ble and perpetual outlawry. The tender
and incapable age of such a person, his natural subjection to the will
of others, his necessary, unavoidable ignorance of the laws, stands for
nothing in his favor. He is disabled to sue in law or equity; to be
guardian, executor, or administrator; he is rendered incapable of any
legacy or deed of gift; he forfeits all his goods and chattels forever;
and he forfeits for his life all his lands, hereditaments, offices, and
estate of freehold, and all trusts, powers, or interests therein. All
persons concerned in sending them or maintaining them abroad, by the
least assistance of money or otherwise, are involved in the same
disabilities, and subjected to the same penalties.

The mode of conviction is as extraordinary as the penal sanctions of
this act. A justice of peace, upon information that any child is sent
away, may require to be brought before him all persons charged or even
suspected of sending or assisting, and examine them and other persons
on oath concerning the fact. If on this examination he finds it
_probable_ that the party was sent contrary to this act, he is then, to
bind over the parties and witnesses in any sum he thinks fit, but not
less than two hundred pounds, to appear and take their trial at the next
quarter sessions. Here the justices are to reexamine evidence, until
they arrive, as before, to what shall appear to them a probability. For
the rest they resort to the accused: if they can prove that any person,
or any money, or any bill of exchange, has been sent abroad by the party
accused, they throw the proof upon him to show for what innocent
purposes it was sent; and on failure of such proof, he is subjected to
all the above-mentioned penalties. Half the forfeiture is given to the
crown; the other half goes to the informer.

It ought here to be remarked, that this mode of conviction not only
concludes the party has failed in his expurgatory proof, but it is
sufficient also to subject to the penalties and incapacities of the law
the infant upon whose account the person has been so convicted. It must
be confessed that the law has not left him without some species of
remedy in this case apparently of much hardship, where one man is
convicted upon evidence given against another, if he has the good
fortune to live; for, within a twelvemonth after his return, or his age
of twenty-one, he has a, right to call for a new trial, in which he also
is to undertake the ne