Confirmation

contracts, conveyancing.

1.

A contract by which that which was voidable, is made firm and unavoidable.

2. A species of conveyance. ' 1.

When a contract has been entered into by a stranger without authority, he in whose name it has been made, may by his own act confirm it; or if the contract be made by the formal manner confirm and render it valid; and in that event it will take effect, as between the parties, from the original making. To make a valid confirmation the party must be apprised of his rights, and where there has been a fraud in the transaction, he must be aware of it, and intend to confirm his contract.

Vide 1 Ball & Beaty, 353; 2 Scho. & Lef. 486; 12 Ves. 373; 1 Ves. Jr. 215. 2.

Lord Coke defines a confirmation of an estate, to be “a conveyance of an estate or right in esse, whereby a voidable estate is made sure and unavoidable; or where a particular estate is increased.” The first part of ths definition may be illustrated by the following case put by Littleton, § 516; where'a person lets land to another for the term of his life, who lets the same to another for forty years, by force of which he is in possession; if the lessor for life confirms the estate of the tenant for years, by deed, and afterwards the tenant for life dies, during the term; this deed will operate as a confirmation of the term for years. As to the latter branch of the definition; whenever a confirmation operates by way of increasing the estate, it is similar in every respect to a release that operates by way of enlargement, for there must be privity of estate, and proper words of limitation. The proper technical words of a confirmation are, ratify, approve and confirm. A confirmation does not strengthen a void estate. Cunfrmatro est nulla, ubt donum precedens est invalidum, et ubi donatio nulla est nec valebit confirmatio. For conformation may make a voidable or defeasible estate good, but cannot operate on an estate void in law. Co. Litt. 295. ‘The. canon law agrees with this rule, and hence the maxim Vide Vin. Ab. h. t.; Com. Dig. h. t.; Ayliff’s Pand. *386; 1 Ch. Pr. 315. CONFISCATION is the act by which the estate, goods or chattels, of a person who has been guilty of some crime, or whois a publicenemy, is declared to be forfeited for the benetit of the public treasury. When property is forfeited as a punishment for the commission of crime, it is usually called a forfeiture.

1 BI. Com. 299.

It-is a general rule that the property of the subjects of an enemy found in the country may be appropriated by the government, without notice, unless there be a treaty to the contrary. It has been frequently provided by treaty that foreign subjects should be permitted to remain and continue their business, notwithstanding a rupture between the governments, so long as they conducted themselves innocently; and when there was no such treaty, such a liberal permission has been announced in the very declaration of war. Vattel, liv.

3,c. 4, § 63.

Sir Michael Foster, (Discourses on High Treason, p- 185, 6,) mentions several instances of such declarations by the king of Great Britain, and he says that aliens were thereby enabled to acquire personal chattels and to maintain actions for the recovery of their personal rights, in as fulla manner as alien friends.

1 Kent. Com. 57.

In the United States, the broad principle has been assumed “ that war gives to the sovereign full right to take the persons and confiscate the property of the enemy wherever found. The mitigations of this rigid rule, which the policy of modern times has introduced into practice, will more or less affect the exercise of this right, but cannot impair the right itself.” 8 Cranch, possession of their neighbours; and when war breaks out, the question what shall be done with enemy’s property found in the country, is one rather of policy than of law, and is properly addressed to the consideration of the legislature, and not to courts of law. ‘The strict right of confiscation exists in Congress; and without a legislative act authorising its confiscation, it cannot be condemned.

8 Cranch, 128, 9.

See Chit. Law of Nations, c.

3; Marten’s Law of Nat. lib. 8, c. 3, s 9; Burlamaqui, Princ. of Pol. Law, part 4,c.7; Vattel, liv. 3,c.

4, § 63, The claim of a right to confiscate debts, contracted by individuals in times of peace, and which remain due to subjects of the enemy in time of war, rests very much upon the same principles as that concerning the enemy’s tangible property, found in the country at the commencement of the war. But it is the universal practice to forbear to seize and confiscate debts and credits.

1 Kent. Com. 64, 5.