduated as master of arts in a Scottish university, or ob tained an equivalent degree in an English or foreign univer sity ; and the other, at the interval of a year, in Roman, private international, and Scots law. He must, before the latter examination, produce evidence of attendance at classes of Scots law and conveyancing in a Scottish univer sity, and at classes of civil law, public or international law, constitutional law, and medical jurisprudence in a Scottish or other approved university. He has then to undergo the old academic form of the public impugnment of a thesis on some title of the pandects ; but this cere mony, called the public examination, has degenerated into a mere form. A large proportion of the candidate s entrance fees (amounting to 339) is devoted to the magnificent library belonging to the faculty, which literary investigators in Edinburgh find so eminently useful. LORD ADVOCATE, or KING S ADVOCATE, is the principal law-officer of the crown in Scotland. His business is to act as a public prosecutor, and to plead in all causes that concern the crown. He is at the head of the system of public prosecutions by which criminal justice is administered in Scotland, and thus his functions are of a far more ex tensive character than those of the English law-officers of the crown. He is aided by a solicitor-general and subor dinate assistants called advocates-depute. The office of king s advocate seems to have been established about the beginning of the 1 6th century. Originally he had no power to prosecute crimes without the concurrence of a private party; but in the year 1597 he was empowered to prose cute crimes at his own instance. He has the privilege of pleading in court with his hat on. ADVOCATION", in Scottish Law, was a mode of appeal from certain inferior courts to the supreme court. It was abolished in 1868, a simple "appeal" being substituted. ADVOWSON, or ADVOWZEN (advocatio), in English Common Law, the right of presentation to a -vacant eccle siastical benefice, is so called because the patron defends or advocates the claims of the person whom he presents. Originally all appointments within a diocese lay with the bishop ; but when a landoAvner founded a church on his estate and endowed it, his right to nominate the incumbent was usually recognised. Where the right of presentation remains attached to the manor, it is called an advowson appendant, and passes with the estate by inheritance or sale without any special conveyance. But where, as is often the case, the right of presentation has been sold by itself, and so separated from the manor, it is called an advowson in gross. Advowsons are further distinguished into presentative, collative, and donative. In a presentative advowson, the patron presents a clergyman to the bishop, with the petition that he be instituted into the vacant living. The bishop is bound to induct if he find the clergyman canonically qualified, and a refusal on his part is subject to an appeal to an ecclesiastical court either by patron or by presentee. In a collative advowson the bishop is himself the patron, either in his own right or in the right of the proper patron, which has lapsed to him through not being exercised within the statutory period of six months after the vacancy occurred. No petition is necessary in; this case, and the bishop is said to collate to the benefice. In a donative advowson, the sovereign, or any subject by special licence from the sovereign, confers a benefice by a simple letter of gift, without any reference to the bishop, and without presentation and institution. The incumbent of such a living is to a great extent free from the jurisdic tion of the bishop, who can only reach him through the action of an ecclesiastical court. When an ecclesiastical body owned an advowson, it very frequently, by appropria tion, exercised the right in its own favour, the -corporation becoming the incumbent of the living, the actual duties of which were discharged by a vicar or peryietwal curate. An advowson, being property, may be sold, or mortgaged, or seized by the creditors on a bankrupt estate, under certain restrictions intended to prevent simony. A sale is abso lutely prohibited during the mortal sickness of the incum bent, or during the existence of a vacancy. There are upwards of 13,000 benefices in the Church of England, the advowsons being distributed as shown in the following list, which may be taken as approximately correct : Under the patronage of the crown there are 1144 livings; bishops, 2324 ; deans and chapters, 938 ; the universities, 770 ; parochial clergy, 931 ; and private persons, 7000. ADYTUM, the most retired and sacred place of ancient temples, into which none but the officiating priests were allowed to enter. The Most Holy Place of the temple of Solomon was of the nature of the pagan adytum ; none but the high priest being admitted into it, and he but once a year. M, or AE, a diphthong, compounded of A and E, of fre quent occurrence in Latin and in Anglo-Saxon. In the best .editions of the classics the form now preferred is ae. In English words derived from Latin the diphthong is gene rally converted into the simple e, but it is not unfrequently retained, as in jEolian, mediaeval, &c. In some words it represents the Greek at, to which the Latin ce corresponds, as in aesthetics (awr&^riKa). ^EACUS, in Mythology, the son of Jupiter by ^Egina. When the isle of JEgina was depopulated by a plague, his father, in compassion to his grief, changed all the ants upon it into men and Avomen, who were called Myrmidones, from fj-vpfj.^, an ant. The foundation of the fable is said to be, that when the country had been depopulated by pirates, who forced the few that remained to take shelter in caves, ^Eacus encouraged them to come out, and by commerce and industry to recover what they had lost His character for justice and piety was such that, in a time of

universal drought, he was nominated by the Delphic oracle