Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/839

 832 FEDERAL REPORTER. �four charged with malfeasance, their acts were clearly individ- ual, and not officiai. Accordingly, the court held the demur- rer to the declaration good, and dismissed the suit, saying that "if the defendants are liable at ail upon the allegations contained in the declaration, they are liable individually and severally, and not jointly, as directors;" meaning to say that if they were liable at ail in that suit. The court also said that this being an action at law, it could not extend to the conscience; implying that, therefore, it was a case for equity; law looking to what is written in the statute or contract, equity to what is written in the conscience. �The case shows how inadequate the œachinery of the com- mon-law courts often is to meet the needs of modern civili- zation. Originally the chief object of its rules of pleading was to reduce every case to a single issue of fact for the de- cision of a jury of mediocre intelligence. The simple trans- actions of early times could be readily adjudicated under such a System. But the multiform, varied, and complicated affairs of our commercial age are continually presenting cases, most of them of great magnitude and complication, which do not admit of adjustment to the rigid and inelastic machinery of the ancient practice and pleading at law. The genius of modern law judges bas much liberalized and expanded the System, espeeially by enlarging the scope of actions of as- sumpsit, and its indebitatus counts; and many remedies have been given by statute which were unknown to the common law. But these expedients have only ameliorated the syptem; they have not and cannot bring it into full adaptation to ail the exigencies of modern litigation. Nor is' it necessary that this shouldbe; its deficiencies being supplied by the equity jurisdiction, exercised as an adjunct, and not as a substitute. So important is it to preserve the trial by jury in civil causes, wherever the ends of justice can be attained under the Sys- tem of common-law pleading, that the procedure is pre- served and suits are required to be brought at law in nearly ail cases in which it is competent to afford relief. Beyond these, equity is relied upon to afford the needf ul redress; and equity is the all-sufficient supplement of the law. Bqui- ����