OF COMMON AND STATUTE LAW. BY JOHN B. MINOR, LL. D., PROFESSOR OF COMMON AND STATUTE LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF VOLUME IV. THE PRACTICE OF THE LAW IN CIVIL CASES, RICHMOND: PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR. SOLD BY M. M KENNIE, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA; RANDOLPH & ENGLISH; AND WEST, JOHNSTON & CO., RICHMOND, VA. 1879. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, By JOHN B. MINOR, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. CHAPTER II. OF THE PRINCIPAL RULES OF PLEADING. THE principal rules of pleading have been classified and expounded by Mr. Stephen with such felicity, that any considerable departure from his plan would be doing an injustice to the student. To that plan, therefore, it is designed to adhere, with such occasional modifications and additions as in the progress of the subject may seem to be called for. It will be remembered that in the beginning of the discussion of the pursuit of remedies through the medium of an action at common law, it was proposed first to state the proceedings in actions from beginning to end, (Ante, p: 698), with the purpose of afterwards setting forth the principal rules of pleading, as the second and last step in the exposition of the topic. To that second part we are now come, and will proceed to unfold it as briefly as may be: 2. The Principal Rules of Pleading. As preliminary to the development in detail of the rules of pleading, it will be desirable to consider again the nature and otjects thereof, to which it will be found that the rules have a direct relation. And it may be observed that in the systematic classification of these rules, the student will find great advantage in the familiarity which it is hoped he has acquired with the proceedings in an action as set forth in the preceding chapter. Much that he has there learned will now be brought into requisition, and it will be prudent to recur continually to the explanations which have been there given, not only when they are particularly referred to, but whenever the necessary brevity in this part of the subject shall occasion any obscurity. As the object of all pleading, or juridical altercation, is to ascertain the subject for decision, so the main object of the common law system of pleading is to ascertain it by the produc tion of an issue, a question either of fact or law, mutually proposed and accepted by the parties as the subject for determination. This appears to be peculiar to that system, being unknown in the present practice of any other plan of judicature. In all courts indeed, the particular subject for decision must, of course, in some manner be developed before the decision can take place, but the methods generally adopted for this purpose differ widely from that of the common law. (St. Pl. 124-25; Id. (Tyler,) 148.) By the general course of all other judicatures, the parties make their statements at large, and with no view to the extrica |