Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/14

* SERVICE OF PAPERS. SERVITUDE. The requisites of proper service are also gov- erned by the local acts in each State. The most common requirements are that the ]ia])ers or proc- ess be handed to the person intended to be served, and often that their nature or contents be stated to him at the time. If the person thus sei'ved throws down the paper, the service is neverthe- less complete, and, if he refuses to receive it, it should be laid on his shoulder or laid down in his presence and its nature explained to him. in which cases the service is deemed valid. Some practice acts require that certain judicial papers or oiders be read to the person served, or the judge's signature exhibited to him. Where there are several defendants each one must be served individually, but where the action is against a coj5artnership service on one member is sufficient. Service is made on a corporation by serving one of its officers or a director, or, if it is a foreign corporation, a representative within the State. Some codes provide that service of the plead- ings and other papers after the first process may be made by mail on the attin'neys for the re- spective parties. Ignorance of the effect of serv- ice will not avoid the consequence of non-eom- ])liance with the contents of the papers or the rules of court. See Pleading ; Proceduke. SERVITES (ML. scrvitw, from Lat. scrriis, servant, slave). A Roman Catholic monastic Order founded in Florence in 1240 by seven prominent merchants, who desired to advance the glory of the ^'irgin Mary. It is a contemplative Order, and for a time enjoyed great prosjierity. Its rule was based on the Augustinian and was confirmed by Pope Alexander IV. in 1255. In 1288 it had some ten thousand members. In the lifetime of the founders it entered France and Germany, and in the next century Spain; but its introduction into England was not till 1864. Thence in 1870 the Order came into the United States, where in 1902 it had three monasteries with fourteen fathers and eleven lay brothers. Its membership has nuich decreased, and even in Italy it has now only 40 monasteries. Besides the monks there were nuns of this Order. SERVITUDE (Lat. scrritudo, from serviis. servant, slave). In the Roman law, a right to use property which belongs to another. Servi- tudes are classified as 'proedial' and 'personal.' The former are annexed to land: the right be- longs to the owner of a 'dominant' piece of land, and is exercised over a neighboring 'servient' piece of land. The priedial servitudes are fnither subdivided into rustic and urban. The former include rights of way and riglits of drawing water from or over neighboring land. The urban servitudes are annexed to residential property: they include rights of support from an adjoining building, rights of discharging rainwater on ad- joining premises, and restrictions upon the height of neighboring buildings. The prandial servitudes are of unlimited duration. Personal servitudes are established in favor of a particular person, without reference to his ownership of land, and they may be exercised over immovable property or over movables. They are rights of more or less complete use and en- joyment, regularly limited to a single life. The most important personal servitude is a usufruct. A very important restriction upon servitudes is that the owner of servient property need not do anything. His duty is confined to inaction or toleration. The only exception is found in the urban servitude of supjiort from an adjoining buihling. Tliis servitude obliges the owner to keep his building in repair. Servitudes may be established by contract (ac- cepted grant) or by testament or by judicial de- cree in a partition suit or by prescription. They may be extinguished by contract (accepted re- lease), and by confusion or merger, when the ownership of the servient pro])erty and the spe- cial right conferred by the servitude are united in one person. Personal and rustic servitudes may be lost by non-user: urlian servitudes are so lost only when the owner of the servient estates prescribes his liberty ( see Prescriptiox ), which means that he nurst maintain for 10 or 20 years a state of things inconsistent with the servitude. In modern civil law it is possible to charge periodical jiaynicnts U])on land ; but with this ex- ception the modern European doctrine of servi- tudes is substantially like the Roman. General restrictions imposed liy law upon use of property, especially when in the interest of neighbors, are sometimes calh-d 'legal servitudes.' The term servitude was also applied to the status of transported laborers marked by temporary loss of liberty due to service obligations under con- tract. Develojied chiefly in English and French seventeenth and eigliteenth century colonies, negro, Indian, and white servitude was anal- ogous to recent subject labor in Cuba, Soutll America, South Africa, and Hawaii. For two centuries (ItJin-lSlO) in America servitude was an importiint social institution, serving the econ- omic functions of immigration and a skilled labor supply. Its longest institutional duration was in agricultural Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Vir- ginia, where it supplied high-grade labor a cen- tury after slavery replaced it as a general labor supply. Indented or indentured servitude started as a free personal relation based on voluntary contract for a term of service in lieu of trans- portation and maintenance or profit-sharing be- tween poor British or Continental immigrants and individuals or corporations, like the Virginia Company, importing them. It tended to pass into a property relation ( 1 ) in which was rec- ognized only the involuntary and sometimes in- definite service obligation enjoined by law in England or the colonies, or procured by force through the kidnapping of persons in Great Brit- ain, called 'spiriting': and (2) in which exten- sive control .was asserted over the bodies and lib- erties of the person during service. The mas- ter's right to service of both voluntary and in- voluntary servants was supposed to be based upon contract, written or oral, in the form of court sen- tences, act of Assembly, or 'according to the custom of the country.' The status servitude was recognized by statute, as follows: Vir- ginia, KiiO: Massachusetts. 10.30-30: JFaryland, 1037; Connecticut, 1043; Rhode Island, 'lG47; North Carolina, 1665; Pennsylvania, 1082; Georgia, 1732. Important incidents added by law were: Master's alienation, by gift, sale, or will; rating in assets; seizure for debt; two to seven year additions to time of service, whip- ping, and fetters for control ; consent to mar- riage, property ownership, trade, and assembly; servant's rights to freedom dues, certificate of freedom, suit and complaint by petition, com- mutation lor punishment, free time, medical at- tention, and, if white, non-service to colored per-