and about the beginning of the present | may be formed. But in England it is said century appeared Mr. Betham's account of the families of the then existing baronets, in five volumes, 4to.

As King James I. established the order of English baronets for the encouragement of the planting and settling the province of Ulster, so he designed to establish an order of baronets in Scotland for the encouragement of the planting and settling of Nova Scotia. He died however before any proceedings had been taken. His successor adopted the scheme, and in 1625 granted certain tracts of land in Nova Scotia to various persons, and with them the rank, style, and title of baronets of that province, with precedency analogous to the precedency given to the baronets of England. Some addi tional privileges were given them; as that the eldest son of a baronet of Nova Scotia, during the lifetime of his father, might claim the honour of knighthood; and that the baronet might wear a ribbon and medal, with badge and insignia of the order. The addition to the coatarmour of the baronet was the arms of the province of Nova Scotia.

It was proposed that the number should be limited to 150. The first was Sir Robert Gordon of Gordonstown. There were frequent creations of this dignity till the union with Scotland in 1707, when the creations ceased.

Baronets of Ireland were instituted by King James I. in 1620, for the same purpose with the baronets of England. The money was paid into the Irish Exchequer. The first person who received the dignity was either Sir Dominick Sarsfield, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland, or Sir Francis Blundell, the Secretary of State.

BARRISTER. The etymology of this word has been variously given by different authors, and it would be unprofitable to enumerate the fanciful derivations which have been assigned to it. In French the word barreau, which signifies a bar of wood or iron, is also used to signify "a place in the audience where the advocates plead, and which is closed to prevent the press of people." (Richelet, Diction.) From the word bar then it is obvious that such a term as barrister

that the term barrister arose from the arrangement of the halls of the different Inns of Court, which, for several centuries, have composed in England a kind of university for the education of advocates. [INNS OF COURT.] The benchers and readers, being the superiors of each house, occupied on public occasions of assembly the upper end of the hall, which was raised on a dais, and separated from the rest of the building by a bar. The next in degree were the utter barristers, who, after they had attained a certain standing, were called from the body of the hall to the bar (1. e. to the first place outside the bar), for the purpose of taking a principal part in the mootings or exercises of the house; and hence they probably derived the name of utter or outer barristers. The other members of the Inn, consisting of students of the law under the degree of utter barristers, took their places nearer to the centre of the hall and farther from the bar, and from this manner of distribution appear to have been called inner barristers. The dis tinction between utter and inner barristers

is at the present day wholly abolished, the former being called barristers generally, and the latter falling under the denomination of students.

The degree of utter barrister, though it gave rank and precedence in the Inn of Court, and placed the individual in a class from which advocates were always taken, did not originally communicate any authority to plead in courts of justice. In the old reports of the proceedings of courts, the term is wholly unknown; serjeants and apprentices at law, who are supposed by Dugdale to be the same persons,* being the only pleaders or advocates mentioned in the earlier year-books.

serjeants are comprehended under the term * It might be shown, by many instances, that apprentices. Thus in Plowden's Reports,' vol. i. p. 213, the great case of the Duchy of Lancaster is said to have been argued, among others, by "Carrel, apprentice, and Plowden, apprentice." This argument took place in the fourth year of the reign of Elizabethi; and it appears from the Chronica Juridicialia, p. 165, that both Carrel serjeants. The Latin designation of serjeant in legal documents is serviens ad legem.

and Plowden had been, before that time, created

In the time of Stow, however, who wrote | defendant. The points of law arising in this fictitious case were then argued two utter barristers, after which th reader and the benchers closed the pr ceedings by declaring their opinions sep rately. These exercises appear to hav lost much of their utility in the time. Lord Coke, who, in the First Institut p. 280 a, praises the ancient readings, but says that the modern performances wer of no authority. Roger North says that Lord Keeper Guilford was one of the last persons who read in the Temple cording to the ancient spirit of the inte tution. It is, however, beyond all dou that, as far back as we have any dist memorials, all advocates must have passes through the mode of preparation adopte in the Inns of Court.

in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, it is clear that utter barristers were entitled to act as advocates, as he expressly says that persons called to that degree are "so enabled to be common councellors, and to practice the law both in their chambers and at the barres." The exact course of legal education pursued at the Inns of Court before the Commonwealth is extremely uncertain, but it appears to have consisted almost entirely of the exercises called readings and mootings, which have been described by several old writers. The readings in the superior or larger Mouses were thus conducted: The benchers annually chose from their own body two readers, whose duty it was to read openly to the society in their public hall, at least twice in the year. On these The serjeants, who, before the alk occasions, which were observed with ance of utter barristers to plead in coc. great solemnity, the reader selected some appear to have been the only advoca statute which he made the subject of were called from the Inns of Court by formal examination and discussion. He king's writ, which was only issued at t first recited the doubts and questions discretion of the crown, and generally a which had arisen, or which might by a matter of favour; and indeed this extr possibility arise, upon the several clauses tinues to be the case at the present day of the statute, and then briefly declared In process of time it became convenie his own judgment upon them. The ques- and necessary to enable utter barristers t tions thus stated were then debated by practise; but some time after they bez the utter barristers present with the to act as advocates in the superior courts reader, after which the judges and ser- the terms upon which they were called to jeants, several of whom were usually pre- the bar, and allowed to plead, were pr»sent, pronounced their opinions separately scribed by the Privy Council. Thus a3 upon the points which had been raised. order of council, regulating the proces de Readings of this kind were often pub-ings of all the Inns of Court in this lished, and it is to this practice of the Inns of Court that we are indebted for some of the most profound juridical arguments in our language, such as Callis's reading on the Statute of Sewers, and Lord Bacon's on the Statute of Uses.

same.

The process of mooting in the Inns of Court differed considerably from reading, though the general object of both was the On these occasions, the reader of the Inn for the time being, with two or more benchers, presided in the open hall. On each side of the bench table were two inner barristers, who declared in law French some kind of action, previously devised by them, and which always contained some nice and doubtful points of law, the one stating the case for the plaintiff, and the other the case for the

spect. dated Easter Term, 1574, a signed by Sir Nicholas Bacon as 1. keeper, and several lords of council, rects that "none be called to the utter but by the ordinary council of the House (i.e. the Inn), in their general ordinary councils in term time; also, that te shall be utter barristers without hav performed a certain number of mooti also, that none shall be admitted to på in any of the courts at Westminster, or sign pleadings, unless he be a rea bencher, or five years' utter barrister, a continuing that time in exercises of lear ing; also, that none shall plead befre justices of assize unless allowed in the courts of Westminster, or allowed by the justices of assize." (See Dugdales Origines Judiciales.) This appears to be

giance and supremacy with two other oaths being taken. This admission in the Arches Court qualifies the person for practising in any of the other ecclesiastical courts of Doctors' Commons. The present number of advocates is 24.

being first read, and the oaths of alle- | the comforts and luxuries of civilized! by exchanging skins for manufac articles. The Indians meet the trac each man divides his skins into in which have a relative value to e=" other, as that two otter skins are equ... one beaver. For one lot he wants a or a looking-glass, or a blanket, or axe. The trader has the articles to r the Indian in exchange. Twenty bear skins are given for a gun; the gune a pound in Birmingham; the be skins are worth more than twenty. the amount in London. If the ine were brought into more general ec with the exchangers of civilised life, would regulate their exchanges y money-standard, and would obtai fairer value for their skins

Advocates admitted in the Arches Court of Canterbury are admitted to be advocates of the High Court of Admiralty of England upon their alleging such their admission in the Arches Court. The present number of advocates is 24.

The advocates of the provincial courts at York must be barristers-at-law; and they are admitted as advocates of the Consistory Court there, with power to practise in all other the archbishop of York's courts, by virtue of his grace's fiat directed to his chancellor: the stamp-duty on their admission is 50l. But it is not required that they should be doctors of civil law, nor does the constitution of Archbishop Pickham, 9 Edw. I., 1221, apply to them. The number of advocates, as far back as any record shows, has been limited to four; but the present number is only two. The admitted advocates of the courts have exclusive right to practise therein, though in cases of weight and difficulty, counsel on the northern circuit are occasionally taken in to their assistance.

BARRISTER, in Scotland. CATES, FACULTY OF.]

[ADVO

The term barter seems to have h derived from the languages of sonth Europe: baratar, Spanish; baratt Italian,-which signify to cheat as was to barter: hence, also, our word is" ratry. The want of a standard of va... in all transactions of barter, gives ocor sion to that species of overreaching wh prevails from an ignorance of the n principles of trade, by which all exch gers are benefited through an excis The examples of barter, however, with any reference to some standard of va become more and more uncommo the commercial intercourse of matk advances. A skin of corn, or a s vessel of corn, among some of the luc tribes, is established as a standard value; councils are held to determine 25 rate of exchange; and a beaver-k thus held to be worth so many mores* ** of corn than a blanket. This is approach to a standard of value, w almost takes the transaction out of condition of being a barter. in L trade carried on between Russia an China, the exchanges of merchandise art directly effected, but the compart

BARTER. When one commodity is exchanged directly for another, without the employ nent of any instrument of exchange which shall determine the value of the merchandise, the transaction is called Barter. All trade resolves itself into an exchange of commodities; but the commercial exchangers of one commodity for another effect their exchanges by a money-payment, determined by a market-value. This is a sale. Swift, in his attack upon Wood's halfpence, which he considered as destructive of the money-value of the merchandise is determ standard of value, says, "I see nothing by a money-standard. This is cl left us but to barter our goods, like the not barter. The Indian corn-m 2 wild Indians, with each other." The of value is something like the airl general evils of such a state are obvious; measure which formerly existed in tha and they create dishonest attempts in one country, when certain values be exchanger to cheat the other. The affixed to cattle and slaves, they beca North American Indians obtain a few of an instrument of exchange, under the

name of living money. Amongst the

northern nations skins used to be a standard of value: the word rahu, which signifies money in the Esthonian language, has not lost its primitive siguification of skins amongst the Laplanders. When nations come to use any standard of value, whether skins as in northern Europe, or dhourra (pounded millet, Sorghum vulgare), as in Nubia, or shells, as in parts of India, their transactions gradually lose the character of barter. If wages are paid in articles of consumption, as in some districts of England, the transaction is called truck: troc is the French for barter. [TRUCK SYSTEM.]

Among old English writers it is applied to a child not born in lawful wedlock; and as such he is technically distinguished from a mulier (plius mulieratus), who is the legitimate offspring of a mulier or married woman.

The civilians and canonists distinguish illegitimate children into four or five classes not recognised in the English law; it may, however, be worth while to remaik, that the familiar term natural, applied by us to all children born out of wedlock, is in that classification confined to those only who are the offspring of unmarried parents, living in concubinage, and who labour under no legal impediment to intermarriage. Children of the last-mentioned class are, by the civil and canon law, capable of legitimation by the subsequent union of the parents, or by other acts which it is needless here to particularize. (Heineccius, Syntag, vol. i. p. 159; Ridley's View, &c., p. 350, ed. 1675; Godolphin's Repertorium Canonicum, chap. 35.)

The English very early adopted strict notions on the subject of legitimacy; and when the prelates of the 13th century were desirous of establishing in this country the rule of the canon law, by which bastard children are legitimated upon the subsequent intermarriage of their parents, the barons assembled at Merton (A.D. 1235) replied by the celebrated declaration, "that they would not consent to change the laws of England hitherto used and approved."

The exchanges of a civilized people amongst themselves, or with other countries, are principally carried on by bills of exchange; the actual moneypayment in a country by no means represents the amount of its commercial transactions. If any sudden convulsion arise which interrupts the confidence upon which credit is founded, bills of exchange cease to be negotiable, and exchangers demand money payments. The coin of a commercial country being insufficient to represent its transactions, barter would be the natural consequence if such a disastrous state of things were to continue. Thus, when Mr. Huskisson declared in 1825 that the panic of that year placed this country "within forty-eight hours of barter," he meant that the credit of the state would have been so reduced, that its notes would not have been received, or its coin, except for its intrinsic value as an It has been observed that this sturdy article of exchange; and that the bills of repugnance to innovation was the more individuals would have been in the same disinterested, inasmuch as the lax mocase. Barter, in this case, would be a back-rality of those days must probably have ward movement towards uncivilization. BASTARD. The conjectures of etymologists on the origin of this word are various and unsatisfactory. Its root has been sought in several languages:-the Greek, Saxon, German, Welsh, Icelandic, and Persian. For the grounds on which the pretensions of all these languages are respectively supported, we refer the curious to the glossaries of Ducange and Spelman, the more recent one of Boucher, and to the notes on the title Bastard in Dodd and Gwillim's edition of Bacon's Abridgment, vol. i., p. 746.

made the proposition not altogether unpalatable to many to whom it was addressed. The opposition, therefore, seems to have been prompted by a jealousy of ecclesiastical influence, which was at that time ever watchful to extend the authority of the church by engrafting on our jurisprudence the principles of the canon law.

On another point our ancestors were less reasonable for it was very early received for law, not only that the fact of birth after marriage was essential to legitimacy, but that it was conclusive of it.