Procuration

The acting of one person in the afiairs of another, by the latter's authority or request; agency. Also, the authority of one person to act for another, derived from the latter; power of attorney. Procurator: an agent; a person authorized and employed to manage the affairs of a principal; a proxy. Other old senses of the word are given; such as, a proxy of a lord in parliament; one who collected the fruits of a benefice for the incumbent; an employed advocate or collecting agent of a religious house, or of a parish church; a proctor. See Burrtll. Bouvier defines procuration somewhat differently from the sense assigned to it above, which is, however, supported by the other modern dictionaries. He states it to mean the act by which one person gives power to another to act in his place. In other words, he makes the appointing the- agent, i.e. the power as conferred, to be the procuration, instead of "the undertaking the agency, or the power as received. If this were so, procurator should be, it would seem, the person conferring the power, or the principal, which is not its meaning. To harmonize the inflexions of the word, procuration must stand for the power as received, — the agency as possessed and exercised; and such is, we think, its accepted use and meaning. It is quite true that in one meaning of procuration it is well rendered by power of attorney; but it is the power considered as being held and exercised by the agent, not in its aspect of an authority issuing from the principal.

Procuration fee

The fee which a scrivener or broker was allowed to take for making a bond, i Bl. Com. 157. Procurations, in ecclesiastical law, were a species of payment made by parish priests to bishops and archdeacons, to secure or recompense their visits. According to Jacob, the visitor formerly demanded a proportion of meat and state of the church; afterwards, these were turned into annual payments of a certain sum, which is called a procuration, — being so much given to the visitor ad procurandum cibum etpotum. Procuration, in this sense, is defined by Va Uensis, writing in 1290, to be the furnishing of the necessary expenses, which is due from the church or monastery to him upon whom is incumbent, by virtue of his ofl Boe, the right and the burden of visitation, whether he be bishop, or archdeacon, or dean, or legate of the most high pontiff. Thus we read that " on Wednesday, on the feast of St. Luke the Evangelist, the lord bishop took his procuration in meat and drink at Bordesley, and passed the night there." Cowel. Procurator-fiscal. In Scotland, the title of the public prosecutor for each district, — corresponding somewhat to the procureur du roi in France, or to the county or district attorney in the United States. He institutes the preliminary inquiry, into crime within his district, acting generally under the instructions of the lord advocate. Wharton; Mozley §• W.

Procurator litis

The prosecutor or manager of one's cause; the designar tion, in the Roman civil law, of an official analogous to attorney-at-law in common-law courts. Special distinctions were, however, jnade, according to which this title particularly designated one who managed a plaintiff's cause in his absence. See Burrill. Procurator negotiorum. A title in the civil law, corresponding to our attorney in fact; a manager of business affairs for another person. Procurator in rem suam. Proctor in his own affair. A term of the Scotch law, importing that one is acting as attorney as to his own property. When an assignment of a thing is made, and a procuration or power of attorney is given to the assignee to take it into possession, he is called procmator in rem suam. See Bouvier. Procuratorium; procuratory. Tlie name of the usual instrument by which any religious person or community used to constitute or delegate their procurator or ■ J'roouratory of resignation. A mandate or commission whereby a tenant of land in Scotland empowers a person whose name is left blank to appear in presence of the superior lord, and resign the lands to him, either that the lands may remain the property of the superior, in which case it is said to be a resignation ad remanentiam, or for the purpose of the superior's giving out the feu (i.e. making a fresh grant of the land) to a new vassal, or to the former vassal and a new series of heirs, which is said to be a resignation infavorem. Bell. Thus a procuratory of resignation corresponds to the surrender of an English copyhold.

Paterson.