Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/671

 S U M S U M 643 two, an originating .summons seven, clear days before its return. A decision on a summons is generally subject to appeal. In the Chancery Division it is customary to adjourn into court the con- sideration of a summons of more than ordinary importance. The appendix to the Rules of 1883 contains forms of every kind of summons in the High Court. In the county courts an action is commenced by plaint and summons. Two kinds of summons are in use, the ordinary and the default summons. The latter is an optional remedy of the plaintiff in actions for debts or liqui- dated demands exceeding 5, and in all actions for the price or hire of goods sold or let to the defendant to be used in the way of his calling. It may also issue by leave of the judge or registrar in other cases, with the single exception that no leave can be given in claims under 5 where the claim is not for the price or hire of goods sold or let as above, if the affidavit of debt discloses that the defendant is a servant or person engaged in manual labour. The advantage of a default summons is that judgment is entered for the plaintiff without hearing unless the defendant gives notice of defence within a limited time. A default summons must as a rule be served personally on the defendant ; an ordinary summons need not be served personally, but may in most cases be delivered to a person at the defendant's house or place of business. A summons is also issued to a witness in the county court. Forms of summons are given in the County Court Rules, 1886. These include certain special forms used in Admiralty and interpleader actions and in proceedings under the Charitable Trusts Acts, the Friendly Societies Act, 1875, and the Married Women's Property Act, 1882. In criminal law a summons is the mode of securing the attendance of the defendant before a court of summary jurisdiction, whether it be sought to obtain a conviction or an order against him. Forms of summons to a defendant, a witness, or a surety will be found in the schedule to the Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1848, and in the rules issued in accordance with the Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1879 (see the article SUMMARY JURISDICTION, supra). Forgery of a summons or use of any document falsely purporting to be a summons or professing to act under such a document is punishable as felony under the County Courts Act, 1846, and the Forgery Act of 1861. Scotland. Summons is a term confined in strictness to the commencement of an action in the Court of Session. Formerly it was the mode of commencing an action in the sheriff court, but such an action is now commenced by PETITION (q.v.). In some Acts of Parliament, however e.g., the Citation Amendment Acts the term " summons " is certainly used to denote part of the process of an in- ferior court. The summons is a writ in the sovereign's name, signed by a writer to the signet, citing the defender to appear and answer the claim. The will of the summons calls upon the defender to appear on the proper inducix. A privileged summons is one where the induciae are shortened to six days against defenders within Scot- land (6 Geo. IV. c. 120, s. 53). Defects in the summons are cured by amendment or by a supplementary summons. The summons goes more into detail than the English writ of summons, though it no longer states, as it once did, the grounds of action, now stated in the condescendence and pursuer's pleas in law annexed to the summons. The form of the summons is regulated by 13 and 14 Viet. c. 36, s. 1, and Schedule A. After the action has been set on foot by summons, the attendance of the parties and witnesses is obtained b}- citation. The Citation Amendment Acts, 1871 and 1882, give additional facilities for the execution of citations in civil cases by means of registered letters. In cases in a court of summary jurisdiction the English summons is represented by the warrant of citation. SUMNER, CHARLES (1811-1874), American statesman, was born at Boston, Mass., on 6th January 1811. He graduated at Harvard in 1830, and studied law with Judge Story. His natural powers of mind were great, his habits of study intense, and his success immediate and con- spicuous. Everything seems to have been expected of him, and he disappointed nobody. In 1834 he had been admitted to the bar, was editor of the American Jurist, and was reporting the decisions of Judge Story. For the next three years he was a lecturer in the Harvard law school. He then spent three years in Europe, always, however, studying with an intensity that never relaxed. Returning, he began the practice of law, but gradually drifted into politics during the anti-slavery struggle. In 1851 the few " free-soilers " in the Massachusetts legis- lature offered to vote for Democrats for other officers in return for Democratic votes for Sumner as United States senator. Sumner was thus sent to the Senate, to which he was regularly re-elected for the rest of his life. He at once became a man of mark, though not of popularity, in the Senate. His fine personal presence, his somewhat florid rhetoric, his wealth of citation from learned and foreign tongues, his wide foreign acquaintance, high cul- ture, and social standing, seem to have staggered his Southern colleagues. They could not look down upon him, and they hardly knew what else to do. A long series of speeches brought about an assault upon him, 22d May 1856, by Preston S. Brooks, a representative from South Carolina, in retaliation for Sumner's criticism of Brooks's uncle, a senator from his State. Brooks found Sumner writing in the Senate chamber, and beat him so cruelly that he narrowly escaped death. He was absent from his place until 1859, and never fully recovered from the effects of the assault. When his party took control of the Senate in 1861 Sumner became one of its foremost members. Like_ Stevens (see STEVENS), he propounded a theory of the relations of the seceding States to the Union which never was endorsed, but had its influence on the outcome of reconstruction. In the American Union States are auto- nomous, but Territories are theoretically under the abso- lute government of Congress, though in practice Congress gives them as much self-government as is possible or prudent. A Territory becomes a State by admission through an Act of Congress. Sumner held that the national boundaries of the Union were so fixed that no State could escape from them by secession, that a State's secession was merely an abandonment of its Statehood, so that it fell back into the condition of a Territory and came under the absolute government of Congress. This "State- suicide " theory was in due time condemned by the Supreme Court, which held that a State could not lose its State- hood; but Congress had really acted upon it already in several points of reconstruction. Sumner's peculiar field was in the Senate committee on foreign relations, of which he was chairman from 1861 until 1871. It was during this period, in 1869, that he urged the "indirect" items of the Alabama claims, sacrificing without hesitation the English popularity which had always been dear to him. Within a year or two he felt compelled to oppose the new administration of President Grant in several particulars. In the expectation of gratifying the president, the Repub- lican senators removed Sumner from his chairmanship; and, like Seward, he passed his later years in general op- position to the party which he had helped to organize. In December 1872 he introduced a resolution that the names of victories over fellow-citizens should be removed from the regimental flags of the army. For this his State legislature censured him, but the censure was rescinded just before his death. He had been from the beginning of the Civil War the advocate of emancipation and of the grant of full status to the Negroes; and for the last few- years of his life his energies were devoted to forwarding his Civil Rights Bill, intended to give the freedmen the same legal rights as the whites. He died at Washington on llth March 1874. Sumner's speeches were collected in 1850 under the title of Ora- tions and Speeches, to which was added, in 1856, Recent Speeches and Addresses. His Works, in twelve volumes, were issued in 1875. See also Lester's Life of Sumner, 1874 ; Harsha's Life of Sumner ; and Pierce's Memorial and Letters of Sumner. SUMPTUARY LAWS are those intended to limit or regulate the private expenditure of the citizens of a com- munity. They may be dictated by political, or economic, or moral considerations. They have existed both in ancient and in modern states. In Greece, it was amongst the Dorian races, whose temper was austere and rigid, that they most prevailed. All the inhabitants of Laconia were forbidden to attend drinking entertainments, nor could a Lacedaemonian possess a house or furniture which was the work of more elaborate implements than the axe and saw. Amongst the Spartans proper, simple and frugal habits of