150 UNIVEESITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



What is the inherent difficulty in these mutual altercations between 

 the plaintiff and defendant ? Their obvious purpose is to analyze the 

 merits of the cause, and to ascertain the precise subject of controversy 

 preparatory to trial. We are told that the sergeants and apprentices 

 in the old days drew their own pleadings. After the abandonment 

 of alternate allegations by word of mouth by the parties or their 

 counsel they would naturally fall into certain formulae, and we gather 

 from Reeve's History oj English Law that as early as the time of 

 Edward I the declaration was drawn with form and precision and was 

 liable to be excepted to if deficient in either of these qualities.' But 

 certain logical processes have not changed in all these centuries; and 

 with all our progress and the demands of an advanced civilization 

 certain necessities survive. For example: A holds B's bond for $500, 

 and proposes to institute suit upon it. Being a teacher of law, I 

 once asked a group of young men, novitiates in the subject, to draw 

 up and submit to me, not necessarily in the dialectics of pleading, a 

 statement of that cause of action. It was surprising how closely 

 the best of them approached the accepted formula : 



This man B owes me, A, $500, as witness his bond here, which I now show to 

 the court ; yet he has not paid me. 



Surprising, I say, even to the making of profert, about which these 

 young men had received no instruction; and they were put upon 

 honor against consulting the precedents or seeking outside assistance. 

 Some failed, of course, but all sought for the essential allegations, and, 

 what is to the point, having found them, as they thought, stowed 

 them away for future use. With what joy they read the case of 

 Henry HaweP Henry Hawe, on Sunday, August 21, 1664, was at 

 church in the parish of Wockingham, and during the service kept his 

 hat on, when John Planner, who was one of the churchwardens, 

 requested him to take his hat off, which Hawe refused to do; where- 

 upon Planner took it off, and Hawe brought this action. 



I suspect that under the modern codes the complaint in the case 

 of this resolute Quaker under different hands would have shown a 

 widely varying intensity of thought, feeling, and expression. But 



' 2 Reeve's Hist. Eng. Law p. 264. ' i Sound, p. 10; 4 Mitt. Inst. p. 603. 



