horities and could not be
recovered by his heirs. This mediaeval injustice continued for some
centuries in Germany and France, and we can hardly say that the notion
is extinct in this country when a State like California, by her system
of public administrators, practically impounds a large proportion of
all personal property owned by non-residents at their death. Cases
have been known where it cost the executor more than one-third of
the money to collect a mortgage, owned by a deceased citizen of
Massachusetts, in California; and for that reason, among others,
Eastern lawyers have advised against investments in that State; for
the public administrators are usually petty politicians in search of a
job. The increasing burden of our State inheritance tax laws, whereby
every State wherein a corporation exists besides the State of the
deceased seizes its percentage of the stock of such corporation in the
hands of the executors, is another step in this direction. This early
Statute Merchant, liberal in other respects, still excludes Jews from
its benefits.

(1284) Jury trial was well established by this time, for the Statute
of Wales includes it in its code of procedure for that principality.
The great Statute _De Donis_, or Westminster II, came the following
year; most interesting to lawyers as the foundation of estates tail;
but it also regulates "assizes or juries" that "rich men do not abide
at home by reason of their bribes." It also specifically requires
indictment "of twelve lawful men at least," and gives an action
against sheriffs imprisoning without such warrant "as they should have
against any other person." Rape, ten years before made punishable only
by two years' imprisonment, is now made an offence punishable by
loss of life or member; showing how our ancestors treated a burning
question, at least in our Southern States, of to-day. Finally, it
confirms and explains the writ _de odio et atia_, the predecessor of
the modern _habeas corpus_. Some writers have doubted whether this
writ existed as a practical remedy much before the Statute of Charles
II; but here it says that parties indicted, etc., are to have the writ
_de odio et atia_ "lest they be kept long in prison, like as it is
declared in Magna Charta." This can only refer to C. 36 of John's
Charter, "the writ of inquest of life or limb to be given gratis and
not denied"; and taken in connection with the action for damages just
given affords a fairly comple