always died, which Mr. Maine shows might or might not be the case. The mancipa tion, derived from the more ancient mancipium, did not vest a testator's estate con ditionally on his death, as " not a few civil ians" imagined, or "grant it from a time uncertain, i.e. the death of the grantor." This compels us to look for sound inter pretation in another direction, to Hebrew antiquity, and not to Latin.
Our inquiry has led us into the bounded border land between two professions and two great domains of truth. To pursue it farther would carry us across the line into the rich fields of interpretation of contem porary written revelation. We pause in an alluring inquiry; for we have written for well-read lawyers and laymen, and not for Biblical scholars.
A LEGAL INCIDENT. IS A DEMURRER A PERSONAL AFFRONT?
CONFLICTING OPINIONS.
By Camm Paiteson. MANY years ago a young man noted for industry and probity of charac ter, who was six feet seven inches tall and large in proportion, who resided in an in land county in Virginia, and whose educa tion was somewhat defective, determined to study law. He got three books, the chief one of which was " Stephen on Pleading," and after reading them two months without any instructor, applied for and obtained by some unaccountable means a license. He had hardly opened his office before a mer chant gave him six accounts upon which he was directed to bring suit. He had no forms except those set forth in an old edi tion of " Stephen on Pleading," which had been obsolete for more than half a century; he had never seen a Declaration in his life, but he brought the suits. When the cases were called, six of the most enormous docu ments ever seen in any court-house were placed on the bar of the court; they were not folded in legal style, but were in six tremendous envelopes, addressed to the court, just as though they had been letters. They all commenced as follows : " Charles Creditor complains of David Debtor, who is in the custody of the marshal of the Marshalsea," and so on. Such Declarations
were never before seen in America. The counsel for the defendant was an old county court lawyer, not overburdened himself with legal knowledge, but he knew enough to know that these Declarations were demur rable. When the first case was called he rose from his seat in the bar with some difficulty, as he was just recovering from a spell of illness, and said : " May it please the court : I tender a demurrer to the Declaration, and ask the court to pass upon it. In a practice extending over forty years I have never before seen such a Declara tion." And he held up the awful looking document, the sight of which caused a sup pressed smile on the part of the audience. Now this giant young lawyer lived near the old one. There was an intense rivalry be tween them, and the manner of the elder member of the bar was far from being pleasant or reassuring. The young man had never heard of a demurrer in his life, and he had not the faintest idea of what it was. In his distress he turned to the writer and asked him what to do. I promptly in formed him that he should ask the court to give until the next morning to prepare his defense to the demurrer, which request the court granted. After the court had ad
