void.' But it seems to me perfectly well settled, that the statement of a consideration in a deed of land (unless impeached as fraudulent by creditors or purchasers) is conclusive. Once admit the general rule, that no man can be admitted to contradict the consideration in his own deed, and it follows of course that the grantor or his heirs cannot deny that the consideration recited to have passed did pass, or show that there was no good or valuable consideration whatever given for the land. That the grantor or his heirs cannot be admitted to do this, I consider to be well settled both by the cases before referred to, and by the following. Macgley v. Haver, 7 John. 341. Emery v. Chase, 5 Greenleaf, 232; Scheunerhow v. Vanderheyden, 1 John. 139; Green v. Weston, Say. 209; 3 Preston's Abr. 13-14; 3 Mason, 358, and cases there cited.

It is my opinion, therefore, that the heirs of W. would not be admitted to show that there was no consideration for the conveyance from W. to P., but that the consideration mentioned in the deed must be taken to be the true consideration as against them.

But suppose that the law is otherwise, and the heirs of W. are admitted to aver and prove that the consideration men. tioned in the deed did not in fact pass, and that no other consideration passed from the grantee to the grantor. What will be the effect of this fact, or, in other words, is this deed sufficient to pass the estate intended to be conveyed by it, without any consideration?

At the common law, no consideration was necessary to the validity of a conveyance. A consideration was first required in courts of equity, and was made necessary in those modes of conveyance only, which derived their origin from the doctrines and usages of that court, such as operate by raising and passing a use. But a consideration never was, and is not at the present day, necessary to the validity of a feoffment. Let us consider then whether this deed can operate as a feoffment. The statute of 1783, c. 37, § 4, enacts, 'that all convey

ances of land, signed and sealed by the grantor, having right to convey, acknowledged by him before a justice of the peace, and recorded in the registry of the county where the land lies, shall be valid to pass the same, without by other act or ceremony in the law whatever.'

The effect of this statute is to substitute the acknowledgment and recording of the deed for livery of seisin. The statute enacts, that a deed acknowledged and recorded shall be valid and effectual to pass the land,' not a use in the land, and accordingly it has been held, that a deed acknowledged and recorded may have the effect of a feoffment without livery of seisin. Marshal v. Fisk, 6 Mass. 32; Thatcher v. Gill, cited, ib.; Thatcher v. Omans & al. 3 Pick. R. 521.

There is no particular form of words necessary to constitute a feoffment, Com. Dig. Feoffment A.3; and there is a case in Roll's Abr. where dedi et concessi were held sufficient, and by our law a deed will be construed as a feoffment, when such a construction is necessary to give effect to the intention of the parties. Knox & al. v. Jenks, 7 Mass. 494, and cases cited under the last point.

It seems to me, therefore, that this deed would be construed as a feoffment, to the validity of which no consideration is necessary. But there is one further difficulty still remaining. For a feoffment, made without consideration, is said to be, as it were, of no effect, for it shall be construed to enure only to the use of the grantor himself. Co. Lit. 23 a.; Noy's Ten. 6; Dyer, 186, b. Before stat. 27 Hen. VIII. if a person had conveyed his lands to another without any consideration or declaration of uses, the grantor still continued entitled to the use of the land, and this doctrine was not altered by that statute, though it gave to it this further efficacy, that the legal estate, which, before the statute, continued in the feoffee, was, after the statute, united with the use, so that if one after the statute made a feoffment in fee, without consideration and without any declaration of uses, the use immediately resulted back to

himself, and the statute executing the legal estate according to the use, he became seised precisely as before.

In this case, however, although there is no consideration, there is a declaration of uses; for, on looking into the habendum in the deed, we find that the premises were conveyed to B. G. P. To have and to hold the aforegranted premises to the said B. G. P., his heirs and assigns, to his and their use and behoof forever.' Now I take it to be very clear, that no use can result to the grantor when the use of the entire estate is expressly limited to the grantee. Tippen v. Cozen, 4 Mod. 380; 1 Ld. Ray. 33; Saund. on Uses, 203.

I am therefore of opinion that no use would result in this case to S. W., but that, on the contrary, the use being expressly limited to B. G. P., would belong to and vest in him.

Finally, I am of opinion that the title acquired by B. G. P. under and by virtue of S. W.'s deed, was a good title, and perfectly valid as against the heirs of S. W.

C.

ART. V.-THE GERMAN HISTORICAL SCHOOL OF

JURISPRUDENCE.

Introduction général à l'Histoire du Droit; par E. LERMINIER, Professeur de l'Histoire des Legislations comparées au College de France. Seconde Edition. Un vol. in 8°. Paris.

A General Introduction to the History of Law. By E. LERMINIER, Professor of the History of Legislations compared, in the College of France.

THE first edition of M. Lerminier's work was published in 1829; and the publication of a second in 1835, considering its purely scientific character and the little interest felt in such

productions in France, as we infer from several remarks of the author, is highly creditable both to him and his work. Our principal purpose, in this notice, is to insert in our Journal a translation of the seventeenth chapter, on the subject of the historical school of jurisprudence in Germany. As a work of general interest, however, we shall briefly state the object and the plan of the author, and for this purpose avail ourselves of the Themis (vol. 10, p. 318.) His first three chapters are devoted to an inquiry into what constitutes the idea of law (droit,) and in the remainder of the work the author follows out, from age to age,-from the renovation of science in the twelfth century to the present time, the progress of several branches of human knowledge, which are commonly considered as distinct, but which he unites under the name of law, (droit). He inquires into the extent and manner in which Irnerius, Alciat, Cujas, Doneau, Dumoulin, L'Hospital, Bodin, Bacon, Grotius, Leibnitz, Thomasius, Domat, D'Aguesseau, Pothier, Vico, Montesquieu, Filangieri, Beccaria, Kant, Hugo, Haubold, Savigny, Niebuhr, Gaus, Hegel, and Bentham, have successively contributed to this progress. In this investigation, the author regards, as belonging to one and the same science, first, the glosses of the early interpreters of the Justinian compilation, the philological discussions of the sixteenth century, the Cujacean restitutions of the ancient jurisconsults, mutilated by Tribonian,-the attempts at classsification, generalization, and hermeneutics, commenced by Doneau, and continued almost to the present day, by a great number of German, and by some French jurisconsults,-the collections of decisions or summaries of the jurisprudence of the tribunals, the sole or almost the sole tribute offered to science by the French jurisconsults and practicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and finally, the historical, and, at the same time, philological researches of the Dutch school of the last century, which have been pursued by Hugo and Savigny and their numerous school;-second, the compilations of the ancient French customs, the legislative reforms pro

posed or effected by L'Hospital, Lamoignon, D'Aguesseau, and by the redactors of the new codes, as well as the political or legislative theories of Bodin, of Montesquieu, of Filangieri, of Beccaria, and of Bentham;-lastly, the metaphysical or psychological speculations of Thomasius, of Leibnitz, of Kant, and of Hegel. M. Lerminier's work, therefore, is not a history of legislative institutions, either of nations in general, or of any particular nation; but it is what the Germans call a literary history, that is to say, a history of the methods which have been successively practised, in order to elevate a certain object of study to the rank of a science,-of the different systems which have successively prevailed in relation to it,—and, at the same time, of the men and of the circumstances, which have advanced or retarded its progress. The work is concluded by an Appendix, containing an analysis of the work of M. Gaus, On the law of succession and its developments in the history of the world, and an analysis of Savigny's History of the Roman law in the middle ages; these two works, according to M. Lerminier, representing the opposite character and results of the labors of the two rival schools in Germany. It entered into the plan of our studies', says M. Lerminier, in the Advertisement to his Appendix, to make known by long analyses the two histories of law, which the two rival schools in Germany represent, and which constitute, as it were, the last word and the highest expression of this part of the science; devoted, the one to an exclusive culture of philosophic dogmatism, and the other to an investigation, equally exclusive, of historical reality.'

Such, in brief, is the object and the plan of M. Lerminier. We now proceed, as we have already stated our principal purpose in this article to be, to lay before our readers an account of the German Historical School of Jurisprudence, for which purpose we shall insert the 17th chapter of the work before us.