ASSENT, ROYAL. 



ASSETS. 



Talent*. <* ainai le veut;" if any other public Mil. " I.e r-i tor 1, 

 nine) le reut;" if a iwivate bill. " Soil fait comme il ert desire 1 ." 

 What i. called an act of gnu*, that in, an act by which the royal 

 favour ir bounty U extended to any party, must be signed by the 

 sovereign before it i* laid before parliatnent, where it U only reail once 

 in each house, and where, although it mar be rejected, U cannot U- 

 amended. To such an act there is no further expression of the royal 

 aMent, but, having read ita title, the clerk of the parliament says, 

 U* PrrlaU, Seigneur*, et Commoni, en le preeent parliament 

 assemble*, au nom de touU TO* autres subject*, remercient trcn 

 humblenirnt votre majoste", et prient a l>icn V..UK doimcr en sanUS 

 bone vie et league.* 



When the royal accent is reltued to a bill, the form of announce- 

 ment U " Le roi (or U reine) s'aviaera." It U probable that in former 

 time* theae words were intended to mean what they express, namely, 

 that the sovereign would take the nutter into consideration, and 

 merely postponed hi* d<vi.-i..n for the preeent There has been no 

 instance of the rejection by the crown of any bill, certainly not of any 

 public bill, which ILI>! |kisA-d tlmnigh |wrliament. f.ir many years. It 

 i* commonly stated, even in book* of good authority, that the last 

 instance wa* the rejection of the bill for triennial parliaments by 

 William III. in 1693. Tindal. in hi* continuation of liapin. snys. Tin- 

 king let the bill lie on the table for some time, no that men's eyes and 

 expectation* were much fixed on the issue of it ; but in conclusion he 

 refused to pas* it, so the session i-nd.-<l in an ill humour. The rejecting 

 a bill, though an unquestionable right of the crown, has been so 

 s..|.|..iii practised, that the two houses are apt to think it a hardship 

 when there is a bill denied." But another instance occurred towards 

 the close of the same year, which was more remarkable, in consequence 

 of iU being followed by certain proceedings in parliament, which was 

 Kitting at the time. This was the rejection of the bill commonly called 

 the I'lace Bill, the object of which was to exclude all holders of offices 

 of trust and profit under the crown from the House of Commons. It 

 was presented to the king along with the land tax bill ; and the day 

 after he had assented to the one and rejected the other, the House of 

 Commons, having resolved itself into a grand committee on the state 

 of the nation, passed the following resolution: "That whoever 

 advised the king not to give the royal assent to the act which was to 

 redress a grievance, and take off a scandal upon the proceedings of the 

 Commons in parliament, is an enemy to their majesties and the king- 

 dom ; and that a representation be mode to the king, to lay before him 

 how few instances hare been in former reigns of denying the royal 

 assent to bills for redress of grievances ; and the grief of the Commons 

 for his not having given the royal assent to several public bills, and in 

 particular to this bill, which tends so much to the clearing the reputa- 

 tion of this house, after their having so freely voted to supply the 

 public occasions." An address conformable to the resolution was 

 accordingly presented, to which the king returned a polite answer, 

 confining himself to the confidence that ought to be preserved between 

 himself and the parliament, but taking no notice of what was said 

 about the rejection of the bill. When the Commons returned from 

 the royal presence, it was moved in the house " That application be 

 made to his majesty for a further answer ; " but the motion was 

 negatived by a majority of 229 to 28. 



Mr. Hatsell, in the second volume of his 'Precedents' (ed. 1818), 

 quotes other instances of subsequent date to this ; the latest being 

 the rejection of a Scotch militia bill in 1/07. In former times the 

 refusal of the royal assent was a common occurrence. Queen Eliza- 

 beth once at the end of a session, out of ninety-one bills which were 

 presented to her, rejected forty-eight. 



It is the royal assent which makes a bill an act of parliament, and 

 gives it the force of a law. As by a legal fiction the laws passed 

 throughout a whole session of parliament are considered as forming 

 properly only one statute (of which what are popularly called the 

 separate acts are only so many chapters), it used to be a matter of 

 doubt whether the royal assent, at whatever period of the session it 

 might be given, did not make the act operative from the beginning of 

 the session, when no day was particularly mentioned in the body of it 

 as that on which it should come into effect. In order to settle this 

 ]'int. it was enacted by S3 Oeo. III. c. 13, that the clerk of parlia- 

 ment should for the future endorse on every bill the day on which it 

 received the royal assent, and that from that day, if there was not in 

 it any specification to the contrary, its operation should commence. 



It appears that the several forms of words now in use ore not, as has 

 been sometimes stated, exactly the same that have been employed in 

 this ceremony from the first institution of parliaments. For instance, 

 it is recorded that Henry VII. gave his assent to the bill of attainder 

 named in the first year of his reign (1485) against the partisans of 

 lUchard HI. in the more emphatic terms, " Le roy le voct, en toutz 

 imintz." On some occasions, of earlier date, the assent is stated to 

 have lieen givi-n in Kngliiih. Thus, to a bill of attainder passed against 

 Sir William Oldhall in 1463(31 Henry VI.), the clerk is recorded in the 

 liolli of I'. , r l:. inn-lit to harp announced his majesty's assent as follows : 

 i.-.n; voile that it lie tuuldc ami d....n in maner and forme as it is 

 desired." And in 1459, in the case of an act of attainder against the 

 I ink. ,,f York, the Earl* of Salisbury, Warwick, and others, the same 

 king gave hi* Mwnt in the following form : " The king agrceth t., thi-, 

 act, so that by virtue thereof ho be not put from his prerogative to 



hew such mercy and grace a* shall please his highness, according 

 to his regalitie and dignltie, to any |>. r~.ii or |>rnions. whose names 

 be expressed in this act, or to any other that might be hurt l-\ th- 



- t 



In the time of the Commonwealth, an RngHA form was subct 

 for those in Norman-French, which had been previously and ;.- 

 in use. On the 1st October, 1656, the House of Commons resolved 

 " that when the Lord Protector shall pass a bill, the form of u.,i.l- to 

 be used shall be these, ' The Lord Protector doth consent 1 " I 

 also, a bill passed the House of Lords, and was read a second time in 

 the House of Commons, for abolishing the use of the l-'n -n. -h < 

 all proceedings in parliament and courts of justice, in winch 

 directed, "that instead of ' Le roy le vcult,' these words be used, ' The 

 king answers lie it so ;' instea i.iit come il eat desire' ,' these 



words be substituted, ' Be it as is prayed ; ' where these word*, ' Le 

 roi remercie sea bons sujetc. accepte Icur benevolence, et ainsi le veult.' 

 have been used, it shall hereafter be, ' The king thanks bis go. 

 jects, accepts their benevolence, and answers Be it so ;' instead - 

 roi s'arisera,' theae word*, ' The king will consider of it,' be used." 

 " Why this bill was rejected by the Commons," says Hatsell. " or why 

 its provisions with respect to proceedings in parliament .>.- ii.it 

 adopted in an act which afterwards passed in the year 1731, 'Ti 

 proceedings in courts of justice should be in English,' I never heard 

 any reason assigned." For further information on this subject, see 

 Hatsell's ' Precedent*.' vol. ii. pp. 338351, ed. 1818. 



ilSSMKXT OF DAMAGES takes place on a writ of inquiry 

 before the sheriff or his deputy, and a jury of the county w 1, 

 action is laid, in cases where the defendant suffers judgment by default. 

 In such cases, the defendant having adinitt<-d hi.- lial.ility for the debt 

 or damage sued for, the only question is as to the amount ; and the 

 jury are summoned merely to assess the damages, and not 

 trials where issue is joined to try the issue at well at to assess the 

 damages (tarn ad triandum quam ntl ini/uirfnilum). The verdict may 

 be set aside on motion to the court where the action is brought, in case 

 the jury are improperly returned, or the sheriff has mi-d 

 in jxiint of law, or the damages are excessive. [WitiT or !MJI nu ; 

 DAMAGES.] 



ASSESSMENT OF TAXES. [TAX, TAXATION.) 



j KTS (from the Norman French attctz, sufficient) is the real and 

 personal property of a party deceased, which, either in the hand* of 

 his heir or devisee, or of his executor or administi i^eable 



with the payment of his debts and legacies. Assets are either jiersonal 

 or real. The former, embracing goods, chattels, debts, &c., devolve on 

 the executor or administrator ; and the latter (including all real 

 descend to his heir-at-law, or are devised to his dc\ . . A 

 also distinguishable into legal, or such as render the executor or heir 

 liable to a suit at common law on the part of a credit 

 or such as can only be rendered available by a suit in a court of i 

 and are subject to distribution and marshalling among credit" 

 legatees, according to the peculiar equitable rules of that court 



1. As to penonal legal atteit. These include all goods, cli 

 and moveables, which belonged to the deceased in of lion or po.- 

 at the time of his death, and which actually come to the executor's or 

 administrator's hands ; and also all things which come to the executors 

 or administrators at any time I'M lieu of them. Thus, a lease in 

 executors, in pursuance of a covenant to grant a lease to the t . 

 in his life ; goods delivered to executors under a contract to deliver 

 them to a testator; damages recovered by an executor for breach of a 

 contract mode with the testator, are pertunal legal attett. So the 

 young of sheep or cattle of the testator born after bin death ; the 

 profits made by his executor in carrying on his trade ; the value of his 

 mortgaged chattels, redeemed by the executor after his death, are 

 assets of this description. 



The locality of the property, in general, does not affect the question 

 whether it is assets or not ; -it being a maxim that " assets in any part 

 of the world are assets in every port of the world." Therefore, stock 

 in foreign funds, or a leasehold for years in Ireland, must, in the case 

 of a deficiency of assets in this country, be sold by the execni 

 satisfy the creditors. By the 5th Geo. II. c. 7, s. 4, houses, lands, 

 negroes, 4c., in the plantations of the West Indies, were rendered 

 personal assets, devolving on the executor for satisfaction of debts. 

 And the 9th (!eo. IV. c. 33, produced the same operation on all real 

 estates of British subjects (not being Mohammedans or Gentoos), 

 situate in India within the civil jurisdiction of the British supreme 

 courts at Fort William (Calcutta), Foi ' ^-o (Madra- 



Bouibay. 



As the law protects an executor or administrator from any p. 

 charge so long as he acts rightfully, the assets which render him 

 chargeable to a creditor are, of course, only such as cvmt i<> ///.- //, //.-, 

 and not necessarily all those of which the deceased may die possessed. 

 It was said by Wcntworth, a le authority on tl 



that if the testator at his death has sheep in Cumberland, bullock* in 



Wales, fat oxen in Bucks. mon.\ .1..: .1...M -t nil. .md plat.- in l.ond 



and the executor dwells at Cov.-nii v. namely, far from all them- | 

 the executor has Kiich an actual ixisscssion immediately on the tes- 

 tator's death, that he may maintain trespass against anyone taking 

 them away, and therefore it is doubtful whether these goods nn 

 be considered to have actually come to bis hands so as to be assets 



