Bail is security given for one's appearance in court at a future day.

Bail is from the French word bailler, to deliver, because the defendant is bailed or delivered to his securities upon their giving security for his appearance, and is supposed to continue in their friendly custody instead of going to jail.

PLEADINGS are the mutual altercations between the plaintiff and defendant reduced to writing.

The general and orderly parts of pleading are: the declaration, the defense, the plea, the replication, the rejoinder, the sur-rejoinder, the rebutter, the sur-rebutter, etc.

The declaration, narratio or count, anciently called the tale, is the first pleading in which the plaintiff sets forth his cause of complaint at length.

Local actions are where possession of land is to be recovered, or damages for an actual trespass, or for waste, etc., affecting land.

Transitory actions are for injuries which might happen anywhere, as debt, detinue, slander, and the like.

Venue or visne is the vicinia or neighborhood in which the injury is declared to be done.

A nonsuit is when the plaintiff neglects to deliver or file a declaration for two terms after the defendant appears, or is guilty of other delays or defaults against the rules of law; or where, in any subsequent stage of the action, he is adjudged not to follow or pursue his remedy as he ought to do; in which case a non-suit, or non-prosequitur, is entered, and he is said. to be non-pros'd.

A retraxit is an open and voluntary renunciation by the plaintiff of his suit in court, whereby he forever loses his suit.

A discontinuance is when the plaintiff leaves a chasm in the proceeding of his cause, as by not continuing the process regularly from day to day, and from time to time, as he ought to do.

Defense, in its true legal sense, signifies, not a justification, protection, or guard, but merely an opposing or denial of the truth of the validity of the complaint.

Claim of cognizance or conusance is a claim to have the action tried in some special jurisdiction. It must be claimed

before defense made, if at all.

Imparlance is a continuance of the cause, which the defendant is entitled to demand, and may, before he pleads, have granted by court, to see if he can end the matter amicably without further suit, by talking with the plaintiff.

Oyer. The defendant may crave oyer of the writ, or of the bond or other specialty, upon which the action is brought that is, to hear it read to him.

A plea is the defendant's answer of fact to the plaintiff's declaration.

Pleas are of two sorts: dilatory pleas and pleas to the action.

Dilatory pleas are such as tend merely to delay or put off the suit by questioning the propriety of the remedy, rather than by denying the injury.

They are to the jurisdiction of the court, to the disability of the plaintiff, or in abatement.

Pleas to the action are such as dispute the very cause of suit or answer to the merits of the complaint.

They are made by confessing or denying any cause of action, and are either general or special — pleas that totally deny the cause of complaint being the general issue or a special plea in bar. The general plea or general issue is what traverses, thwarts, and denies at once the whole declaration without offering any special matter whereby to evade it.

An issue is a fact affirmed on one side and denied on the other.

Special pleas are usually in the affirmative, though sometimes in the negative, but they always advance some new fact not mentioned in the declaration, and then they must be averred to be true in the common form—" and this he is ready to verify."

An estoppel is a special plea in bar, which happens where a man has done some act or executed some deed which estops or precludes him from averring anything to the contrary.

The conditions and qualities of a plea are: that it be single and contain only one matter; that it be direct and positive, and not argumentative; that it have convenient certainty of time, place and persons; that it answer the plaintiff's allegations in every material point, and that it be so pleaded as to be capable of trial.

A motion is an occasional application to court by the parties or their counsel, in order to obtain some rule or order of court necessary in the progress of a cause.

The replication is when the plea is in, if it does not amount to an issue, but only evades it, the plaintiff may plead again, and reply to the defendant's plea.

The subsequent pleadings are the rejoinder, the sur-rejoinder, the rebutter, the sur-rebutter, etc.

To give color is to suppose one to have an appearance or color of title - bad in deed in point of law.

Departure in pleading consists in varying from the title or defense which the party has once insisted on. This must be carefully avoided; the replication must support the declaration, and the rejoinder the plea.

New or novel assignment is when the plaintiff who has alleged in his declaration a general wrong, in his replication, after an evasive plea by the defendant, reduces that general wrong to more particular certainty by assigning the injury afresh in such manner as clearly to ascertain and identify it.

Duplicity in pleading must be avoided by every plea being simple, entire, connected, and confined to one single point.

Issue and demurrer Issue is where the parties, in the course of pleading, come to a point affirmed on one side and denied on the other; which, if it be matter of law, is called a demurrer; but, if matter of fact, it still retains the name of an issue of fact.

A demurrer confesses the facts to be true, but denies the law arising upon those facts.

Continuance is the detaining of the parties in court from time to time.

Plea of puis darien continuance, or since the last adjournment, is where the defendant is permitted to plead some new matter that has arisen since he has pleaded, or even after issue or demurrer.

TRIAL is the examination of the matter of fact put in issue.

The several species of trial are: by record, by inspection or examination, by certificate, by witnesses, by wager of battel, by wager of law, and by jury.

Trial by the record is only had when the existence of such record is the point in issue, as where a matter of record is pleaded in any action, as a fine, judgment, etc., and the opposite party pleads "nul tiel record."

Trial by inspection, or examination, is had by the court, principally when the matter in issue is the evident object of the senses, and where, for the greater expedition of a cause, the judges, upon the testimony of their own senses, decided the point in dispute.

Trial by certificate is where such certificate must have been conclusive to a jury, as where the evidence of the person certifying is the only proper criterion of the point in dispute.

Trial by witnesses, or without the intervention of a jury (the method in the civil law), is where the judge is left to form his own sentence upon the credit of the witnesses

examined.

Trial by wager of battel, or judiciary duel, is in the nature of an appeal to Providence, under an apprehension and hope that heaven would give the victory to him who had the right.

Trial by wager of law is only had where the matter in issue had been privately transacted between the parties themselves, without witnesses present, and consisted in the defendant's discharging himself from the claim on his own oath, bringing with him at the same time into court eleven of his neighbors to swear that they believed his statement to be true. Trial by jury, or per pais (by the country), is of two kinds: extraordinary, or that of the grand assise or grand

jury, consisting of sixteen jurors, instituted by Henry II. to do away with the barbarous custom of dueling, etc.; and ordinary, by a jury of twelve free and lawful men of the body of the county.

Juries were either special, as where the causes were of too great nicety for the discussion of ordinary freeholders, or where the sheriff was suspected of partiality; or common, as one returned by the sheriff according to the directions of statute.

Challenges are exceptions made to jurors, and are either to the array or to the polls.

Challenges to the array are at once an exception to the whole panel.

Challenges to the polls are exceptions to particular jurors, and are of four kinds, viz.:

Propter honoris respectum, as if a lord of Parliament be empanelled on a jury, he may be challenged by either party or may challenge hims if.

Propter defectum, as for defect in estate sufficient to qualify one to be a juror, etc.

Propter affectum, as for suspicion of bias or partiality. Propter delictum, as for some crime that affects the credit of the juror.

A tales is a supply of such men as are summoned upon the first panel in order to make up a deficiency in the same.

Evidence signifies that which demonstrates, makes clear, or ascertains, the truth of the very fact or point in issuc, either on the one side or the other. No evidence ought to be admitted on any other point.

A verdict is the finding of the jury.

A special verdict is where the jurors state the facts as they find them to be proved, and pray the advice of the court thereon.

JUDGMENT is the sentence of the law pronounced by the court upon the matter contained in the record.

A judgment is either upon demurrer, upon a verdict, by