LIMITATIONS. Of Civil Remedies. In general, by the theory and early practice of the common law, a party who had any legal ground of complaint against another might call the latter to answer in court at such time as suited his convenience; 13 East 449. This privilege, however, it was soon found, might be productive of great inconvenience, and not unfrequently of great injustice. Par ties might, and often' did, wait till witnesses were dead or papers destroyed,. and then proceeded to enforce claims to which at an earlier date a successful defence might have been. made. Titles were thus rendered un certain, the tenure of property insecure, and litigation fostered. To prevent these evils, statutes were passed limiting the time with in which a party having a cause of action should appeal to the courts for redress,— hence called statutes of limitation. The doctrine of fines, of very great antiquity in the history of the common law, the purpose of which was to put an end to controversies, grew out of the efforts to obviate these evils, and frequent attempts, prior to the accession of James I., by statutes of restricted appli cation, were made to the same end. But till the reign of that prince no general enact ment applicable alike to personal and real actions had been passed.
In 1623, however, by stat. 21 Jac. I. c. 16, entitled "An Act for Limitation of Actions, and for Avoiding of Suits in Law," known and celebrated ever since as the Statute of Limitations, the law upon this subject was comprehensively declared substantially as it exists at the present day in England, whence our ancestors brought it with them to this country ; and it has passed, with some modi fications, into the 'statute-books of every state in the Union except Louisiana, whose laws of limitation are essentially the pre scriptions of the civil law, drawn from the Partidas, or Spanish Code.
In 1 Bla. 287, Wilmot, J., declared it to be a, "noble beneficial act," which should be construed liberally; quoted in Ward v. Hal
lam, 1 Yeates (Pa.) 331.
The similarity between the statutes of the several states and those of England is such that the decisions of the British courts and those of this country are for the most part illustrative of all, and will be cited in discriminately in this brief summary of the law as it now stands. One preliminary ques tion, however, has arisen in this country, growing out of the provision of the national constitution prohibiting states from passing laws impairing the obligation of contracts, for which there is no English precedent. Upon this point the settled doctrine is that unless the law bars a right of action already accrued without giving a reasonable time within which to bring an action, it pertains to the remedy merely, and is valid ; Sturges v. Crowninshield, 4 Wheat. (U. S.) 122, 4 L. Ed. 529; Eckstein v. Shoemaker, 3 Whart. (Pa.) 15; Battles v. Fobes, 19 Pick. (Mass.). 578, note. Subject to this qualification, a law may extend or reduce the time already limited. But a cause of action already bar red by pre-existing statutes will not be re vived by a statute extending the time ; Robb v.' Harlan, 7 Pa. 292; Wires v. Farr, 25 Vt. 41; Battles v. Fobes, 18 Pick. (Mass.) 532; Sprecker v. Wakley, 11 Wis. 432; Baldro v. Tolmie, 1 Oreg. 176; though if it be not • al ready barred, a statute extending the time will apply ; Chandler v. Chandler, 21 Ark. 95; Royce v. Hurd, 24 Vt. 620. The fact that a statute continues in force a previous period of limitation for past contracts, and provides a different period for future con tracts, does not render it invalid, as lack ing a uniform operation, or as being in the nature of special legislation ; McKean v. Archer, 52 Fed. 791.
The essential attribute of a statute of lim itations is that it limits a reasonable time within which an action may be brought. A statute which allows no time, but absolutely bars the cause of action, is not a statute of limitations; Keyser v. Lowell, 117 Fed. 400, 54 C. C. A. 574.