too, although the saving clause in cases of disability does not in terms mention any actions on the case except actions on the case for words, yet it has always been construed as extending to all actions on the case from the manifest inconvenience of a contrary construction." The general rule is, undoubtedly, that the statute of limitation begins to run against a party immediately upon the accrual of the right of action, and continues to run, unless he was then under a disability mentioned in it, or its running is prevented or arrested by some fact specified for that effect in the statute.? $427. Where the legislature has made no exception the courts of justice can make none, as this would be legislating.3 The insolvency of the defendant or the plaintiff's want of means to prosecute a suit, or his bankruptcy, will not suspend or prevent the running of the statute. But one implied exception has been extensively recognized, namely, that the statute does not run during a period of civil war as to matters of controversy between citizens of the opposing belligerents." Another example of avoiding a positive statute upon grounds of equity is afforded by those cases in which courts of equity give effect to unwritten contracts relating to lands on the ground of part performance. The great object of the statute of frauds is clearly expressed in the title prefixed to it. It is for the prevention of frauds and perjuries. It is not, therefore, to be presumed that it was intended in any instance to 1 Wood on St. of Lim. sec. 16. 6 2 Wells v. Child, 12 Allen, 333; The Sam Slick, 2 Curt. 480; Harrison v. Harrison, 39 Ala. 489; Dozier v. Ellis, 28 Miss. 730; Barnes v. Williams, 3 Ired. L. 481; Warfield v. Fox, 53 Pa. St. 382; Bucklin v. Ford, 5 Barb. 393; Sacia v. De Graaf, 1 Cow. 356; Pryor v. Ryburn, 16 Ark. 671; Favorite v. Booher, 17 Ohio St. 548; Howell v. Hair, 15 Ala. 194; Conover v. Wright, 6 N. J. Eq. 613; Clark v. Richardson, 15 N. J. L. 347; De Kay v. Darrah, 14 id. 288; Thorpe v. Corwin, 20 id. 311; Pinckney v. Burrage, 31 id. 21; Kistler v. Hereth, 75 Ind. 177; Parsons v. McCracken, 9 Leigh, 495; Rogers v. Hillhouse, 3 Conn. 398; Barker v. Mil lard, 16 Wend. 572; Sands v. Campbell, 31 N. Y. 345. In North Carolina, it was held in Vance v. Grainger, Conf. 71, that where the evidence of debt sued on had been detained in the hands of a master by order of a court of equity, the statute was meantime suspended. 3 Bank v. Dalton, 9 How. 522; McIves v. Ragan, 2 Wheat. 29; Troup v. Smith, 20 John. 33; Callis v. Waddy, 2 Munf. 511; Hamilton v. Smith, 3 Murphy, 115. 4 Mason v. Crosby, Davies, 303: Harwell v. Steel, 17 Ala. 372. Wood on St. Lim. § 6; § 368, ante. 62 Story's Eq. § 752 et seq. encourage fraud, and we may infer that any construction which would have a certain tendency to do so would counteract the design of the legislature by advancing the mischief intended to be prevented.' As the statute was intended to prevent frauds and perjuries, any agreement in which there was no danger of either has been held to be out of the statute; or if within the statute, it is taken out when specific performance is necessary to prevent fraud, as in case of one party refusing to perform when the other had partly performed.3 2 § 428. Statutes which are to be liberally construed will, like all others, be so construed as to exclude all cases which, though within the letter, are not within the mischief to be remedied, or the remedial or benign object in view, and, therefore, not within the intention of the law-maker. A statute enacting that any deed from a husband to a wife for her use shall be void as against his creditors, who were such at the time of execution, does not prevent a voluntary conveyance by the husband of a chattel which is exempt from execution.* As this interpretative function, however, of excluding cases and applications which are not within the legislative intention is not peculiar to liberal construction, a few cases by way of farther illustration will suffice.5 Municipal corporations, by reason of the purposes for which they are organized and for which they raise money and possess property, are excepted by implication from various statutes which apply to corporations generally. They are generally held not subject to garnishment. In some of the states, either by force of statutes I Wilber v. Paine, 1 Ohio, 117; 2 9 Colo. 204; Covington v. McNickle, Pomeroy's Eq. § 921. 2 Att'y-Gen❜l v. Day, 1 Ves. Sr. 221. 3 Bond v. Hopkins, 1 Sch. & Lef. 433; Wilson v. West Hartlepool Co. 2 De G. J. & S. 475; Humphreys v. Green, L. R. 10 Q. B. Div. 148; Nunn v. Fabian, L. R. 1 Ch. 35. 4 Smith v. Allen, 39 Miss. 469. 5 Commercial Bank v. Foster, 5 La. Ann. 516; Ayers v. Knox, 7 Mass. 306; Green v. Commonwealth, 12 Allen, 155; Stockett v. Bird, 18 Md. 484; Electro-M. etc. Co. v. Van Auken, 18 B. Mon. 262; Wheeler v. McCormick, 8 Blatchf. 267; Maxwell v. Collins, 8 Ind. 38; Vane v. Vane, L. R. 8 Ch. 383; Union Canal Co. v. Young, 1 Whart. 410. Erie v. Knapp, 29 Pa. St. 173; Bulkley v. Eckert, 3 Pa. St. 368; McLellan v. Young, 54 Ga. 399; Mobile v. Rowland, 26 Ala. 498; Hawthorn v. St. Louis, 11 Mo. 59; Pendleton v. Perkins, 49 id. 565; Fortune v. St. Louis, 23 id. 239; Hadley v. Peabody, 13 Gray, 200; Boone which indicate the purpose to subject them to such process, or by the courts' refusing to except the reasons operating elsewhere and thereon to accept them by implication, these corporations are liable, like natural persons and other corporations, to garnishment. The revenues of public corporations are the essential means by which they are enabled to perform their appointed work. Deprived of their regular and adequate supply of revenue, they are practically destroyed, and the very ends of their creation thwarted. It is settled doctrine that the taxes and public revenues of such corporations cannot be seized under execution against them, either in the treasury or in transit to it.2 § 429. The application of the words of a statute may be restrained to bring the operation of it within the intention of the legislature, when no violence is done by such interpretation to the language employed. On this principle the provision that no person shall be sued before any justice except in the township where he resides was held to have no application to a defendant who resided out of the state or in another county. The object of the statute was to prevent justices at the county seat of a county from engrossing the principal business at the expense of the justices of the other townships. "An act concerning conveyances" provided that every partition of any tract of land or lot made under any order or decree of any court, and every judgment or decree by which the title to any tract of land or lot shall be recovered, shall be recorded; and until so recorded, such parti 3 Co. v. Keck, 31 Ark. 387; Stillman v. Isham, 11 Conn. 123; Derr v. Lubey, 1 MacArthur, 187; Bradley v. Richmond, 6 Vt.121; Parsons v. McGavock, 2 Tenn. Ch. 581; Memphis v. Laskie, 9 Heisk. 511; Burnham v. Fond du Lac, 15 Wis. 193; Buffham v. Racine, 26 Wis. 449; McDougal v. Hennepin Co. 4 Minn. 184; Merwin v. Chicago, 45 Ill. 133; Greer v. Rowley, 1 Pittsburgh, 1; Mayor, etc. v. Root, 8 Md. 95; Brown v. Gates, 15 W. Va. 131. Adams v. Tyler, 121 Mass. 380; Whidden v. Drake, 5 N. H. 13; Bray v. Wallingford, 20 Conn. 416; Ward v. Hartford, 12 Conn. 404; Wilson v. Lewis, 10 R. I. 285; Wales v. Muscatine, 4 Iowa, 302; Drake on Att. (5th ed.) § 516. 2 Dillon on Municipal Corporations (2d ed.), §§ 9, 65, and cases cited; Chicago v. Hasley, 25 Ill. 595; Egerton v. Municipality, 1 La. Ann. 435; Municipality v. Hart, 6 id. 570; New Orleans, etc. R. R. Co. v. Municipality, 7 id. 148. See Smoot v. Hart, 33 Ala. 69; Newark v. Funk, 15 Ohio St. 462. 3 Maxwell v. Collins, 8 Ind. 38; Wheeler v. McCormick, 8 Blatchf. 267. tion, judgment or decree shall not be received in evidence in support of any right claimed by virtue thereof. In an action of trespass to try title and for partition of land, a former unrecorded judgment was offered in evidence. It was held admissible; that this statute was only intended for the protection of bona fide purchasers and creditors; that it has no application when such judgment is offered in evidence in a second trial between the parties to the former suit in which it was rendered.2 1 Pasc. Dig. art. 4710. 2 Russell v. Farquhar, 55 Tex. 355. In this case Moore, C. J., said: If courts were in all cases to be controlled in their construction of statutes by the mere literal meaning of the words in which they are couched, it might well be admitted that the appellant's objection to the evidence was well taken. But such is not the case. To be thus controlled, as has often been held, would be for the courts, in a blind effort to refrain from an interference with legislative authority by their failure to apply well-established rules of construction, to in fact abrogate their own power and usurp that of the legislature, and cause the law to be held directly the contrary of that which the legislature had in fact intended to enact. While it is for the legislature to make the law it is the duty of the courts to 'try out the right intendment' of statutes upon which they are called upon to pass, and by their proper construction to ascertain and enforce them according to their true intent. For it is this intent which constitutes and is in fact the law, and not the mere verbiage used by inadvertence or otherwise to express its intent, and to follow which would prevent that intent. In seeking to ascertain the intent of a statute, the words in which it is expressed should, and evidently must, receive our first as well as chief consideration. If, upon the perusal of a statute, its intent, and the means for carrying such intent into effect, plainly appear, and there is no apparent conflict between it and other seemingly unrepealed laws, it should be construed and enforced by the courts in conformity with the ordinary signification of the words in which it is expressed, unless a necessity for otherwise construing it is made to appear. But if its mere perusal should not enable the court to satisfactorily interpret it, then it becomes the duty of the court to look diligently for the intention of the legislature, keeping in view at all times the old law, the evil and the remedy. R. S. art. 315, sec. 6. . . The section in question forms a part of an act concerning conveyances. And when subsequently re-enacted, it is found in a law regulating and concerning registration. The evil in the legislative mind evidently was that, under existing laws, frauds might be perpetrated upon bona fide purchasers and creditors by persons who had previously parted with or been divested of their title to land, upon subsequent purchasers and creditors having no adequate evidence or information of such previous divestiture of title. By the old law the bringing of suit charged all the world with notice lis pendens of the matters then in litigation. But A statute of Virginia prohibited the sale of any office or deputation of any office touching the administration of justice, and contained a proviso that nothing in the act should be so construed as to prohibit the appointment, qualification and acting of any deputy clerk or deputy sheriff who shall be employed to assist the principals in the execution of the duties of their respective offices. The question arose on that statute whether a contract was legal by which a sheriff agreed that another should perform the duties of his office, and have all the fees, privileges and emoluments of it, and in consideration thereof should pay to the sheriff a gross sum, unconnected in any manner with the fees of the office. The court declared that it was settled by numerous authorities that, where the reservation or agreement is not to pay out of the profits, but to pay generally a certain sum, which must be paid at all events, this is a sale of the office; and a bond for the performance of such an agreement is void by the statute. It apparently adopts the view of Willis, C. J., in Layng v. Paine, as to the principal reasons for making the statute: (1) that offices might be exercised by persons of skill and integrity, and (2) that they might take only the legal fees. The proviso, and the history of the office- it having been immemorially farmed out,-induced the court to hold that the contract in question was not prohibited. A statute which inhibited a party as witness testifying as to any transaction with or statement by a deceased party was held not to extend to conversations with a surviv this notice ceased with the termination of the case; and, therefore, conveyances by judgment or decree of court were within the same evil as existed in regard to transfers between parties prior to the registration laws. Hence it was essential that they should be subjected to the same rule. Public convenience also demanded that there should be one office in each county where those desiring to do so could inform themselves as to the transfers or incumbrances affecting all the real estate in the county. But if any one failed to have his transfer registered, certainly only those who were in some way injured thereby had a right to complain, or to insist that another had lost some valuable or vested right by his failure to comply with the law." Crosby v. Huston, 1 Tex. 237. 11 Rev. Code of 1819, ch. 145, p. 559. Salling v. McKinney, 1 Leigh, 42, citing Ingram's Case, Co. Lit. 234a; Trevor's Case, Cro. Jac. 269; 12 Coke, 369; Woodward v. Foxe, 3 Lev. 289; 2 Vent. 187; 3 Inst. 148; Layng v. Paine, Willes' Rep. 571; Parsons v. Thompson, 1 H. Bl. 322; Garforth v. Fearon, id. 327; Law v. Law, Cas. Temp. Talb. 140; 3 P. Wms. 391; Harrington v. Du Chatel, 1 Bro. C. C. 124; Noel v. Fisher, 3 Call, 215. |