question the usual answer was, “By God | being concerned in the Popish plot, the prisoner objected, in arrest of judgment, that he had not been called on to hold up his hand on his arraignment; but the judges declared the omission of this form to be no objection to the validity of the trial. (Howell's State Trials, vol. vii. p. 1555.) and my country." But by a late statute (7 & 8 Geo. IV. c. 28, sec. 1) this form was abolished; and it was enacted, that "if any person, not having privilege of peerage, being arraigned upon an indictment for treason, felony, or piracy, shall plead 'Not guilty,' he shall, without any further form, be deemed to have put himself upon the country for trial, and the court shall, in the usual manner, order a jury for the trial of such person accordingly." The arraignment of a prisoner is founded upon the plain principle of justice, that an accused person should be called upon for his answer to a charge before he is tried or punished for it. That this was a necessary form in English criminal law at a very early period appears from the reversal in parliament of the judgment given against the Mortimers in the reign of Edward II., which Sir Matthew Hale calls an "excellent record." One of the errors assigned in that judgment, and upon which its reversal was founded, was as follows:-"That if in this realm any subject of the king hath offended against the king or any other person, by reason of which offence he may lose life or limb, and be thereupon brought before the justices for judgment, he ought to be called to account (poni rationi), and his answers to the charge to be heard before proceeding to judgment against him; whereas in this record and proceedings it is contained that the prisoners were adjudged to be drawn and hanged, without having been arraigned (arrenati) thereupon, or having an opportunity of answering to the charges made against them, contrary to the law and custom of this realm." (Hale's Pleas of the Crown, book ii. c. 28.) The ceremony of the prisoner holding up his hand upon arraignment is merely adopted for the purpose of pointing out to the court the person who is called upon to plead. As it is usual to place several prisoners at the bar at the same time, it is obviously a convenient mode of directing the eyes of the court to the individual who is addressed by the officer. In the case of Lord Stafford, who was tried for high treason in 1680, on the charge of ARREST, PERSONAL. [DEBT.] ARRESTMENT in the law of Scotland is a process by which a creditor may attach money or moveable property which a third party holds for behoof of his debtor. It bears a general resemblance to foreign attachment by the custom of London. [ATTACHMENT.] The person who uses it is called the arrestor; he in whose hands it is used is called the arrestee, and the debtor is called the common debtor. It is of two kinds, arrestment in execution and arrestment in security. The former can proceed only on the decree of a court, on a deed which contains a clause of registration for execution, or on one of those documents, such as bills of exchange and promissory notes, which by the practice of Scotland are placed in the same position as deeds having a clause of registration. Arrestment in security is generally an incidental procedure in an action for the constitution of a debt; but it may be obtained from the Bill Chamber of the Court of Session on cause shown, as a method of constituting a security for a debt not yet due. This latter class of arrestments is under the equitable control of the judge who issues it; and it is a general principle that it cannot be obtained unless the claimant show that circumstances have occurred which have a tendency to make his chance of payment less than it was at the time when he entered into the engagement with his debtor. An arrestment may be recalled on it being shown that it should not have been issued, and an arrestment in security may be "loosed" on the debtor finding security for the payment of his debt. An arrestment in execution expires on the lapse of three years from the date of its execution, and an arrestment in security, on the lapse of three years from the day when the debt becomes due. In the meantime, the person in whose hands the process is used, is liable in damages if he part with the property arrested, but it cannot be attached after he has parted with it, in the hands of a bond-fide holder. The arrestment is made effectual for the payment of the debt by an action of Forthcoming, in which the common debtor is cited. It concludes for payment of the money if the arrestment be laid on money, or for their sale for behoof of the creditor if it be laid on other moveable goods. The arrestee may plead against the arrestor whatever defence he might have had against the common debtor. The authority of the local courts was enlarged in regard to arrestments, and the process was generally regulated, by the 1 & 2 Vict. c. 114. The practice on this subject will be found in Darling's 'Powers and Duties of Messengers-atArms.' ARSON. [MALICIOUS INJURIES.] ARTICLES OF WAR. [MUTINY ACT.] c. 21, the commission is "by the king himself signed with his own hand,” and attested by the clerk of the crown in Chancery. During the last illness of George IV. an act was passed to appoint one or more person or persons, or any one of them, to affix in the king's presence, and by his Majesty's command given by word of mouth, his Majesty's signature by means of a stamp. When the king comes down in person, he is seated on the throne, robed and crowned. The royal assent is rarely given in person, except at the end of a session; but bills for making provision for the honour and dignity of the crown, such as settling the bills for the civil lists, have generally been assented to by the king in person immediately after they have passed both houses. When the bill for supporting the dignity of Queen Adelaide received the royal assent in the usual form, in August, 1836, she was preASSENT, ROYAL. When a bill has sent, attended by one of the ladies of the passed through all its stages in both bed-chamber and her maids of honour, and houses of parliament, if it is a money sat in a chair placed on a platform raised bill, it is sent back to the charge of the for that purpose. After the royal assent officers of the House of Commons, in was pronounced, the queen stood up and which it had of course originated; but if made three curtesies, one to the king, one not a bill of supply, it remains in the to the lords, and one to the commons. custody of the clerk of the enrolments in The bills that have been left in the House the House of Lords. The royal assent is of Lords lie on the table; the bills of always given in the House of Lords, the supply are brought up from the Commons Commons, however, being also present at by the Speaker, who, in presenting them, the bar, to which they are summoned by especially at the end of a session, is acthe Black Rod. The king may either be customed to accompany the act with a present in person, or may signify his short speech. In these addresses it is assent by letters patent under the great usual to recommend that the money which seal, signed with his hand, and commu- has been so liberally supplied by his nicated to the two houses by commis- Majesty's faithful Commons should be sioners. Power to do this is given by judiciously and economically expended; 33 Henry VIII. chap. 21. The commis- and a considerable sensation has been sioners are usually three or four of the sometimes made by the emphasis and great officers of state. They take their solemnity with which this advice has seats, attired in a peculiar costume, on a been enforced upon the royal ear. The bench placed between the woolsack and royal assent to each bill is announced by the throne. When the king comes in the clerk of the parliaments. "When her person, the clerk assistant of the parlia- Majesty gives her assent to bills in perment waits upon his Majesty in the son, the clerk of the crown reads the robing-room before he enters the house, titles, and the clerk of the parliament reads a list of the bills, and receives his makes an obeisance to the throne, and commands upon them. During the pro- then signifies her Majesty's assent. A gress of a session, the royal assent is gentle inclination, indicative of assent, is usually given by a commission under the given by her Majesty, who has already great seal issued for that purpose. In given her commands to the clerk assiststrict compliance with 33 Henry VIII. ant." (May's Law, &c. of Parliament.) ASSENT. [195] hardship when there is a bill denied." After the title of the bills is read by the clerk of the crown, the clerk of the parliament says, if it is a bill of supply, which receives the royal assent before all other bills, "Le roi (or la reyne) re-being followed by certain proceedings in mercie ses bons sujets, accepte leur bene- parliament, which was sitting at the time. volence, et ainsi le veult" if any other This was the rejection of the bill compublic bill," Le roi le veult" if a private monly called the Place Bill, the object of bill," Soit fait comme il est desirée." In which was to exclude all holders of an act of grace or pardon, which has offices of trust and profit under the crown the royal assent before it is laid before from the House of Commons. It was parliament, where it is only read once presented to the king along with the in each house, and where, although it Land-tax Bill; and the day after he had may be rejected, it cannot be amended, assented to the one and rejected the other, there is no further expression of the the House of Commons, having resolved royal assent, but, having read its title, itself into a grand committee on the state "Les of the nation, passed the following resothe clerk of the parliament says, Prelats, Seigneurs, et Communes, en ce lution:-"That whoever advised the king present parliament assemblées, au nom de not to give the royal assent to the act touts vos autres sujets, remercient très which was to redress a grievance, and humblement vostre majeste, et prient à take off a scandal upon the proceedings Dieu vous donner en santé bonne vie et of the Commons in parliament, is an enemy to their majesties and the kinglongue." dom; and that a representation be made to the king, to lay before him how few instances have been in former reigns of denying the royal assent to bills for redress of grievances; and the grief of the Commons for his not having given the royal assent to several public bills, and in particular to this bill, which tends so much to the clearing the reputation of this house, after their having so freely voted to supply the public occasions." An address conformable to the resolution was accordingly presented to his Majesty by the whole house. The king returned a polite answer to so much of the address as referred to the confidence that ought to be preserved between himself and the parliament, but took no notice of what was said about the rejection of the bill. When the Commons returned from the royal presence, it was moved in the house When the royal assent is refused to a bill, the form of announcement is Le roi s'avisera. It is probable that in former times these words were intended to mean what they express, namely, that the king would take the matter into consideration, and merely postponed his decision for the present; but the necessity of refusing a bill is removed by the constitutional principle that the crown has no will except that of its ministers, who only retain their situations so long as they enjoy the confidence of parliament. There has been no instance of the rejection by the crown of any bill, certainly not of any public bill, which had passed through parliament, for many years. It is commonly stated, even in books of good authority (for instance, in Chitty's edition of Blackstone), that the last instance was the rejection of the bill for triennial parliaments by William III. in 1693. Tindal, in his continuation of Rapin, says, "The king let the bill lie on the table for some time, so that men's eyes and expectations were much fixed on the issue of it; but in conclusion he refused to pass it, so the session ended in an ill humour. The rejecting a bill, though an unquestionable right of the crown, has been so seldom practised, that the two houses are apt to think it a 66 That application be made to his Majesty for a further answer;" but the motion was negatived by a majority of 229 to 28. Mr. Hatsell, in the second volume of his Precedents (edition of 1818), quotes other instances of subsequent date to this. The latest which he discovered was the rejection of a Scotch militia bill by Queen Anne in 1707; and this is also the latest mentioned in Mr. May's recent work. In former times the refusal of the royal 0 2 assent was a common occurrence. Queen Elizabeth once at the end of a session, out of ninety-one bills which were presented to her, rejected forty-eight. It is the royal assent which makes a bill an act of parliament, and gives it the force of a law. As by a legal fiction the laws passed throughout a whole session of parliament are considered as forming properly only one statute (of which what are popularly called the separate acts are only so many chapters), it used to be a matter of doubt whether the royal assent, at whatever period of the session it might be given, did not make the act operative from the beginning of the session, when no day was particularly mentioned in the body of it as that on which it should come into effect. In order to settle this point, it was ordered by 33 George III. c. 13, that the clerk of parliament should for the future endorse on every bill the day on which it received the royal assent, and that from that day, if there was not in it any specification to the contrary, its operation should com ing to his regalie and dignitie, to any person or persons whose names be expressed in this act, or to any other that might be hurt by the same." In the time of the Commonwealth, an English form was substituted for those in Norman-French, which had been previously and are now in use. On the 1st of October, 1656, the House of Commons resolved "that when the Lord Protector shall pass a bill, the form of words to be used shall be these, The Lord Protector doth consent." In 1706, also, a bill passed the House of Lords, and was read a second time in the House of Commons, for abolishing the use of the French tongue in all proceedings in parliament and courts of justice, in which it was directed, "that instead of Le roy le veult, these words be used, The king answers Be it so; instead of Soit fait comme il est desirée, these words be substituted, Be it as is prayed; where these words, Le roi remercie ses bons sujets, accepte leur benevolence, et ainsi le veult, have been used, it shall hereafter be, The king thanks his good subjects, accepts their benevolence, and It appears that the several forms of answers Be it so; instead of Le roi s'aviwords now in use are not, as has been sera, these words, The king will consider sometimes stated, exactly the same that of it, be used." "Why this bill was rehave been employed in this ceremony jected by the Commons," says Hatsell, from the first institution of parliaments." or why its provisions with respect to For instance, it is recorded that Henry VII. gave his assent to the bill of attainder passed in the first year of his reign (1485) against the partisans of Richard III. in the more emphatic terms, mence. Le roy le voet, en toutz pointz. On some occasions, of earlier date, the assent is stated to have been given in English. Thus, to a bill of attainder passed against Sir William Oldhall in 1453 (the 31st of Henry VI.), the clerk is recorded in the Rolls of Parliament to have announced his Majesty's assent as follows: "The king volle that it be hadde and doon in maner and forme as it is desired." And in 1459, in the case of an act of attainder against the Duke of York, the Earls of Salisbury, Warwick, and others, the same king gave his assent in the following form:"The king agreeth to this act, so that by virtue thereof he be not put from his prerogative to show such mercy and grace as shall please his highness, accord not proceedings in parliament were adopted in an act which afterwards passed in the year 1731, That all proceedings in courts of justice should be in English,' I never heard any reason assigned." For further information on this subject, see Hatsell's Precedents, especially vol. ii. pp. 338-351 (edition of 1818); also May's Treatise upon the Law, Privileges, Proceedings, and Usage of Parliament, 1844. ASSEMBLY, GENERAL, OF SCOTLAND. [GENERAL ASSEMBLY.] ASSEMBLY, NATIONAL. [STATESGENERAL.] ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES. [WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY.] ASSESSED TAXES. [TAXES.] ASSESSOR. The word assessor is Latin (ad-sessor), and signifies one who sits by the side of another. An assessor was one who was learned in the law, and sat by a magistrate or other functionary, such as the governor of a province (Præses), to aid him in the discharge of the judicial duties of his office. It is stated in the Digest, i. tit. 22, "De Officio Assessorum,' that all the duties of assessors, by which the learned in the law discharge their functions, lie pretty nearly in the following matters: cognitiones, postulationes, libelli, edicta, decreta, Epistolæ." The Latin words are here retained, because they cannot be correctly rendered by single equivalents in English. This passage shows that they were persons acquainted with the law, who aided in the discharge of their duties those functionaries who required such assistance. A work of the learned Jurist Sabinus is referred to by Ulpian (Dig. 47, tit. 10, i. 5), which appears from the title to have treated of the duties of assessors. An instance is mentioned in Suetonius (Galba, 14) of a man being raised from the office of assessor to the high dignity of Præfectus Prætorii. The Emperor Alexander Severus gave the assessors a salary. (Lampridius, Alex. Severus, 46.) In the later empire assessors were also called Conciliarii, Juris studiosi, and Comites. It is conjectured by Savigny (Geschichte des Röm. Rechts im Mittelalter, i. 79) that as the old forms of procedure gradually fell into disuse, the assessors took the place of the judices; or in other words, became Judices. Originally the assessor did not pronounce a sentence; this was done by the magistrate or person who presided. (See the passage in Seneca, De Tranquill. c. 3.) Two officers called assessors are elected by the burgesses in all municipal boroughs, annually on the 1st of March. The qualifications are the same as those of a councillor; but actual members of the council, the town-clerk, and treasurer are ineligible. In corporate towns divided into wards, two assessors are elected for each ward. The duty of the assessors is to revise the burgess lists in conjunction with the mayor, to be present at the election of councillors, and to ascertain the result of elections. (5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 76.) The word assessor is not usually applied in this country to those whose duty it is to assess the value of property for local or public taxation. This is usually done by a "surveyor," who adds this duty incidentally to his general private business. Under the Insolvent Act (7 & 8 Vict. c. 96) an assessor may be appointed for inferior courts, who has power to award imprisonment in cases of fraudulent debts. ASSESSOR. In Scotland the magistrates of corporate burghs who exercise judicial powers, generally employ some professional lawyer to act as their assesIt is his duty to see that the proper judicial control is exercised over the preparation of the pleadings, and to make out drafts of the judgments. sor. ASSETS (from the Norman French assetz, sufficient) is the real and personal property of a party deceased, which, either in the hands of his heir or devisee, or of his executor or administrator, is chargeable with the payment of his debts and legacies. Assets are either personal or real. Personal assets comprehend goods, chattels, debts, and devolve on the executor or administrator; and assets (including all real estate) descend to the heir-at-law, or are devised to the devisee of the testator. Assets are also distinguishable into legal, or such as render the executor or heir liable to a suit at common law on the part of a creditor, and equitable, or such as can only be rendered available by a suit in a court of equity, and are subject to distribution and marshalling among creditors and legatees, according to the equitable rules of that court. ASSIENTO TREATY; in Spanish, EL ASIENTO DE LOS NEGROS, and EL PACTO or TRATADO DEL ASIENTO, that is, the compact for the farming, or supply, of negroes. It is plain that the word Assiento, though occasionally signifying an assent or agreement, cannot, as is sometimes stated, have that meaning in this expression. Spain, having little or no intercourse with those parts of Africa from which slaves were obtained, used formerly to contract with some other nation that had establishments on the western coast of that continent for the supply of its South American possessions with negroes. Such treaties were made first with Portugal, and afterwards with France, each of which countries, in consideration of enjoying a monopoly of the supply of negroes to the South Ame |