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post mortem, by the abolition of military tenures, combined with the negligence of the heralds in omitting their usual progresses, has rendered the proof of a modern descent, for the recovery of an estate or succession to a title of honour, more difficult than that of an ancient. This will be indeed remedied for the future, with respect to claims of peerage, by a late standing order of the house of lords; directing the heralds to take exact accounts and preserve regular entries of all peers and peeresses of England, and their respective descendants; and that an exact pedigree of each peer and his family shall, on the day of his first admission, he delivered to the house by garter, the principal king at arms. But the general inconvenience, affecting more private successions, still continues without a remedy.

III. Injuries cognizable by the courts maritime, or admiralty courts. These courts have jurisdiction and power to try and determine all maritime causes; or such injuries, which, though they are in their nature of common law cognizance, yet being committed on the high seas, out of the reach of our ordinary courts of justice, are therefore to be remedied in a peculiar court of their own. All admiralty causes must be therefore causes arising wholly upon the sea, and not within the precincts of any county.

Where the admiral's court hath not original jurisdiction of the cause, though there should arise in it a question that is proper for the cognizance of that court, yet that doth not alter nor

take away the exclusive jurisdiction of the common law. And so, vice versa, if it hath jurisdiction of the original, it hath also jurisdiction of all consequential questions, though properly determinable at common law. Wherefore, among other reasons, a suit for beaconage of a beacon standing on a rock in the sea may be brought in the court of admiralty, the admiral having an original jurisdiction over beacons. In case of prizes also in time of war, between our own nation and another, or between two other nations, which are taken at sea, and brought into our ports, the courts of admiralty have an undisturbed and exclusive jurisdiction to determine the same according to the law of nations.

IV. Such injuries as are cognizable by the courts of the common law. For it is a settled and invariable principle in the laws of England, that every right when withheld must have a remedy, and every injury its proper redress. The definition and explication of these numerous injuries, and their respective legal remedies, will employ our attention for many subsequent chapters. But, before we conclude the present, I shall just mention two species of injuries, which will properly fall now within our immediate consideration: and which are, either when justice is delayed by an inferior court that has proper cognizance of the cause; or, when such inferior court takes upon itself to examine a cause and decide the merits without a legal authority.

1. The first of these injuries, refusal or neglect

of justice, is remedied either by writ of procedendo, or of mandamus. A writ of procedendo ad judicium, issues out of the court of chancery, where judges of any court do delay the parties; for that they will not give judgment, either on the one side or on the other, when they ought so to do. In this case a writ of procedendo shall be awarded, commanding them in the king's name to proceed to judgment; but without specifying any particular judgment, for that (if erroneous) may be set aside in the course of appeal, or by writ of error or false judgment and, upon farther neglect or refusal, the judges of the inferior court may be punished for their contempt, by writ of attachment returnable in the king's bench or common pleas.

A writ of mandamus is, in general, a command issuing in the king's name from the court of king's bench, and directed to any person, corporation, or inferior court of judicature, within the king's dominions; requiring them to do some particular thing therein specified, which appertains to their office and duty, and which the court of king's bench has previously determined, or at least supposes, to be consonant to right and justice. It is a high prerogative writ, of a most extensively remedial nature and may be issued in some cases where the injured party has also another more tedious method of redress, as in the case of admission or restitution to an office; but it issues in all cases where the party hath a right to have any thing done, and hath no other specific means of compelling its performance. A mandamus, there

fore, lies to compel the admission or restoration of the party applying, to any office or franchise of a public nature whether spiritual or temporal; to academical degrees; to the use of a meeting-house, &c. it lies for the production, inspection, or delivery, of public books and papers; for the surrender of the regalia of a corporation; to oblige bodies corporate to affix their common seal; to compel the holding of a court; and for an infinite number of other purposes, which it is impossible to recite minutely.

2. The other injury, which is that of encroachment of jurisdiction, or calling one coram non judice, to answer in a court that has no legal cognizance of the cause, is also a grievance, for which the common law has provided a remedy by the writ of prohibition.

This writ may issue either to inferior courts of common law; as, to the courts of the counties palatine or principality of Wales, if they hold plea of land or other matters not lying within their respective franchises; to the county-courts or courtsbaron, where they attempt to hold plea of any matter of the value of forty shillings: or it may be directed to the courts christian, the university courts, the court of chivalry, or the court of admiralty, where they concern themselves with any matter not within their jurisdiction; as if the first should attempt to try the validity of a custom pleaded, or the latter a contract made or to be executed within this kingdom.

Thus careful has the law been, in compelling

the inferior courts to do ample and speedy justice; in preventing them from transgressing their due bounds; and in allowing them the undisturbed cognizance of such causes as by right, founded on the usage of the kingdom or act of parliament, do properly belong to their jurisdiction.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF WRONGS, AND THEIR REMEDIES RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF PErsons.

I COME now to consider at large, and in a more particular manner, the respective remedies in the public and general courts of common law, for injuries or private wrongs. And, in treating of these, I shall at present confine myself to such wrongs as may be committed in the mutual intercourse between subject and subject; which the king as the fountain of justice is officially bound to redress in the ordinary forms of law reserving such injuries or encroachments as may occur between the crown and the subject, to be distinctly considered here. after, as the remedy in such cases is originally of a peculiar and eccentrical nature.

I proceed therefore now to enumerate the several kinds, and to inquire into the respective natures, of all private wrongs or civil injuries, which may be offered to the rights of either a man's person or his property; recounting at the same time the respective remedies, which are furnished by the

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