A. LINCOLN.

ON BANKRUPTCY

NOTES OF AN ARGUMENT.

December [?], 1858.

Legislation and adjudication must follow and conform to the progress of society.

The progress of society now begins to produce cases of the transfer for debts of the entire property of railroad corporations; and to enable transferees to use and enjoy the transferred property, legislation and adjudication begin to be necessary.

Shall this class of legislation just now beginning with us be general or special?

Section Ten of our Constitution requires that it should be general,

if possible. (Read the section.)

Special legislation always trenches upon the judicial department; and in so far violates Section Two of the Constitution. (Read it.)

Just reasoning—­policy—­is in favor of general legislation—­else the Legislature will be loaded down with the investigation of smaller cases—­a work which the courts ought to perform, and can perform much more perfectly.  How can the Legislature rightly decide the facts between P. & B. and S.C.

It is said that under a general law, whenever a R. R. Co. gets tired of its debts, it may transfer fraudulently to get rid of them.  So they may—­so may individuals; and which—­the Legislature or the courts—­is best suited to try the question of fraud in either case?

It is said, if a purchaser have acquired legal rights, let him not be robbed of them, but if he needs legislation let him submit to just terms to obtain it.

Let him, say we, have general law in advance (guarded in every possible way against fraud), so that, when he acquires a legal right, he will have no occasion to wait for additional legislation; and if he has practiced fraud let the courts so decide.

A LEGAL OPINION BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

The 11th Section of the Act of Congress, approved Feb. 11, 1805, prescribing rules for the subdivision of sections of land within the United States system of surveys, standing unrepealed, in my opinion, is binding on the respective purchasers of different parts of the same section, and furnishes the true rule for surveyors in establishing lines between them.  That law, being in force at the time each became a purchaser, becomes a condition of the purchase.

And, by that law, I think the true rule for dividing into quarters any interior section or sections, which is not fractional, is to run straight lines through the section from the opposite quarter section corners, fixing the point where such straight lines cross, or intersect each other, as the middle or centre of the section.

Nearly, perhaps quite, all the original surveys are to some extent erroneous, and in some of the sections, greatly so.  In each of the latter, it is obvious that a more equitable mode of division than the above might be adopted; but as error is infinitely various perhaps no better single rules can be prescribed.