property and the father have appointed no guardian, the Court of Chancery will appoint one.

The general rights and duties of Guardians in respect of the custody of the children, and-if they have funds for the purpose in their hands-of maintaining and educating them, are exactly the same as those of the Father. In respect of the management of the Ward's property, the subject is included under the general head of "Trustees."

(3) Trustees.

It was previously seen that the policy of the "Mortmain" Acts was to prevent lands coming into the hands of religious corporations. A persistent effort to evade these Acts was made by means of interposing persons who could legally become owners, and leaving it to their honour or good faith to allow the religious corporations for whose benefit a gift was made to enjoy the fruits of lands conveyed or devised to themselves. These efforts, though favoured by the Court of Chancery, which was presided over by ecclesiastics, were resolutely withstood by the Legislature, which at last succeeded in sweeping away the whole system. But the notion that a gift might be made to one person in trust for the benefit of another became familiarly recognised in the Court of Chancery, which, in cases of gifts so made which did not fall within the Mortmain laws, compelled the persons who were the immediate recipients of the gifts to fulfil the trusts imposed upon them. The varieties of these trusts were, in course of time, largely multiplied, and at the present day the topic of Trusteeship and of the rights and duties of Trustees is one of the most important branches of Law. The Court of Chancery keeps a watchful, or rather severely critical eye on the acts and omissions of trustees, and employs its most potent and searching mechanism to secure that trustees shall draw as little, and those on whose behalf the trust is held (the cestui que trusts in old Law French) as much, per

sonal benefit as possible from the trust. Trustees are thus bound (under the penalty of being liable to make compensation out of their own private resources) to take the utmost care of property committed to their charge, to protect it from waste, to invest funds safely and advantageously, and to incur such expenditure as, and no more than, is strictly necessary and profitable.

Trustees may be distributed into two classes, passive and active, according as they have merely to be intermediate organs for the receipt of money entrusted to them from one quarter and the payment of it to another, or as they have, in addition to this, a variety of active duties cast upon them. To the latter kind of trustees belong guardians of children and lunatics, executors and administrators, and assignees in Bankruptcy (that is, the persons to whom all the insolvent's money or goods are transferred in trust for distribution among his creditors). Nevertheless, as has been seen above, all trusts have some active duties attached to them, though where more than one trustee is appointed, it is usually one of them only who acts in the name of the rest, the rest remaining none the less responsible. Trustees must generally assent to undertake the trust imposed upon them, though there are numerous cases in which persons interfering with the property of others, or accidentally having funds of theirs in their hands, are treated as trustees even against their will.

V. LAW OF "TORTS " OR CIVIL INJURIES.

The notion of a Tort, or Civil Wrong, is that of such a violation of a right as is neither a Breach of Contract nor a Crime. The rights which afford occasion to this violation thus fall under one of three classes, that is (1) rights of ownership; (2) rights of special classes of persons; and (3) those universal rights which appertain, in a greater or less degree, to every member of the community, such as rights to personal security, to free locomotion, to the conditions of

a healthful existence, and to that amount of fair reputation to which their character and conduct entitle them. The violation of these different classes of right-which are sometimes made to be crimes as well as torts-are such as trespass to property or to the person, false imprisonment, malicious arrest and prosecution, nuisances in all their various sorts, slander and libel. The remedy is pecuniary compensation, accompanied (in some cases) with restitution of a thing detained.

VI. CRIMINAL LAW.

A crime is an act which the State absolutely forbids, and which it employs all the machinery of police, prosecution, and punishment, which it has at hand, either wholly to prevent or at the least to render as infrequent as possible.

In English Law every crime is said to be either a Treason, or a Felony, or a Misdemeanour. The two first of these terms are old feudal words, the first implying an active breach of good faith on the part of a vassal towards his lord, and the second implying such a breach of feudal duty as carried with it forfeiture of the lands held. As society progressed the older classification of crimes was felt to be no longer sufficient to meet the growing forms of violence, and gradually a new class of crimes, that is, the class of "misdemeanours," founded on the notion of a civil injury sustained by the Crown, was added to the old ones. The class of "felonies" and the class of "misdemeanours," especially the latter, were gradually enlarged as fresh manifestations of fraud, malice, and violence accompanied the growing commercial and social complexity of modern life. At the present day the distinction between misdemeanours and felonies is little more than nominal, involving as it does only a slight difference of procedure. All forfeitures for felony have been recently abolished.

The crime of Treason may be generally described as an offence directed against the constitution or administration

of the State. It is more particularly described by a number of Statutes, commencing with that of the twenty-fifth year of Edward III. This Statute was very general in its terms, and included under the head of "treason" a number of acts of very different moral complexion and political importance. Consequently, a number of successive Acts were needed to interpret the first one and to protect personal liberty against abusive constructions of it. Some of these Acts prescribe the number of witnesses requisite for conviction, and the number and quality of essential facts to which their testimony severally must relate. Others secure that the accused is furnished at a definite period before his trial with a list of the jurors and the adverse witnesses, and with a copy of the "indictment," or formal statement of the offences charged against him. In spite, however, of these statutory precautions, a tendency constantly manifested itself in Courts of Justice (which were largely under the influence of the Crown) to extend the construction of the Treason Statutes, so as to bring under them all sorts of offences, even of the nature of riot or of the mere free expression of political opinion. These doctrines of what is called "constructive treason were repudiated by the Bar in the reign of George III.; but in that reign Statutes were nevertheless passed giving legislative substance to these very doctrines.

A more lenient tendency has, however, prevailed of late. Recent Statutes have relegated to the general head of felonies a number of acts which, by constant judicial construction, had come to be treated as treasons. A double advantage is thus gained. Innocent persons are less exposed to slanderous State prosecutions; and persons really mischievous can be tried by the usual less complicated process common to felonies generally.

Felonies and Misdemeanours are offences directed against either person or property, or against both conjointly. Provision is made for the punishment of accessories to crimes, whether before or after the fact, of those who attempt

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to commit crimes, and for the aggravated punishment of those who commit repeated crimes. An anomalous form of offence is that styled "misprision of treason." It consists in the bare knowledge or concealment of treason, and is evidenced by a person apprised of treason forbearing to communicate it to a judge of assize or justice of the peace.

A large number of acts are made felonies or misdemeanours for the purpose of indirectly securing ulterior moral and political ends. Such acts are bigamy, false entries in public registers, frauds by trustees or bankrupts, and cruelty to animals.

Besides " crimes," which are technically classified as treasons, felonies, and misdemeanours, and are the subjectmatter of indictments at Courts of Quarter-Sessions, Courts of Assize, and the Central Criminal Court, there are many other offences which are described by successive Acts of Parliament, and are tried by a Court of Petty Sessions or by a Police Magistrate. They are said to be cases for summary conviction, though in most of these cases the accused has the option of having the trial reserved for a superior Court; and in some cases an appeal to a Court of Quarter-Sessions is specially allowed.

The offences forming the subject-matter of summary convictions are very various, including acts of the merest civic irregularity as well as those which involve moral guilt. They cover what are called "breaches of the peace," frauds against the revenue, and offences against Acts for the regulation of the Metropolis, of public health, of public education, public morals, and game preserving.

The rapid multiplication of offences punished summarily is a danger to public liberty which ought to be jealously watched. No Jury is needed, and the Judges are either unskilled country gentlemen, or lawyers appointed, removable, and capable of promotion, by the Executive GovernIn the course of rapidly discharging a multiplicity of routine business of this sort, the Judge and the policeman

ment.