forcibly marrying her, prevent her from being evidence against him, when she was perhaps the only witness to the fact. By 5 & 6 Vict. c. 38, § 11, charges of abduction of women and girls cannot be tried by justices at sessions, but must take place in a superior court. ABEYANCE is a legal term, derived from the French bayer, which, says Richelet, means to "look at anything with mouth wide open." Coke (Co. Litt. 342, b.) explains the term thus, "En abeiance, that is, in expectation, of the French bayer to expect. For when a parson dieth, we say that the freehold is in abeyance, because a successor is in expectation to take it; and here note the necessity of the true interpretation of words. If tenant pur terme d'autre vie dieth, the freehold is said to be in abeyance until the occupant entereth. If a man makes a lease for life, the remainder to the right heirs of J. S., the fee-simple is in abeyance until J. S. dieth. And so in the case of the parson, the fee and right is in abeyance, that is in expectation, in remembrance, entendment or consideration of law, in consideratione sive intelligentia legis; because it is not in any man living; and the right that is in abeyance is said to be in nubibus, in the clouds, and therein hath a qualitie of fame whereof the poet speaketh: 'Ingrediturque solo et caput inter nubila condit.'" Such is a specimen of the ridiculous absurdity with which Coke seeks to relieve the dryness of legal learning. The expression that the freehold or the inheritance of an estate is in abeyance means that there is no person in whom the freehold or the inheritance is then vested, and that the ownership of the freehold or of the inheritance is waiting or expecting for an owner who is to be ascertained. This doctrine of the suspense of the freehold or of the inheritance is repugnant to the general principles of the tenure of land in England. By the old law, it was always necessary that some person should be in existence as the representative of the fee or freehold for the discharge of the feudal duties, and to answer the actions which might be brought for the fief; and thus the maxim arose that the freehold of lands could never be in abeyance. Still it was admitted that both the inheritance and the freehold might in some cases be in abeyance. Thus, in the case of glebe lands belonging to parsons, and of lands held by bishops and other corporations sole, it is said that the inheritance must always be in abeyance, as no one can, under any circumstances, be entitled to more than an estate for life in these lands; and during a vacancy of the church, it is said that the freehold is in abeyance, for there is then no parson to have it, and it is said that the freehold cannot be in the patron, who, though he possesses a right to present to the benefice, has no direct interest in the land annexed to it. This subject is further considered under TENURE. But whatever may be the true doctrine of abeyance in the case just mentioned, it is certain that such an abeyance cannot be created by the voluntary acts of parties. Therefore if a man grant land in such a manner that the immediate freehold would, if the deed were allowed to operate, be in abeyance, it is a rule of law that the deed by which such a grant is made, is void; and if the grant be so framed that the inheritance would be in abeyance, it is a rule of law that the inheritance shall remain in the person who makes the grant. The object of this rule of law is to prevent the possibility of the freehold subsisting for a time without an owner. Also, "When a remainder of inheritance is limited in contingency by way of use or devise, the inheritance in the mean time, if not otherwise disposed of, remains in the grantor and his heirs, or, in the heirs of the testator, until the contingency happens to take it out of them." (Fearne, Contingent Remainders, p. 513, 4th edit.) Titles of Honour are also sometimes said to be in abeyance, which occurs when the persons next in inheritance to the last possessor are several females or co-parceners. In this case the title is not extinct, but is in abeyance; and may be revived at any time by the king. Several instances of the exercise of this prerogative are on record both in ancient and modern times. (Coke upon Littleton, 165, a.) Among the Romans an hereditas, of | dom for ever, and not to return without which the heres was not yet ascertained, the king's licence. Upon making his was said 'jacere;' and this is a case confession and taking this oath, he bewhich corresponds to the abeyance of the came attainted of the felony; he had forty English law. When the heres was ascer- days from the day of his appearance before tained, his rights as heres were considered the coroner to prepare for his departure, to commence from the time of the death and the coroner assigned him such port of the testator or the intestate. During as he chose for his embarkation, to which the interval between the death and the he was bound to repair immediately with ascertainment of the heres, the hereditas a cross in his hand, and to embark with was sometimes spoken of as a person; and all convenient speed. If he did not go sometimes it was viewed as representing immediately out of the kingdom, or if he the defunct. These two modes of view- afterwards returned into England withing the hereditas in this intermediate time out licence, he was condemned to be express the same thing, the legal capacity hanged, unless he happened to be a clerk, of the defunct. The reason for this fiction in which case he was allowed the benefit was peculiar to the Roman law, and it had of clergy. This practice, which has obno other object than to facilitate certain vious marks of a religious origin, was, by acquisitions of property by means of several regulations in the reign of Henry slaves who were a part of the hereditas. VIII., in a great measure discontinued, A slave could in many cases acquire for and at length by the statute 21 James I. his master; but in the case of an hereditas c. 28, all privilege of sanctuary and abjacens, the slave could only acquire for juration consequent upon it were entirely the benefit of the hereditas by virtue of a abolished. In the reign of Queen Elizafiction that he had still an owner of pro- beth, however, amongst other severities per legal capacity. The fiction accord- then enacted against Roman Catholics and ingly made the acquisition of the slave Protestant Dissenters convicted of having valid by reference to the legal capacity of refused to attend the divine service of the his defunct owner, which was known, and Church of England, they were by statute not to the condition of the unascertained (35 Eliz. c. 1) required to abjure the heres, who might not have the necessary realm in open court, and if they refused legal capacity. Thus, if a Roman, who to swear, or returned to England without had a legal capacity to make a will, licence after their departure, they were to died intestate, and one of the intestate's be adjudged felons, and to suffer death slaves was appointed his heres by an- without benefit of clergy. Thus the other person, the slave could take as punishment of abjuration inflicted by this heres for the benefit of the hereditas Act of Parliament was far more severe to which he belonged, by virtue of the than abjuration for felony at the common fiction which gave to this hereditas the law: in the latter case, the felon had the legal capacity of the defunct intestate. benefit of clergy; in the former, it was (Savigny, System des heutigen Römischen expressly taken away. Protestant DisRechts, ii. 363.) senters are expressly exempted from this severe enactment by the Toleration Act; but Popish recusants convict were liable to be called upon to abjure the realm for their recusancy, until a statute, passed in the 31 Geo. III. (1791), relieved them from that and many other penal restrictions upon their taking the oaths of allegiance and abjuration. ABILITY; CAPACITY, LEGAL. [AGE; WIFE.] ABJURATION (of the Realm) signifies a sworn banishment, or the taking of an oath to renounce and depart from the realm for ever. By the ancient common law of England, if a person guilty of any felony, excepting sacrilege, fled to a parish church or churchyard for sanctuary, he might, within forty days afterwards, go clothed in sackcloth before the coroner, confess the full particulars of his guilt, and take an oath to abjure the king ABJURATION (Oath of). This is an oath asserting the title of the present royal family to the crown of England. It is imposed by 13 Will. III. c. 6; 1 Geo. I. c. 13; and 6 Geo. III. c. 53. By this oath the juror recognises the right of the king under the Act of Settlement, engages to support him to the utmost of the juror's power, promises to disclose all traitorous conspiracies against him, and expressly disclaims any right to the crown of England by the descendants of the Pretender. The juror next declares that he rejects the opinion that princes excommunicated by the Pope may be deposed or murdered; that he does not believe that the Pope of Rome or any other foreign prince, prelate, or person has or ought to have jurisdiction directly or indirectly within the realm. The form of oath taken by Roman Catholics who sit in either House of Parliament is given in 10 Geo. IV. c. 7 (the Roman Catholic Relief Act). The first part of the oath is similar in substance to the form required under 6 Geo. III. c. 53. The following part of the oath is new:-"I do hereby disclaim, disavow, and solemnly abjure any intention to subvert the present Church Establishment as settled by law within this realm; and I do solemnly swear that I will never exercise any privilege to which I am or may become entitled to disturb or weaken the Protestant religion or Protestant government in the United Kingdom; and I do solemnly, in the presence of God, profess, testify and declare that I do make this declaration, and every part thereof, in the plain and ordinary sense of the words of this oath, without any evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation whatsoever." Before the passing of this Act (10 Geo. IV. c. 7), the oath and declaration required to be taken and made as qualification for sitting and voting in Parliament were the oaths of allegiance, supremacy, and abjuration, and the declarations commonly called the declarations against transubstantiation, the invocation of saints, and the sacrifice of the mass. | ingham, having embraced the Roman Catholic religion, took and subscribed the oath required to be taken and subscribed by Roman Catholics." The word Abjuratio does not occur in classical Latin writers, and the verb Abjurare, which often occurs, signifies to deny a thing falsely upon oath. ABORIGINES, a term by which we denote the primitive inhabitants of a country. Thus, to take one of the most striking instances, when the continent and islands of America were discovered, they were found to be inhabited by various races of people, of whose immigration into those regions we have no historical accounts. All the tribes, then, of North America may, for the present, be considered as aborigines. We can, indeed, since the discovery of America, trace the movements of various tribes from one part of the continent to another; and, in this point of view, when we compare the tribes one with another, we cannot call a tribe which has changed its place of abode, aboriginal, with reference to the new country which it has occupied. The North American tribes that have moved from the east side of the Mississippi to the west of that river are not aborigines in their new territories. But the whole mass of American Indians must, for the present, be considered as aboriginal with respect to the rest of the world. The English, French, Germans, and others, who have settled in America, are, of course, not aborigines with reference to that continent, but settlers, or colonists. If there is no reason to suppose that we can discover traces of any people who inhabited England prior to and different from those whom Julius Cæsar found here, then the Britons of Cæsar's time are the aborigines of this island. The term aborigines first occurs in the Greek and Roman writers who treated of The case of a member of the House of the earlier periods of Roman history, and, Commons becoming converted to the Ro- though interpreted by Dionysius of Haliman Catholic faith after he had taken his carnassus (who writes it, in common with seat, occurred for the first time since the other Greek authors, 'Aßwpıyîves, or 'Aßopassing of 10 Geo. IV. c. 7, in the session piyives, or 'Aßwpiyivo) to mean ancestors, of 1844, and is thus noticed in the Votes it is more probable that it corresponds to and Proceedings of the House, dated May the Greek word autochthones. This latter 13:"Charles Robert Scott Murray, designation, indeed, expresses the most esquire, member for the county of Buck-remote possible origin of a nation, for it signifies "people coeval with the land which they inhabit." The word aborigines, though perhaps not derived, as some suppose, from the Latin words ab and origo, still has the appearance of being a general term analogous to autochthones, and not the name of any people really known to history. The Aborigines of the ancient legends, interwoven with the history of Rome, were, according to Cato, the inhabitants of part of the country south of the Tiber, called by the Romans Latium, and now the Maremma of the Campagna di Roma. (Niebuhr, Roman History.) man, who covets the possession of land, will follow up his victory till he has occupied every portion of the continent which he finds suitable for cultivation. The red man must become a cultivator, or he must retire to places where the white man does not think it worth his while to follow him. The savage aborigines do not pass from what we call barbarism to what we call civilization without being subjected to the force of external circumstances, that is, the presence among them of settlers or conquerors. There is no more reason for supposing that huntsmen will change their mode of life, such as it is, without being compelled, than that agricultural people will change theirs. Aborigines, then, as we now understand them, will remain what they are until they are affected by foreign intercourse; and this intercourse will either destroy them in the end, a result which is confirmed by most of our experience, or it will change their habits to those of their conquerors or the settlers among them, and so preserve them, not as a distinct nation, for that is impossible, but by incorporating them among the foreigners. A nation of agriculturists, though con preserve its distinctive character; a nation of savages can only endure as such by keeping free from all intercourse with an agricultural and commercial people. ABORTION. [HOMICIDE.] ABROGATION. [LAW.] The word aborigines has of late come into general use to express the natives of various parts of the world in which Europeans have settled; but it seems to be limited or to be nearly limited to such natives as are barbarous, and do not cultivate the ground, and have no settled habitations. Some of the later Roman writers, as Sallust, describe the Italian aborigines as a race of savages, not living in a regular society; a description which, as Niebuhr remarks, is probably nothing else than an ancient speculation about the progress of mankind from animal rudeness to civilization. Such a speculationquered, may and does endure, and may was very much to Sallust's taste, and we find it also in Lucretius and Horace. Probably the modern sense of this word and the sense in which Sallust uses it agree more nearly than appears at first. The aborigines of Australasia and Van Diemen's Land (if there are any left in Van Diemen's Land) are so called as being savages, though the name may be applied with equal propriety to cultivators of the ground. Some benevolent people suppose that aborigines, who are not cultivators of the ground, may become civilized like Europeans. But it has not yet been proved satisfactorily that this change can be effected in any large numbers; and if it can be effected, it is an essential condition that the aborigines must give up their present mode of life and adopt that of the settlers. But such a change is not easy: even in the United States of North America it has been only partially effected. The wide expanse of country between the Mississippi and the Atlantic is now nearly cleared of the aborigines, and the white ABSENTEE. This is a term applied, generally by way of reproach, to that class of capitalists who derive their income from one country, and reside in another country, in which they expend their income. We here propose to state some of the more material points in the controverted question, whether the consumption of absentees is an evil to the particular country from which they derive their revenues. There is a decided tendency in the progress of social intercourse to loosen the ties which formerly bound an individual or a family to one particular spot. From the improvement of roads, and the rapidity and certainty of steam navigation, Dublin is now as near, in point of time, to London, as Bath was half a century ago; and the distance between England and every part of the Continent is in the same way daily dimi nishing. The inducements to absenteeism, whether from Ireland to England, or from England to the Continent, are constantly increasing; and it is worth while considering whether the evils of absenteeism are so great as some suppose, or whether, according to a theory that was much in vogue some years ago, absenteeism is an evil at all. The expenditure of a landed proprietor resident upon his estate calls into action the industry of a number of labourers, domestics, artisans, and tradesmen. If the landlord remove to another part of the same country, the labourers remain; the domestic servants probably remove with him; but the artisans and tradesmen whom he formerly employed lose that profit which they once derived by the exchange of their skill or commodities for a portion of the landlord's capital. It never occurs to those who observe and perhaps deplore these changes, that the landlord ought to be prevented from spending his money in what part of his own country he pleases. They conclude that there is only a fresh distribution of the landlord's revenues, and that new tradesmen and mechanics have obtained the custom which the old ones have lost. But if the same landlord go to reside in a foreign country-if the Englishman go to France or Italy, or the Irishman to England-it is sometimes asserted that the amount of revenue which he spends in the foreign country is so much clear loss to the country from which he derives his property, and so much encouragement withdrawn from its industry; and that he ought, therefore, to be compelled to stay at home, instead of draining his native land for the support of foreign rivals. Some economists maintain that this is a popular delusion, and that, in point of fact, the revenue spent by the landlord in a foreign country has precisely the same effect upon the industry of his own country as if his consumption took place at home, for that, in either case, it is unproductive consumption. We will endeavour to state their arguments as briefly as we can. We will suppose a landowner to derive an income of 1000l. a year from an estate in one of our agricultural counties. We leave out of the consideration whether he resides or not upon his estate, and endeavours, by his moral influence, to improve the condition of his poorer neighbours, or lets his land to a tenant. The landowner may reside in London, or Brighton, or Cheltenham. With his rents he probably purchases many articles of foreign production, which have been exchanged for the productions of our own country. There are few people now who do not understand that if we did not take from foreigners the goods which they can produce cheaper and better than we can, we should not send to foreigners the goods which we can produce cheaper and better than they can. If we did not take wines from the continental nations, for instance, we should not send to the continental nations our cottons and hardware; and the same principle applies to all the countries of the earth with which we have commercial intercourse. The landlord, therefore, by consuming the foreign wines encourages our own manufactures of cotton and hardware, as much as if, drinking no foreign wine at all, he applied the money so saved to the direct purchases of cotton and hardware at home. But he even bestows a greater encouragement upon native industry, by consuming wine which has been exchanged for cotton and hardware, than if he abstained from drinking the wine; for he uses as much cotton and hardware as he wants, as well as the wine; and by using the wine he enables other people in Europe to use the cotton and hardware, who would otherwise have gone without it. For all that he consumes of foreign produce, some English produce has been sent in exchange. Whatever may be the difference between the government accounts of exports and imports (than which nothing can be more fallacious), there is a real balance between the goods we send away and the goods we receive; and thus the intrinsic value of all foreign trade is this,-that it opens a larger store of commodities to the consumers, whilst it develops a wider field of industry for the producers. There |