Pulaski county, situated near the centre of the state and on the S. bank
of the Arkansas river, at the E. edge of the Ozark foothills. Pop.
(1890) 25,874; (1900) 38,307, of whom 14,694 were of negro blood, and
2099 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 45,941. Little Rock is served by
the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the St Louis South Western, and the
St Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern railways and by river boats. It
occupies a comparatively level site of 11 sq. m. at an altitude of 250
to 400 ft. above sea-level and 50 ft. or more above the river, which is
crossed here by three railway bridges and by a county bridge. The city
derived its name (originally "le Petit Roche" and "The Little Rock")
from a rocky peninsula in the Arkansas, distinguished from the "Big
Rock" (the site of the army post, Fort Logan H. Roots), 1 m. W. of the
city, across the river. The Big Rock is said to have been first
discovered and named "Le Rocher Français" in 1722 by Sieur Bernard de la
Harpe, who was in search of an emerald mountain; the Little Rock is now
used as an abutment for a railway bridge. The state capitol, the state
insane asylum, the state deaf mute institute, the state school for the
blind, a state reform school, the penitentiary, the state library and
the medical and law departments of the state university are at Little
Rock; and the city is also the seat of the United States court for the
eastern district of Arkansas, of a United States land office, of Little
Rock College, of the St Mary's Academy, of a Roman Catholic orphanage
and a Roman Catholic convent, and of two schools for negroes--the
Philander Smith College (Methodist Episcopal, 1877), co-educational, and
the Arkansas Baptist College. The city is the seat of Protestant
Episcopal and Roman Catholic bishops. Little Rock has a Carnegie library
(1908), an old ladies' home, a Florence Crittenton rescue home, a
children's home, St Vincent's infirmary, a city hospital, a Catholic
hospital, a physicians' and surgeons' hospital and the Arkansas hospital
for nervous diseases. A municipal park system includes City, Forest,
Wonderland and West End parks. Immigration from the northern states has
been encouraged, and northern men control much of the business of the
city. In 1905 the value of factory products was $4,689,787, being 38.8%
greater than the value in 1900. Cotton and lumber industries are the
leading interests; the value of cotton-seed oil and cake manufactured in
1905 was $967,043, of planing mill products $835,049, and of lumber and
timber products $342,134. Printing and publishing and the manufacture of
foundry and machine shop products and of furniture are other important
industries. Valuable deposits of bauxite are found in Pulaski county,
and the mines are the most important in the United States.
Originally the site of the city was occupied by the Quapaw Indians. The
earliest permanent settlement by the whites was about 1813-1814; the
county was organized in 1818 while still a part of Missouri Territory;
Little Rock was surveyed in 1821, was incorporated as a town and became
the capital of Arkansas in 1821, and was chartered as a city in 1836. In
1850 its population was only 2167, and in 1860 3727; but in 1870 it was
12,380. Little Rock was enthusiastically anti-Union at the outbreak of
the Civil War. In February 1861, the United States Arsenal was seized by
the state authorities. In September 1863 the Federal generals William
Steele (1819-1885) and John W. Davidson (1824-1881), operating against
General Sterling Price, captured the city, and it remained throughout
the rest of the war under Federal control. Constitutional conventions
met at Little Rock in 1836, 1864, 1868 and 1874, and also the Secession
Convention of 1861. The _Arkansas Gazette_, established at Arkansas Post
in 1819 and soon afterwards removed to the new capital, was the first
newspaper published in Arkansas and one of the first published west of
the Mississippi.
LITTLETON (or LYTTELTON), EDWARD, BARON (1589-1645), son of Sir Edward
Littleton (d. 1621) chief-justice of North Wales, was born at Munslow
in Shropshire; he was educated at Oxford and became a lawyer, succeeding
his father as chief-justice of North Wales. In 1625 he became a member
of parliament and acted in 1628 as chairman of the committee of
grievances upon whose report the Petition of Right was based. As a
member of the party opposed to the arbitrary measures of Charles I.
Littleton had shown more moderation than some of his colleagues, and in
1634, three years after he had been chosen recorder of London, the king
attached him to his own side by appointing him solicitor-general. In the
famous case about ship-money Sir Edward argued against Hampden. In 1640
he was made chief-justice of the common pleas and in 1641 lord keeper of
the great seal, being created a peer as Baron Lyttelton. About this
time, the lord keeper began to display a certain amount of indifference
to the royal cause. In January 1642 he refused to put the great seal to
the proclamation for the arrest of the five members and he also incurred
the displeasure of Charles by voting for the militia ordinance. However,
he assured his friend Edward Hyde, afterwards earl of Clarendon, that he
had only taken this step to allay the suspicions of the parliamentary
party who contemplated depriving him of the seal, and he undertook to
send this to the king. He fulfilled his promise, and in May 1642 he
himself joined Charles at York, but it was some time before he regained
the favour of the king and the custody of the seal. Littleton died at
Oxford on the 27th of August 1645; he left no sons and his barony became
extinct. His only daughter, Anne, married her cousin Sir Thomas
Littleton, Bart. (d. 1681), and their son Sir Thomas Littleton (_c._
1647-1710), was speaker of the House of Commons from 1698 to 1700, and
treasurer of the navy from 1700 to 1710. Macaulay thus sums up the
character of Speaker Littleton and his relations to the Whigs: "He was
one of their ablest, most zealous and most steadfast friends; and had
been, both in the House of Commons and at the board of treasury, an
invaluable second to Montague" (the earl of Halifax).
LITTLETON, SIR THOMAS DE (_c._ 1407-1481), English judge and legal
author, was born, it is supposed, at Frankley Manor House,
Worcestershire, about 1407. Littleton's surname was that of his mother,
who was the sole daughter and heiress of Thomas de Littleton, lord of
Frankley. She married one Thomas Westcote. Thomas was the eldest of four
sons of the marriage, and took the name of Littleton, or, as it seems to
have been more commonly spelt, Luttelton. The date of his birth is
uncertain; a MS. pedigree gives 1422, but it was probably earlier than
this. If, as is generally accepted, he was born at Frankley Manor, it
could not have been before 1407, in which year Littleton's grandfather
recovered the manor from a distant branch of the family. He is said by
Sir E. Coke to have "attended one of the universities," but there is no
corroboration of this statement. He was probably a member of the Inner
Temple, and lectured there on the statute of Westminster II., _De Donis
Conditionalibus_. His name occurs in the Paston Letters (ed. J.
Gairdner, i. 60) about 1445 as that of a well-known counsel and in
1481/2 he received a grant of the manor of Sheriff Hales, Shropshire,
from a Sir William Trussel as a reward for his services as counsel. He
appears to have been recorder of Coventry in 1450; he was made escheator
of Worcestershire, and in 1447/8 was under-sheriff of the same county;
he became serjeant-at-law in 1453 and was afterwards a justice of assize
on the northern circuit. In 1466 he was made a judge of the common
pleas, and in 1475 a knight of the Bath. He died, according to the
inscription on his tomb in Worcester cathedral, on the 23rd of August
1481. He married, about 1444, Joan, widow of Sir Philip Chetwind of
Ingestrie in Staffordshire, and by her had three sons, through whom he
became ancestor of the families holding the peerages of Cobham (formerly
Lyttelton, q.v.) and Hatherton.
His _Treatise on Tenures_ was probably written after he had been
appointed to the bench. It is addressed to his second son Richard, who
went to the bar, and whose name occurs in the year books of the reign of
Henry VII. The book, both historically and from its intrinsic merit, may
be characterized as the first text-book upon the English law of
property. The law of property in Littleton's time was mainly concerned
with rights over land, and it was the law relating to this class of
rights which Littleton set himself to digest and classify. The time was
ripe for the task. Ever since the Conquest regular courts of justice had
been at work administering a law which had grown out of an admixture of
Teutonic custom and of Norman feudalism. Under Henry II. the courts had
been organized, and the practice of keeping regular records of the
proceedings had been carefully observed. The centralizing influence of
the royal courts and of the justices of assize, working steadily through
three centuries, had made the rules governing the law of property
uniform throughout the land; local customs were confined within certain
prescribed limits, and were only recognized as giving rise to certain
well-defined classes of rights, such, for instance, as the security of
tenure acquired by villeins by virtue of the custom of the manor, and
the rights of freeholders, in some towns, to dispose of their land by
will. Thus, by the time of Littleton (Henry VI. and Edward IV.), an
immense mass of material had been acquired and preserved in the rolls of
the various courts. Reports of important cases were published in the
"year books." A glance at Statham's _Abridgment_, the earliest digest of
decided cases, published nearly at the same time as Littleton's
_Tenures_, is sufficient to show the enormous bulk which reported cases
had already attained as materials for the knowledge of English law.
Littleton's treatise was written in that peculiar dialect compounded of
Norman-French and English phrases called law French. Although it had
been provided by a statute of 36 Edward III. that _viva voce_
proceedings in court should no longer be conducted in the French tongue,
"which was much unknown in the realm," the practice of reporting
proceedings in that language, and of using it in legal treatises,
lingered till a much later period, and was at length prohibited by a
statute passed in the time of the Commonwealth in 1650. Unlike the
preceding writers on English law, Glanville, Bracton and the authors of
the treatises known by the names of Britton and Fleta, Littleton borrows
nothing from the sources of Roman law or the commentators. He deals
exclusively with English law.
The book is written on a definite system, and is the first attempt at a
scientific classification of rights over land. Littleton's method is to
begin with a definition, usually clearly and briefly expressed, of the
class of rights with which he is dealing. He then proceeds to illustrate
the various characteristics and incidents of the class by stating
particular instances, some of which refer to decisions which had
actually occurred, but more commonly they are hypothetical cases put by
way of illustration of his principles. He occasionally refers to
reported cases. His book is thus much more than a mere digest of
judicial decisions; to some extent he pursues the method which gave to
Roman law its breadth and consistency of principle. In Roman law this
result was attained through the practice of putting to jurisconsults
hypothetical cases to be solved by them. Littleton, in like manner, is
constantly stating and solving by reference to principles of law cases
which may or may not have occurred in actual practice.
In dealing with freehold estates Littleton adopts a classification
which has been followed by all writers who have attempted to
systematize the English law of land, especially Sir M. Hale and Sir
William Blackstone. It is indeed the only possible approach to a
scientific arrangement of the intricate "estates in land" known to
English law. He classifies estates in land by reference to their
duration, or in other words by reference to the differences between
the persons who are entitled to succeed upon the death of the person
in possession or "tenant." First of all, he describes the
characteristics of tenancy in fee simple. This is still as it was in
Littleton's time the largest interest in land known to the law. Next
in order comes tenancy in fee tail, the various classes of which are
sketched by Littleton with brevity and accuracy, but he is silent as
to the important practice, which first received judicial recognition
shortly before his death, of "suffering a recovery," whereby through a
series of judicial fictions a tenant in tail was enabled to convert
his estate tail into a fee simple, thus acquiring full power of
alienation. After discussing in their logical order other freehold
interests in land, he passes to interests in land called by later
writers interests less than freehold, namely, tenancies for terms of
years and tenancies at will. With the exception of tenancy from year
to year, now so familiar to us, but which was a judicial creation of a
date later than the time of Littleton, the first book is a complete
statement of the principles of the common law, as they for the most
part still exist, governing and regulating interests in lands. The
first book concludes with a very interesting chapter on copyhold
tenures, which marks the exact point at which the tenant by copy of
court roll, the successor of the villein, who in his turn represented
the freeman reduced to villenage by the growth of the manorial system,
acquired security of tenure.
The second book relates to the reciprocal rights and duties of lord
and tenant, and is mainly of historical interest to the modern lawyer.
It contains a complete statement of the law as it stood in Littleton's
time relating to homage, fealty and escuage, the money compensation to
be paid to the lord in lieu of military service to be rendered to the
king, a peculiar characteristic of English as distinguished from
Continental feudalism.
Littleton then proceeds to notice the important features of tenure by
knight's service with its distinguishing incidents of the right of
wardship of the lands and person of the infant heir or heiress, and
the right of disposing of the ward in marriage. The non-military
freehold tenures are next dealt with; we have an account of "socage
tenure," into which all military tenures were subsequently commuted by
a now unrecognized act of the Long Parliament in 1650, afterwards
re-enacted by the well-known statute of Charles II. (1660), and of
"frankalmoign," or the spiritual tenure by which churchmen held. In
the description of burgage tenure and tenure in villenage, the life of
which consists in the validity of ancient customs recognized by law,
we recognize survivals of a time before the iron rule of feudalism had
moulded the law of land in the interests of the king and the great
lords. Finally he deals with the law of rents, discussing the various
kinds of rents which may be reserved to the grantor upon a grant of
lands and the remedies for recovery of rent, especially the remedy by
distress.[1]
The third and concluding book of Littleton's treatise deals mainly
with the various ways in which rights over land can be acquired and
terminated in the case of a single possessor or several possessors.
This leads him to discuss the various modes in which several persons
may simultaneously have rights over the same land, as
parceners:--daughters who are co-heiresses, or sons in gavelkind;
joint tenants and tenants in common. Next follows an elaborate
discussion upon what are called estates upon condition--a class of
interests which occupied a large space in the early common law, giving
rise on one side to estates tail, on another to mortgages. In
Littleton's time a mortgage, which he carefully describes, was merely
a conveyance of land by the tenant to the mortgagee, with a condition
that, if the tenant paid to the mortgagee a certain sum on a certain
day, he might re-enter and have the land again. If the condition was
not fulfilled, the interest of the mortgagee became absolute, and
Littleton gives no indication of any modification of this strict rule,
such as was introduced by courts of equity, permitting the debtor to
redeem his land by payment of all that was due to the mortgagee
although the day of payment had passed, and his interest had become at
law indefeasible. The remainder of the work is occupied with an
exposition of a miscellaneous class of modes of acquiring rights of
property, the analysis of which would occupy too large a space.
The work is thus a complete summary of the common law as it stood at
the time. It is nearly silent as to the remarkable class of rights
which had already assumed vast practical importance--equitable
interests in lands. These are only noticed incidentally in the chapter
on "Releases." But it was already clear in Littleton's time that this
class of rights would become the most important of all. Littleton's
own will, which has been preserved, may be adduced in proof of this
assertion. Although nothing was more opposed to the spirit of Norman
feudalism than that a tenant of lands should dispose of them by will,
we find Littleton directing by his will the feoffees of certain
manors to make estates to the persons named in his will. In other
words, in order to acquire over lands powers unknown to the common
law, the lands had been conveyed to "feoffees" who had full right over
them according to the common law, but who were under a conscientious
obligation to exercise those rights at the direction and for the
exclusive benefit of the person to whose "use" the lands were held.
This conscientious obligation was recognized and enforced by the
chancellor, and thus arose the class of equitable interests in lands.
Littleton is the first writer on English law after these rights had
risen into a prominent position, and it is curious to find to what
extent they are ignored by him.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The work of Littleton occupies a place in the history
of typography as well as of law. The earliest printed edition seems to
be that by John Lettou and William de Machlinia, two printers who
probably came from the Continent, and carried on their business in
partnership, as their note to the edition of Littleton states, "in
civitate Londoniarum, juxta ecclesiam omnium sanctorum." The date of
this edition is uncertain, but the most probable conjecture, based on
typographical grounds, places it about the latter part of 1481. The
next edition is one by Machlinia alone, probably about two or three
years later than the former. Machlinia was then in business alone
"juxta pontem quae vulgo dicitur Fleta brigge." Next came the Rohan or
Rouen edition, erroneously stated by Sir E. Coke to be the earliest,
and to have been printed about 1533. It was, however, of a much
earlier date. Tomlins, the latest editor of Littleton, gives reasons
for thinking that it cannot have been later than 1490. It is stated in
a note to have been printed at Rouen by William le Tailleur "ad
instantiam Richardi Pynson." Copies of all these editions are in the
British Museum. In all these editions the work is styled _Tenores
Novelli_, probably to distinguish it from the "Old Tenures."
There are three early MSS. of Littleton in the University Library at
Cambridge. One of these formerly contained a note on its first page to
the effect that it was bought in St Paul's Churchyard on July 20,
1480. It was therefore in circulation in Littleton's lifetime. The
other two MSS. are of a somewhat later date; but one of them contains
what seems to be the earliest English translation of the _Tenures_,
and is probably not later than 1500.
In the 16th century editions of Littleton followed in rapid succession
from the presses of Pynson, Redmayne, Berthelet, Tottyl and others.
The practice of annotating the text caused several additions to be
introduced, which, however, are easily detected by comparison of the
earlier copies. In 1581 West divided the text into 746 sections, which
have ever since been preserved. Many of these editions were printed
with large margins for purposes of annotation, specimens of which may
be seen in Lincoln's Inn Library.
The practice of annotating Littleton was very general, and was adopted
by many eminent lawyers besides Sir E. Coke, amongst others by Sir M.
Hale. One commentary of this kind, by an unknown hand of earlier date
than Sir E. Coke's, was edited by Cary in 1829. Following the general
practice of dealing with Littleton as the great authority on the law
of England, "the most perfect and absolute work that ever was written
in any human science," Sir E. Coke made it in 1628 the text of that
portion of his work which he calls the first part of the institutes of
the law of England, in other words, the law of property.
The first printed English translation of Littleton was by Rastell, who
seems to have combined the professions of author, printer and
serjeant-at-law, between 1514 and 1533. Many English editions by
various editors followed, the best of which is Tottyl's in 1556. Sir
E. Coke adopted some translation earlier than this, which has since
gone by the name of Sir E. Coke's translation. He, however, throughout
comments not on the translation but on the French text; and the
reputation of the commentary has to some extent obscured the intrinsic
merit of the original.
See E. Wambaugh, _Littleton's Tenures in English_ (Washington, D.C.,
1903).
FOOTNOTE:
[1] These two books are stated, in a note to the table at the
conclusion of the work, to have been made for the better
understanding of certain chapters of the _Antient Book of Tenures_.
This refers to a tract called _The Old Tenures_, said to have been
written in the reign of Edward III. By way of distinguishing it from
this work, Littleton's book is called in all the early editions
"Tenores Novelli."
LITTRÉ, MAXIMILIEN PAUL ÉMILE (1801-1881), French lexicographer and
philosopher, was born in Paris on the 1st of February 1801. His father
had been a gunner, and afterwards sergeant-major of marine artillery, in
the French navy, and was deeply imbued with the revolutionary ideas of
the day. Settling down as a collector of taxes, he married Sophie
Johannot, a free-thinker like himself, and devoted himself to the
education of his son Émile. The boy was sent to the Lycée
Louis-le-Grand, where he had for friends Hachette and Eugène Burnouf.
After he had completed his course at school, he hesitated for a time as
to what profession he should adopt, and meanwhile made himself master,
not only of the English and German languages, but of the classical and
Sanskrit literature and philology. At last he determined to study
medicine, and in 1822 entered his name as a student of medicine. He
passed all his examinations in due course, and had only his thesis to
prepare in order to obtain his degree as doctor when in 1827 his father
died, leaving his mother absolutely without resources. He at once
renounced his degree, and, while attending the lectures of P. F. O.
Rayer and taking a keen interest in medicine, began teaching Latin and
Greek for a livelihood. He carried a musket on the popular side in the
revolution of February 1830, and was one of the national guards who
followed Charles X. to Rambouillet. In 1831 he obtained an introduction
to Armand Carrel, the editor of the _National_, who gave him the task of
reading the English and German papers for excerpts. Carrel by chance, in
1835, discovered the ability of his reader, who from that time became a
constant contributor, and eventually director of the paper. In 1836
Littré began to contribute articles on all sorts of subjects to the
_Revue des deux mondes_; in 1837 he married; and in 1839 appeared the
first volume of his edition of the works of Hippocrates. The value of
this work was recognized by his election the same year into the Académie
des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. At this epoch he came across the
works of Auguste Comte, the reading of which formed, as he himself said,
"the cardinal point of his life," and from this time onward appears the
influence of positivism on his own life, and, what is of more
importance, his influence on positivism, for he gave as much to
positivism as he received from it. He soon became a friend of Comte, and
popularized his ideas in numerous works on the positivist philosophy. At
the same time he continued his edition of Hippocrates, which was not
completed till 1862, published a similar edition of Pliny's _Natural
History_, and after 1844 took Fauriel's place on the committee engaged
on the _Histoire littéraire de la France_, where his knowledge of the
early French language and literature was invaluable.