Habeas corpus is a writ requiring the body of a person imprisoned to be brought before the Court of King's Bench or Common Pleas, who shall determine whether the cause of commitment be just.

The right of private property consists in the free use, enjoyment, and disposal of one's acquisitions, without any control or diminution, save only by law.

The relative rights, or relations of persons, as members of society, are ei her public or private.

THE PUBLIC RELATIONS are those of magistrates and people, the most universal relation by which men are connected together being government.

Prerogative is that special pre-eminence which the King hath over and above all persons, and out of the ordinary course of the common law, in right of his regal dignity.

The people are divided into natives, or natural-born subjects, aliens, and denizens.

Aliens are such as are born out of the realm, or allegiance, of the King.

Denizens are such born as aliens, but who have obtained letters patent (naturalization) to make them subjects.

Natives, or natural-born subjects, are such as are born within the dominions of the Crown of Englan 1. that is, within the ligeance, or, as it is generally called, the allegiance, of the King.

The rights of natives are natural and perpetual; those of aliens, local and temporary only, unless made denizens.

The natives, or people proper, are divided into the clerical, or ecclesiastical, which includes all persons in holy orders or offices; and the laity, which comprehends all the rest of the nation.

The laity are divided into the civil, the military, and the maritime.

The civil state is divided into the nobility and commonalty, and includes all the nation except the clergy, the army, and the navy.

The degrees of the nobility are: dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, and barons.

The degrees of the commonalty are: vidames (now quite out of use), knights, colonels, sergeants-at-law, doctors, esquires, gentlemen, yeomen, tradesmen, artificers, and laborers.

Allegiance is the duty of all subjects, being the reciprocal tie or ligamen which binds the subject to the King in return for that protection which he affords them.

The oath of allegiance was the oath taken to a superior lord, or lord paramount, only, without any saving or exception whatever, to bear faith to one's sovereign lord, in opposition to all men, etc.

Fealty was the obligation on the part of the vassal to his immediate and superior lord.

The oath of fealty, or the feudal oath of fidelity, was the parent of our oath of allegiance, and was couched in almost the same terms as the oath of allegiance, but contained a saving or exception of the faith or allegiance due to the superior lord or King; hence it was the oath taken to the inferior lord.

Homage was the submission of the tenant or vassal to his lord, coupled with the oath and promise, and was performed by openly and humbly kneeling, ungirt, uncovered, and holding up his hands between those of the lord, and swearing that he "became his man from this day forward, for life, for limb, and worldly honor, and unto you shall be true and faithful, and bear you faith for the land I hold of you," etc., and then received a kiss from his lord.

THE PRIVATE RELATIONS of persons in society are: those of master and servant, husband and wife, parent and child, and guardian and ward.

Servants are menial or domestic; apprentices are usually bound for years; laborers are hired by the day or week, and are not part of the family; and stewards, factors, or bailiffs, the law considers as servants pro tempore.

The master has a property in the service of his servant,

and must be answerable for such acts as the servant does by his express or implied command or assent.

Marriage the law regards in no other light than as a civil contract, and holds it good where the parties were able, willing, and did actually contract in the proper forms and solemnities required by law.

Disabilities to marriage are canonical or civil.

Canonical disabilities are: pre-contract; consanguinity, or blood relationship; affinity, or relationship by marriage; and some corporeal infirmities. They are sufficient by the ecclesiastical law, to avoid the marriage in a spiritual court, but in our law they only make it voidable, and not ipso facto void until sentence of nullity be obtained.

The civil disabilities are: a prior marriage, want of age, non-consent of parents or guardians where requisite, and want of reason. They render the marriage void ab initio, and

not merely voidable.

Marriage is dissolved by death or divorce. Divorce is of two kinds: a vinculo matrimonii, or from the bond of matrimony, which is total; and a mensa et thoro, or from bed or board, which is partial only.

Children are of two sorts: legitimate and spurious, or bastards.

The duties of parents to their children are: maintenance, protection, and education.

Legitimate children are those born in lawful wedlock, or within a competent time thereafter.

Bastards are those born out of lawful matrimony.

The main end and design of marriage is to ascertain and fix upon some certain person to whom the care, protection, maintenance and education of children should belong.

Guardian and ward, a temporary relation between persons which the law hath provided, is a kind of artificial parentage, to supply the deficiency when it happens of the natural.

We have guardians by nature, or the parents; guardians for nurture; guardians in socage, or by the common law, which last

two are only until the infant attains the age of fourteen; and guardians by statute, assigned by the father's will.

Full age in an infant, male or female, is twenty-one, which age is completed on the day preceding the anniversary of a person's birth.

An infant may be sued only under the protection and joining the name of his guardian, and an infant may sue either by his guardian, or prochein amy or next friend, who is not his guardian, but any person who will undertake the infant's

case.

An infant, in respect to his tender years, has various privileges and various disabilities in law, chiefly with regard to suits, crimes, estates and contracts.

An infant in ventre sa mere is considered in law, for many purposes, as born. It is capable of having a legacy, or a surrender of a copyhold estate, made to it; it may have a guardian assigned to it, and it is enabled to have an estate limited to its use, and to take afterward, by such limitation, as if it were then actually born.

CORPORATIONS, bodies politic or corporate, or artificial persons established for preserving in perpetual succession certain rights which, being conferred on natural persons only, would fail in process of time.

Their primary division is into aggregate, consisting of many members; and sole, consisting of but one, as a king, bishop, or parson.

Corporations, sole or aggregate, are either ecclesiastical or spiritual, erected to perpetuate the rights of the church; or lay, as college, etc.

LAY CORPORATIONS are civil, erected for many temporal purposes, or eleemosynary, erected to perpetuate the charities of the founder.

Corporations are created generally by act of parliament; by royal charter; and by prescription, of which the city of London is an instance- it has existed so long.

The powers incident to corporations are: to maintain perpetual succession; to act in their corporate capacity like

an individual; to purchase and hold lands; to have a common seal by which the corporation acts and speaks only; and to make by-laws or private statutes for its own government and regulation.

A corporation's privileges and disabilities are: it must always appear by attorney, being, as Coke says, "invisible;" it cannot maintain or be made defendant in a battery or like personal actions, nor commit crime in its corporate capacity, for it is not liable to corporeal penalties; it cannot be an executor, or perform any personal duties, for it cannot take the oath of due performance; it cannot be seized of lands to the use of another, for such kind of confidence is foreign to the end of its institution; it cannot be committed to prison, outlawed or excommunicated.

Corporations, as they cannot be arrested, are made to appear by distress on their lands and goods.

The duty of corporations is to answer the ends of their institution which may be enforced by visitations.

A corporation may be dissolved by act of parliament, by natural death of all its members, by surrender of its franchises, and by forfeiture of its charter-through negligence or abuse of its franchises.