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and circumstances as would afford the best possible chance of preventing litigation; a knowledge of the latitude which the law allowed, with respect to personal property at least, has hitherto operated to encourage the too prevalent habit of procrastination, and not unfrequently to defeat altogether a long cherished design of making an equitable disposition of property by Will. As the law formerly stood, personal property of a certain amount or value, and of certain descriptions, might be disposed of by even a verbal Will, if made under certain peculiar circumstances, and reduced to writing within a given time after the testator's death, and if attested by a certain number of witnesses. With respect to written Wills, the law would allow them to take effect over a very large extent of personal property, though variously made and attested. In short, the question whether the paper presented to the court, from which probate was applied for, was

or was not what it purported to be, namely, the last Will and Testament of the person therein named and described, was one that the court was at liberty to investigate and determine, and upon which evidence of various kinds might be given; so that the consequences of neglecting, till the last hour of existence, that duty which is owing to relations, friends, and dependents, had yet a remedy in the power and authority of the courts possessing jurisdiction in testamentary cases.

This remedy exists no longer. Unless a Will be written in the lifetime of the Testator, and be attested in the particular manner prescribed by the act of the 1 Victoria, c. 26., it can have no effect; and the property which it attempts to dispose of will descend in the same manner, and to the same persons, as it would, if its owner had never made a Will at all. It would be useless here to discuss the wisdom or policy of the al

teration of the law in this particular point, though, however wise and beneficial the alteration of the law in every other respect may be, it does certainly appear that the advantages of the alteration, in the particular point above referred to, will admit of being questioned. If, on the one hand, it may be said that the law as it stood, imposing different rules for different sorts of property, led to confusion and error, and that one rule for the making, attesting, and publishing of Wills, applicable to every species of property, will very soon be universally known, and acted upon, and will prove a security, both for the fulfilment of the testator's intentions, and for the rights of those to whom the property is meant to be given; it may, on the other hand, be alleged that these ends would be more surely attained by leaving it to the courts empowered to grant probates, to sift and examine in every case, however different the circumstances might be, the question whether

the Testator really did or did not make and intend that disposition of his property which the party applying for probate is endeavouring to establish; and that no object is gained by excluding from the tribunal, appointed to decide upon the reality of the Will, every kind of evidence but that which is prescribed by the act of parliament.

The important questions now are, first, in what manner a Will must be made, in order to have effect? and, secondly, what distribution the law will make of the property of such persons as may die without Wills, or leaving such Wills as, under the present law, cannot be established? for, as it may happen to many persons, not ordinarily negligent of their duties, to meet death under circumstances which will prevent their making Wills in such form and manner as the law now requires, the accurate knowledge of the law relating to the division of an intestate's effects will be a powerful induce

ment not to postpone the performance of the important duty of making a Will, with persons who are under obligations to provide for those, whom, in case of intestacy, the law would exclude from all participation in the property of the deceased. The alteration of laws affecting a matter so important and interesting as the disposition of property to take effect after death, and which laws have endured for many generations, and established themselves in the public mind, involves in itself consequences of vital moment to individuals; and much good must necessarily result from any successful efforts to make it universally known. Persons not practically acquainted with the subject may imagine that as the personal property of any one who dies without a Will is divisible among his wife and nearest kindred, no very great harm will result from the few cases (and it is hoped they will not be numerous) in which the knowledge of the new law shall