Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/182

 158 THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

who does his duty and makes his return to the attorney from whom he re- ceived it.

Answers to a Hbel for divorce are required in some States. Because there divorce comes under the head of the chancery practice or the provisions of a code, but no answer is ever required in this State, nor have I ever heard of but one in practice.

The divorce practice in this state is the simplest and plainest in the world. All that is necessary is to set out the common sense of the libellant's case. But where the cause alleged is "extreme cruelty" or such treatment as "in- jures the health or endangers the reason," the libel must set out the specific acts upon which the libellant relies, with their dates and the places where it is alleged they took place. This is in the nature of what is known as a bill of particulars. If it were otherwise the libellee might be charged with '' general cussedness " and never know what he had to meet until he heard it from the lips of adverse witnesses.

7. Owing to the prejudice against such tribunals before suggested, no chan- cery powers worth mentioning were conferred upon any court in this state until the act of December 29, 1832. This act was framed by Joel Parker, afterwards chief justice. The whole of our equitable jurisdiction to-day rests upon the ninth section of that act. At the time of its passage few lawyers in this state knew anything about the practice in such matters. For a quarter of a century the practice in equity matterij was monopolized by less than half a dozen men, — Chancellor Hobbs of Wakefield, Joe Bell of Haverhill, and a few others. The practice was founded upon the English practice. It was tedious and prolix beyond measure. The very door to the equity court, to the younger members of the profession bore an inscription akin to that which the great Italian found written over the gates of hell, " all hope abandon ye who enter here !" But step by step some of them mastered some part of the system. In 1859, Josiah Quincy of Rumney and myself were members of the judiciary committee. To my mind he was one of the most sagacious, prac- tical and level headed men I ever met. I went to him and said, " Mr. Quincy, people bring to me cases m equity. I do not know anything about the prac- tice, it is so cumbrous and confused and can find no one to tell me. Is there not some way by which the excresences can be lopped off, and this jargon be rendered intelligible to a young man who has industry and energy?" His answer was, " Yes, and it ought to be done. I have thought the matter all over and framed two or three sections of the bill. I will perfect it and bring it in." He did so, and explained both the bill and its necessity. After he had done this, the chairman asked that the matter might lie over for two or three days until he could confer with two members of the court, and see if the same result could not be reached by the court establishing a code of rules for the regulation of causes in chancery. The judges agreed to do it. Mr. Quincy 's bill dropped. Judge Bell, the court assenting, framed our rules in chancery, and to this, you owe the simplest and plainest chancery procedure in the world. All you have to do is to master the law and facts of your case, and then set out the facts and what you desire the court to do in clear, compre- hensive and terse language ; and you must observe the same rules in framing answers, replications, and the like.

These new rules gave a great impetus to chancery practice. During all this time these causes were heard alone upon depositions, instead of oral testimony. In this way weeks were wasted when days would have served all the purposes ; but in 1870, the act to which I have already referred was passed, taking di- vorce, equity and a variety of other causes to the trial term. To-day, as a rule, t.ie remedy in equity can be had in much less time then in a court of

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