THE LAW SCHOOL, 91 THE LAW SCHOOL. LECTURE NOTES. [These notes were taken by students from lectures delivered as part of the regular course of in- struction in the School. They represent, therefore, no carefully formulated statements of doctrine, but only such informal expressious of opinion as are usually put forward in the class-room. For the form of these notes the lecturers are not responsible.] The Statute of Frauds, Section 17. — {^From Professor Thayer's Lectures.) — It has been said ^ that the Statute of Frauds was the result of " a case of frightful perjury ; " but this is quite too trivial an explanation for so comprehensive and elaborate a piece of law reform. Probably it was an afterclap of the Commonwealth — a period full of ideas that went to the root of things, in law as well as in politics. This spirit survived the Restoration, and at the beginning of the reign of Charles II. committees were appointed to continue the en- deavors after reform which had been carried forward in the time of the Commonwealth. Finch (Lord Nottingham) was on one of the committees, and these labors culminated in the Statute of Frauds. To the far-reaching propositions of legal reform made in the Common- wealth, and Sir Matthew Hale's connection with them, you may find a clue in a valuable paper in 3 Juridical Society Papers, 567, 597, and in 6 Somers's Tracts, 177-245. It is Hale and Nottingham who are gener- ally credited with the chief hand in bringing out the Statute of Frauds. We may fairly conjecture that the condition of the law at this lime, as to proof of matters of fact, may well have had an important influence. In 1670, about six years before the statute, Bushell's case had put an end to the old mode of restraining jurors bv fines and imprisonment ; and the attaint was no longer workable. Yet Bushell's case expressly recognized the old character of the jury as still existing, and allowed their rightful power to decide cases on their own knowledge without any evidence at all, and in disregard of any that might have been given. A method of checking jurors in the exercise of this power by grant- ing new trials had indeed begun, but it was a novelty and was not worked out till later. This was, of course, a most unsatisfactory state of affairs, against which the statute appears to furnish protection, in a great variety of cases, by requiring a particular kind of pre-appointed form, not merely as a necessary kind of evidence to submit to a tribu- nal as their basis of inference, but as constituting a prerequisite ground of action, or, in some cases, an optional defence. * This exclusion, in certain cases of casual oral evidence and require- ment of pre-constituted evidence in the shape of a writing, is the most conspicuous and characteristic feature of the Statute of Frauds. But it is by no means its only method or its only aim, as is shown by an examination of the whole instrument. Sections 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 18 illustrate its wider scope. It is a various and most comprehensive piece of work. There is an important and obvious difference between section 4 and section 17, in that the former is satisfied by a memorandum 1 For instances see 4 Kent's Commentaries, 517 ; Ladd^s Will, 60 Wis. 187 ; s. c. ; 4 Gray's Cas. Property, 347. 3 Vaughan, 135.
