Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 16.pdf/404

 Rh (1) The relief of aged, impotent, and poor people. (2) The maintenance of sick and maimed soldiers and mariners. (3) The maintenance of schools of learn ing, free schools, and scholars in universities. (4) The repair of bridges, ports, havens, causeways, churches, sea-banks, and high ways. (5) The education and preferment of or phans. (6) The relief, stock, or maintenance for houses of correction. (7) Marriages of poor maids. (8) The supportation, aid, and help of young tradesmen, handicraftsmen, and per sons decayed. (9) The relief or redemption of prisoners or captives. (10) The aid or ease of any poor inhabi tants concerning payment of fifteens, setting out of soldiers, and other taxes. . . . [This] statute did not create a new law with respect to charities, but only furnished a new and ancillary remedial jurisdiction for enforcing them. The statute has been variously regarded in the United States. It has been recognized as part of the common law in Maine, Massa chusetts, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri and North Carolina and has been virtually reenacted in Connecticut and Rhode Island. The statute aside from the effect of its enu meration of charities has been rejected in Xew York, New Jersey, Delaware, Mary land, the District of Columbia, Indiana, Michigan, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vir ginia, West Virginia, Mississippi, and Cali fornia. The question of its status has been raised but left undetermined in Alabama, New Hampshire, and Texas. In Pennsylva nia, Ohio, and Georgia the principles devel oped under the statute by the English courts of equity have been approved and adopted, although those States do not specifically rec ognize it as part of their common law. In the remaining States the question has not been squarely brought before the courts. . ..

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We now come to a consideration of the purpose to which the statute is commonly put today. It is regarded as a universal stand ard or test in deciding what objects are to be considered charitable, and it is the accepted rule that those objects only are charitable which are named in the act or are considered within its spirit. . . . Using the enumerated objects of the statute of Elizabeth as a basis, it will now be clear that both the English and American courts allow themselves the utmost freedom within precedents in determining what are and are not charities. IN the American Law Review for MarchApril is printed a paper on "The Civil Jury," read by A. Caperton Braxton, of Stanton, Virginia, at the recent meeting of the New York State Bar Association. It is a plea for the abolition of the "illogical and oppressive rule requiring unanimity in civil verdicts.'1 Of the.origin of this rule Mr. Braxton says: Since the researches of the German schol ar, Dr. Bruner, it has been generally con ceded that the. English civil jury (which, by the way, -is several centuries older than the criminal jury), came, not "from the forests of Germany." as Montesquieu claims,'but origi nated in England as an outgrowth of the ''in quisition of witnesses" created by the Carlovingian kings of France to establish the facts in controversies concerning the royal es tates. It was not derived from the ancient "folk-courts," but was substantially different from them. Those early "folk-courts'' were not bound by the unanimity rule, nor were any of the older tribunals. The "Indicium Parium" of Magna Charta was not required to be unani mous. In all tribunals known to man—those of ancient Egypt, the Grecian dicasts, the Roman judices, and the courts of the ancient Germans and Anglo-Saxons, of the Britons and the Normans—in each of them the ma jority ruled. How, then, did this anomaly of jury unanimity arise? The answer is, that it had its origin when the jury was not a tri bunal at all, but merely a body of witnesses—