LIMITATION OF ACTIONS. — Originally there was nothing in the law of England—apart from the operation of the maxim actin personalis moritur cum persona, and the ancient rules incident to the feudal system, and the old limitations to actions for trespass to property—to prevent a person who had a claim upon another from refraining, for as long a period as he thought proper, from attempting to enforce it through the agency of the courts. Such a state of things necessarily involved a very general hardship and inconvenience. Any one who intended to make a claim could, if he so desired and the circumstances of the case made it advantageous to him, remain quiescent and await the death of dangerous witnesses, the loss of relevant but damaging documents, and the happening of many other possible contingencies that might render it more difficult for his claim to be successfully resisted. Titles to property were thus rendered insecure, and speculative and vexatious litigation was fostered. In the reign of James L however, there was passed that " noble beneficial Act," well known as the Statute of Limitations. This Act proceeded to limit the time within which actions could be brought, but being limited in its application to certain personal actions it required a number of subsequent statutes, such as the Mercantile Law Amendment Act of 1857, and the Real Property Limitation Acts of 1833, 1837 and 1874, to extend the benefit of the principle of limitation to other forms of action, such as those upon merchants' accounts and those relating to land and its recovery. The term " limitation" thus
denoting the thne prescribed by the law at the end of which a particular action can no longer be maintained, or during which a title to certain property may be acquired merely by adverse possession or enjoyment, it follows that this limitation of actions becomes, according to the point of view, either a means of exemption from liability to legal process, or a mode of acquisition of a title to property. The following table will afford a fairly com prehensive view of the operation of the statutes of' limitation, the first column containing an enumeration of particular causes of action, and the second the respective periods of time during which actions thereon ca,n be brought. As against persons who are lunatics or infants at the time when a cause of action accrues, the prescribed period does not generally begin to run until the end of their condition as such.l The Public Authorities Protection Act_ 189S. should also he noted in this connection.