|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
664 THE CAPE SABLE COMPANY'S CASE.
and resources; and affords the means of practising much fraud
and oppression. To prevent which, and for the facility of travel-
ing, the law of Scotland requires a residence of forty days, to
subject even a foreigner to be sued in the courts of that country, (z)
In the year 1714, the Legislature of Maryland, reciting, that the
people had greatly suffered by the then war; and that their mise-
rable and deplorable circumstances were very much heightened
and aggravated by their being sued and brought to Annapolis
from the remotest parts of the province, to their manifest oppres-
sion and impoverishment, among other things, enacted, that where
the debt or damages did not exceed twenty pounds sterling, the
debtor should only be sued in the county court of the county in
which he resided, and not elsewhere; (y) which act was, from
time to time, continued and revived until the year 1794, when it
was suffered to expire, (z) This act, however, provided only a
partial remedy for the evil it proposed to remove; and therefore,
afterwards, on its being represented to the General Assembly as a
very great grievance to the people, that there was not a sufficient
provision made against arresting them when they happen to be
found about their necessary affairs out of the county where they
reside, it was enacted, that no inhabitant should be arrested by a
capias ad respondendum, or a capias ad satisfaciendum, out of the
county in which he resided, until after a return of non est on such
writ, (a)
This law applied to all such writs, from whatever court they
might issue; and therefore, although the jurisdiction of the Gene-
ral Court, then in existence, extended over the whole state, this
law made it necessary, that its process, for the arresting of a defen-
dant, should be first directed to the county in which he resided;
and consequently, as in England, a testatum capias, or a process
in nature of such a writ, was the only one which, in many cases,
could be sued out. And upon the principles of the English law,
it is obvious, that the General Court must have used an execution,
if not precisely the same, yet in all respects equivalent to a testa-
{x) Kames' Prin. Eq. b. S, e. 8, s. 1; Utterton v.. Tewsch, 3 Eccle. Rep, 351;
Gordon v.. Pye, 3 Eccle. Rep. 450, 463, —(y) 1714, ch. 4. —(z) 1773, ch. 17. —(a)
1728, ch, 24; 1796, ch. 43, s. 14; 1801, ch. 74, s. 11. —Where the suit abates by the
death of a defendant, his executor or administrator may, to revive the suit, be sum-
moned from any other county of the state. —1812, ch. 145, s. 4. And as it would
seem a party may be arrested by virtue of an attachment any where in the state and
brought before the High Court of Chancery. —- Crapster v. Griffith, 2 Bland, 15.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
