the transaction complete, and fit for a decision, cannot (ƒ): "Tempus edax rerum, tuque invidiosa vetustas, Omnia destruitis." "One of the principal reasons," said Lord Cottenham (g), " for admitting limitations of suits, is the difficulty of ascertaining the facts necessary to make it safe to exercise the judicial power." It has been supposed that the legislature only meant to protect persons who had paid their debts, but from length of time had lost or destroyed the proof of payment. From the title of the act (h) to the last section, every word of it shows that it was not passed on this narrow ground. It has been often called, by great judges, an act of peace. Long dormant claims have often more of cruelty than of justice in them. Christianity forbids us to attempt enforcing the payment of a debt which time and misfortune have rendered the debtor unable to discharge (i). It is not a statute to protect parties against loss of evidence, but to quiet claims. To sue a defendant when the plaintiff has slept six years over his rights-when time and misfortune may have disabled the debtor from discharging his obligation-is at once iniquitous and anti-christian (k). These laws have the manifest tendency.... to suppress those prejudices which may rise up at a distance of time, and baffle every honest effort to counteract or overcome them. Parol evidence may be offered of confessions (a species of evidence which, it has been often observed, it is hard to disprove, and easy to fabricate) applicable to such remote times, as may leave no means to trace the nature, extent or origin of the (f) 1 Knapp, 227. (g) 5 Myl. & C. 17. (h) 21 Jac. 1, c. 16. L. (i) 3 Bing. 332. (k) Per Best, C. J., Scales v. Jacob, 3 Bing. 638, 653. C Time after which a contract cannot be enforced is not of its nature. Advantage and application of this law in England. claim, and thus open the way to the most oppressive charges (1). The time beyond which a contract cannot be enforced is not, as was argued in Don v. Lippmann (m), of the nature of the contract. That argument supposes that the parties contemplate the breach only of the agreement. "But nothing," said Lord Brougham, "is more contrary to good faith than such a supposition. If the law of the country proceeds on the supposition that the contracting parties look only to the period at which the Statute of Limitations will begin to run, it will sanction a wrong course of conduct, and will turn a protection against laches into a premium for evasiveness" (n). Our own Statutes of Limitations have been, on all occasions, uniformly recognized as of great public concern and advantage, and are founded in favour of long possessions, for the repose of the subject, and to avoid uncertainties, which produce suits and contentions (o); and the object of them all is to give effect to the maxim, interest reipublicæ ut sit finis litium (p). They have been designated the best of statutes (q), noble beneficial acts (r), acts of peace (s), laws of peace and justice (t), a very beneficial system of laws and of the greatest importance, inasmuch as they are statutes of repose (u), and beneficial to the subject (x). So much importance, indeed, has always been attached to laws of this nature in our own country that they have been by degrees extended to all ranks and classes. True it is that they have been with us of slow (7) 7 Curt. Amer. Rep. 618. (n) See also Ex parte Kidd, In (4) Per Holt, C. J., 7 Mod. 12. 333. 3 Bing. (8) Per Best, C. J., (t) Per Lord Wynford, 1 Knapp, 227. (u) Per Lord Kenyon, 4 T. R. 308. (x) 2 Ves., J. 14. The Crown growth, and have not sprung forth at once. and the Church were long exempt from these laws. The rule as to them was nullum tempus occurrit regi aut ecclesiæ; but in the reign of James the First (y), and again in the reign of George the Third (z), of William the Fourth (a), the law was extended to the Crown; and in the latter reign also (b) to the Duke of Cornwall and (c) the duchy of Lancaster. Again, in the reign of Her present Majesty (d), the law was still further extended as to the Duke of Cornwall. So also in the reign of William the Fourth (e) the law was extended to the Clergy; and again, in the present reign (f), to the Nonconformists, in relation to property devoted to certain purposes in conformity with their religious views. To this last extension of the law a stout but unavailing resistance, not only by the Nonconformists generally, but by many members of the Established Church, was offered. If, as was forcibly asked on the discussion of this extension, persons have been in possession for a long series of years of property devoted to the worship of the Supreme Being, and that worship has been carried on in a particular form, inculcating particular doctrines, why should not that establish a right as indefeasible as the right which is established in the particular cases just referred to (g)? Again, in the reign of George the Third, the principle was applied to informations in the nature of writs of quo warranto for the exercise of any office or franchise in any city, borough or town corporate, exhibited by virtue of the royal prerogative (h). The act in its (3) 21 Jac. 1, cc. 2, 14. (z) 9 Geo. 3, c. 16. (a) 2 & 3 Will. 4, cc. 71, 100. (b) Ib. (c) 2 & 3 Will. 4, c. 71. (d) 7 & 8 Vict. c. 105; 23 & 24 Vict. c. 53; and 24 & 25 Vict. c. 62. (e) 2 & 3 Will. 4, cc. 71, 100; 3 Policy and effect. Morality of using this law as a defence. preamble states that it would greatly tend to secure the quiet, tranquillity and good order of cities, boroughs and towns corporate if a reasonable limitation of time be established, beyond which the holder of an office or a franchise should not be disturbed in the enjoyment of it. Laws thus limiting suits are founded on the noblest policy. They are statutes of repose, to quiet titles, to suppress frauds and to supply the deficiency of proofs from the ambiguity and obscurity of transactions. They presume that claims are extinguished because they are not litigated within the prescribed period. They take away all solid grounds of complaint, because they rest on the negligence or laches of the party himself. They quicken diligence, by making it in some measure equivalent to right. They discourage litigation, by burying in one common receptacle all the accumulations of past times which are unexplained, and have now become inexplicable (i). The neglect of these salutary laws “would make every title throughout the kingdom shake, and conjure up a frightful group, a host of dark and fantastic suitors, to blacken its courts, and fill their air with novel and discordant sounds, uncouth to all learned ears, unintelligible to all learned minds, and involve the community, and all its real property, in a maze of groundless, endless, pitiless litigation"(k). The taking advantage of the statute law of limitations as a defence to a claim which in natural justice may appear to be well founded, may be considered by some persons as a violation of that justice and of morality. "But," says Paley (1), " if a man be ignorant or dubious of the justice of the demand made upon him, he may conscientiously plead this limitation, because he applies the rule of law to the purpose for which it was (i) Story, Confl. of Laws, s. 576. (k) Per Lord Brougham, Ar 66 intended. But when he refuses to pay a debt, of the reality of which he is conscious, he cannot, as before,. plead the intention of the statute and the supreme authority of the law, unless he could show, that the law intended to interpose its supreme authority to acquit men of debts of the existence and justice of which they were themselves sensible.” It has been said by an eminent writer on the laws of Scotland, "that where the right or ground of debt is wholly cut off . . . . the other party may, without impeaching his conscience, take the benefit, in the same manner as if the former proprietor or creditor had relinquished or renounced their pretensions; because the right is discharged or extinguished by the public law to which all our rights are subject. And therefore it is absurd to term prescription an impious defence, since it is equally just and reasonable as the other laws instituted for the good of the commonwealth. Wherefore the party, who has acquired right by prescription or liberation from an obligation, may in point of conscience hold the property of such thing from the former owner or plead an immunity from the debt. . . . for the former owner or creditor, after the prescription is accomplished, loses his right, which, by a just law, is transferred to the other. The most learned of the canonists are of opinion that the former owner cannot, in point of conscience, intermeddle with the thing which, after the prescription, is become another's..... But if, during the course of prescription the possessor or prescriber come to know who is the true owner, or that the debt is just from which he thereafter prescribes a liberation, in point of conscience, or in foro interiori, he ought not to plead it according to the just opinion of the canonists; for though by the civil law, the supervening mala fides of the possessor did not hinder the prescription to proceed, for preventing lawsuits, and for punishing of the negligence of the |