Surety
Surety names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Surety SURETYSHIP failure of the principal
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
SURETYSHIP failure of the principal, is liable to pay the debt and damages; a bondsman, a bail. A surety of good behavior is a recognizance or obligation to the commonwealth entered into by a person with one or more sureties before some competent judge of record, whereby the parties acknowledge themselves to be indebted to the commonwealth in a specified amount, with condition to be void if the defendant shall demean and behave himself well, either generally or specially, for the time therein limited. It includes surety for the peace and something more. A justice may bind over all night-walkers, such as keep suspicious company, or are reported to be pilferers or robbers, common drunkards, cheats, idle vagabonds, and other persons whose misbehavior may reasonably bring them within the general words of the statute as persons not of good fame. A surety of the peace is the acknowledgement of a bond to the commonwealth, taken by a competent judge of record, for keeping the peace.
Surety SURETYSHIP Black Hole
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
SURETYSHIP Black Hole. He succeeded his grandfather, Ali Verdy Khan, in 1756, and within two months of his accession found a pretext for marching on Calcutta. On the arrival of Clive and Admiral Watson he retreated to Moorshedabad, but was routed at the battle of Plassey (June 23, 1757). He then fled up the Ganges, but was betrayed by a fakir, and was put to death by order of the son of Meer Jaffier, the new nawab. Surajah Dowlah's reign lasted 15 months, his age at the time of his death being barely 20.
Surety SURETYSHIP, in law one who is bound with and for another who is primarily liable
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
SURETYSHIP, in law one who is bound with and for another who is primarily liable, and who is called the principal; one who enters into a bond or recognizance to answer for his payment of a debt, or for the performance of some act, and who, in case of the
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 still described suretyship as a personal act ond ond or ond or recognizance given by one individual for another, and it listed the people a justice might bind over to keep "surety of good behavior": "night-walkers, such as keep suspicious company... common drunkards, cheats, idle vagabonds." That sweeping police power is largely gone in the United States: in Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville (1972) the Supreme Court struck down a classic vagrancy ordinance built on such language as unconstitutionally vague, and comparable open-ended binding-over powers in England were curbed after the European Court of Human Rights ruled against a "contra bonos mores" order in Hashman and Harrup v. United Kingdom (1999). The commercial half of the subject has also shifted from friends and neighbours signing bonds to corporate surety companies: the federal Miller Act of 1935 requires payment and performance bonds on most federal construction contracts, and American suretyship doctrine was restated in the Restatement (Third) of Suretyship and Guaranty in 1996. The core principle Collier's states ond that the surety is bound with and for a principal and must pay on the principal's default ond is still black-letter law, as is the old rule that a guarantee must generally be in writing.
Written for this edition, 2026.