ACCOUNTANT. 



ACCUMULATION OF POWER. 



46 



due. If the plaintiff sues in a representative character, as in that 

 of executor or assignee, he must show that the admission was made to 

 him in that character. The statement of an account is not conclusive 

 but only presumptive evidence against the party who admits the 

 balance to be against him, and does not preclude him from showing, 

 by evidence, the existence of error in the account ; unless in the case of 

 an account actually settled by payment, which cannot be opened except 

 upon proof of fraud. 



An account stated is also a good plea in bar to a bill in equity for an 

 account. As a party may in equity open up a settled account on the 

 ground of error, in order to support such a plea, the statement of 

 account mart be shown to have been final, and in writing. It is not 

 essential that it should have been signed, and it will be sufficient if the 

 account has been acquiesced in for a length of time, affording legal 

 presumption of a settlement. A general release may thus be pleaded 

 as a stated account, and a plea of this kind must aver that the account 

 i.s just and fair, whether error or fraud is charged by the bill of the 

 plaintiff or not. 



In answer to a plea of a stated account the plaintiff in equity may 

 show either the existence of fraud, which will be sufficient ground for 

 opening the whole account, or that the account contains specific errors, 

 which will enable him to surcharge, that is, to show omissions for which 

 there ought to be credit, and falsify, that is, to show that there are 

 wrong charges which ought to be deducted. 



ACCOUNTANT, a person who professes skill in mercantile accounts. 

 In a commercial community occasions are constantly arising for the 

 employment of accountants. They are generally appointed to examine 

 the books of traders who have been compelled by embarrassment in 

 their affairs to summon a meeting of their creditors ; or they may be 

 railed in by a trader to investigate his accounts, and to ascertain the 

 state of his affairs. The collection of debts or rente, and the winding- 

 lip of the affairs of persons deceased, or who have given up business, 

 are matters often put into their hands. An accountant has no legal 

 status, like a notary or an auctioneer or appraiser, who perform certain 

 which only they are allowed to discharge; but by the statute 

 establishing District Courts of Bankruptcy, 5 ft 8 Viet., c. 122, official 

 assignees must be selected from persons in trade, or who are or have 

 been " merchants, brokers, or accottntantt." 



ACCOUNTANT IN BANKRUPTCY, an officer appointed by the 

 Lord Chancellor (5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 29), who has the control, care, and 

 management of the funds belonging to bankrupt estates. He must 

 make an annual return to Parliament (13 * 14 Viet. c. 106, BS. 31, 36, 

 47, 181). 



ACCOUNTANT-GENERAL, an officer of the Court of Chancery, 

 first appointed under an Act (12 Oeo. I. c. 32) " for securing the moneys 

 :ind effects of the suitors." The Act recites that ill consequence and 

 great prejudice already had, and might again, ensue to the suitors by 

 having their moneys left in the sole power of the Masters of the Court. 

 The bonds, tallies, orders, and effects of suitors were, it appears, until 

 the passing of this Act, locked up in several chests in the Bank of 

 England, under the direction of the Masters and two of the Six Clerks. 

 The Act confirms a previous order of the Court of Chancery for 

 adopting a different system, and sect. 3 enacts that, " to the end the 

 account between the suitors of the High Court of Chancery and the 

 Bank of England may be the more regularly and plainly kept, and the 

 state of such account may be at all times seen and known," there shall 

 be " one person appointed by the High Court of Chancery to act, per- 

 form, and do all such matters and things relating to the delivering of 

 the suitors' money and effects into the Bank, and taking them out of 

 the Bank, &c., which was formerly done by the Masters and Usher of 

 the Court." The Accountant-Oeneral is "not to meddle with the 

 suitors' money, but only to keep an account with the Bank." He 

 attends several times a- week at the Bank and other places for the pur- 

 pose of making sales, transfers, and acceptances of stock, according to 

 the orders of the Court. The Bank receives moneys under a power of 

 attorney from the Accountant-Oeneral. (As to the practice in the trans- 

 fer of stock by and to the Accountant-Oeneral, see Darnell's ' Practice 

 in Chancery,' 3rd edit. vol. ii. p. 1306, et seq.) His duties are in some 

 respects regulated by the orders issued by the Court of Chancery. The 

 salary is 3000/. a-year (under 15 & 16 Viet. c. 87, s. 22). 



Before the passing of the Act 5 Viet. c. 6, which suppressed the 

 equity jurisdiction of the Court of Exchequer, there was an Accountant- 

 Oeneral of that court. The duties of the Accountant-General and 

 Masters of the Exchequer are now performed by the Queen's Remem- 

 brancer. 



There is an Accountant-Oeneral of the Irish Court of Chancery. 

 MT'LATION. [CAPITAL.] 



ACCUMULATION. Before the passing of the statute 40 Qeo. III. 

 c. 98, a person might suspend the enjoyment of real or personal estate, 

 and direct that the whole profits, rents, and produce thereof should be 

 mlated for a period not exceeding in extent that of any life or 

 number of lives in being, and 21 years afterwards. The mischievous 

 extent to which an individual at the close of the last century availed 

 himself of this power of directing an accumulation, gave rise to the 

 abore statute, the object of which is to prevent the recurrence of a 

 disposition of property so impolitic and unnatural. 



The person in question was named Peter Thellusson. He was the 

 son of Isaac de Thellusoon, ambassador from Geneva to the court of 



Louis XV. He fixed his residence in London about the middle of the 

 18th century, and accumulated an immense fortune as a merchant. He 

 died on the 21st of July, 1797. His name is now only remembered in 

 connection with his extraordinary will, which led to the restraints 

 upon testamentary dispositions above mentioned. 



The property which was the subject of his will consisted of a landed 

 estate of about 4000Z. a-year, and of personal property to the amount of 

 about 600,000. This property he devised and bequeathed to trustees 

 upon trust for accumulation and investment in the purchase of lands 

 during the lives of his sons, grandsons, and the issue of sons and grand- 

 sons living, or in ventre sa mere, at the time of his death, and the lives 

 of the survivors and survivor of them ; and after that period, to be 

 conveyed to the lineal descendants of his sons in tail male. 



It had been long understood to be the rule of law that the absolute 

 ownership of property might be suspended, and consequently the pro- 

 perty rendered inalienable during lives in being at the time of the 

 creation of the trust ; that is, where the trust is created by will, at the 

 time of the death of the testator. This period was afterwards extended 

 so as to allow for the cases of infancy, and of a child in rentre sa mere ; 

 bnt it was for some time questioned whether a term of 21 years 

 might in all cases be added to the period of suspension, though it has 

 since been determined that it may. [SETTLEMENT.] Restraint on the 

 accumulation of income was unknown to the common law, except in so 

 far as the rule against perpetuities necessarily prevented accumulation 

 from being carried beyond its limits ; and Mr. Thellusson's will, by con- 

 fining the restriction to existing lives, escaped the question which then 

 existed as to the allowance of an absolute term of 21 years in 

 addition to a life or lives in being at the time of the creation of 

 the trust. 



This will, which, in the events that happened, had the effect of post- 

 poning the usxifructuary enjoyment of the bulk of the estate till the 

 expiration of nine lives in being at the time of the testator's death, was. 

 after many hard struggles, occasioned rather by the immense value of 

 the property implicated (which it was computed would have amounted, 

 with the expected accumulations, to upwards of 18,000, OOOM, than by 

 any new difficulty in the principle, finally established by the decision 

 of the House of Lords on the 25th of June 1805. (Thellusson r. 

 Woodford, 11 Ves. 112.) 



The case of Thellusson v. Woodford gave rise to the Act of the 

 40 Oeo. III. c. 98, " for restraining all trusts and directions in deeds or 

 wills whereby the profits or produce of real or personal estates shall be- 

 accumulated and the beneficial enjoyment thereof postponed beyond 

 the term therein limited." By the provisions of tlus Act, no person 

 can settle or dispose of property by deed, will, or otherwise, so as to 

 accumulate the income thereof, either wholly or partially, "for any 

 longer term than the life or lives of any such grantor or grantors, 

 settlor or settlors, or the term of twenty-one years from the death of any 

 such grantor, settlor, devisor, or testator, or during the minority or 

 respective minorities of any person or persons who shall be living or in 

 rentre >a mere, .it the time of the death of such grantor, devisor, or 

 testator, or during the minority or respective minorities only of any per- 

 son or persons who, under the uses or trusts of the deed, surrender, will, 

 or other assurances directing such accumulations, would for the time 

 being, if of full age, be entitled to the rents, issues, and profits, or the 

 interest, dividends, and annual produce so directed to be accumulated. 

 And in every case where accumulation shall be directed otherwise than 

 as aforesaid, such direction shall be null and void, and the rents, issues, 

 profits, and produce of such property so directed to be accumulated 

 shall, so long as the same shall be directed to be accumulated contrary 

 to the provisions of this Act, go to and be received by such person or 

 persons as would have been entitled thereto, if such accumulation had 

 not been directed." 



It is now settled upon this statute, that a trust for accumu- 

 lation reaching beyond the allowed period is good for the period 

 allowed by law, and void only for the excess. (12 Ves. 295 ; 4 

 Russ. 403.) 



ACCUMULATION OF POWER is a term applied to that quantity 

 of motion which exists in some machines at the end of intervals of 

 tune, during which the velocity of the moving body has been con- 

 stantly accelerated. 



The simplest case in which there is such an accumulation of power 

 is that of a heavy body, like the rammer of a pile-driving machine, 

 which descends by the action of gravity during a certain time and 

 impinges upon some object At the moment of impact, supposing 

 that the object struck does not move, the velocities of all the particles 

 which had gone on continually increasing during the descent, are 

 destroyed, and thus a shock is produced immensely greater than that 

 which would result from the mere pressure of the body. The battering- 

 ram of the ancients when, being suspended from some fixed point it 

 was allowed to. swing by the action of gravity till one of its extremities 

 stntck the face of a wall, produced its effect in like manner by the 

 power accumulated in it during its motion. In all such cases, the 

 effect, if measured by the magnitude of an impression or indentation 

 produced in the object struck, is, by Mechanics, directly proportional 

 to the mass in motion, and to the square of the velocity at the instant 

 of impact. 



The accumulation produced by the continuous action of gravity, 

 when a body has not far to fall, is commonly increased by that of a 



