No. 4.] KURAL LAW. 181 



ing farmers, except a corporation, is entitled to the benefits 

 of the act as a voluntary bankrupt ; but wage earners and 

 farmers are expressly excepted from the operation of the 

 involuntarj'^ feature of the law ; so that under the present 

 statute no farmer can be put into bankruptcy by his credi- 

 tors, even though he has committed acts which in the case 

 of persons engaged in commercial pursuits or manufactur- 

 ing would be treated as acts of bankruptcy. 



This rather curious anomaly in favor of the agricultural 

 classes of the country is doubtless due to the large influ- 

 ence in the national congress of representatives from the 

 so-called Granger States, without whose aid no bankrupt 

 law could have been passed. On the whole, however, no 

 great harai can result from the favor thus shown farmers, 

 for the fact is, that as a class the agriculturists of our country 

 have been generally more successful in keeping themselves 

 out of the " sponging-house," as the poor debtor court is 

 sometimes styled, and have cheated their creditors less, than 

 any other class in the community. 



Easements. 



The law of easements is of peculiar importance to the 

 owners of farms and country estates, and no other branch 

 of real estate law has been more fertile in litigation. Some 

 knowledge of easements is therefore almost a necessary part 

 of the education of an intelligent farmer. 



An easement is a charge imposed on one estate for the 

 benefit of another belonging to a diiferent owner. Separate 

 ownership is an essential feature to the creation and main- 

 tenance of such a right. 



The land enjoying the privilege is called the dominant 

 estate ; the one which bears the Inirden, the servient estate. 



That which is an easement for one of the estates is a 

 servitude for the other. When the entire ownership of both 

 becomes merged in the same person or persons, the ease- 

 ment disappears. No man can create or retain an easement 

 in favor of one parcel of his property as against another 

 part of it. An easement once created remains upon the land 

 so long as the separate ownership of the parcels lasts ; and 

 it runs with the land, passing, by the conveyance or descent 



