Definition
A conclusion to the country is a pleading maneuver in common law procedure by which a party, having denied a material fact alleged by the opposing party, submits the disputed question to determination by a jury. When a defendant traversed (denied) a material allegation in the plaintiff's declaration, the pleading was said to "conclude to the country" — that is, it closed with a formal demand for trial by jury, the jury being metaphorically identified with "the country" as the representative body of the community called upon to decide disputed facts. The conclusion took a standardized form: "and of this he puts himself upon the country" (or its Latin equivalent, *et de hoc ponit se super patriam*), to which the opposing party was required to respond with a matching joinder in issue.
The conclusion to the country was the procedurally correct way to close a plea of traverse. A pleading that traversed a fact but failed to conclude properly — by instead concluding with a demurrer, or by omitting the formal conclusion altogether — was defective in form and exposed the pleader to challenge.
Common Language
This is pure legal jargon of the common law pleading system. "Country" in ordinary modern English refers to a nation or rural landscape; neither Wiktionary nor Webster's 1913 preserves the specialized sense of "the country" as a jury of one's neighbors and fellow subjects. The gap is significant: a researcher encountering this phrase in a historical pleading or treatise who reads "country" in its modern sense will entirely miss the procedural meaning.
Common Confusion
CONCLUSION TO THE COUNTRY vs. CONCLUSION IN LAW: These are the two alternative closing forms available in common law pleading. A conclusion to the country submits a disputed fact to a jury; a conclusion in law closes a pleading with a demurrer, submitting to the court a question of law that arises on admitted or assumed facts. They are mutually exclusive — a pleading that traverses on fact must conclude to the country; a pleading that concedes the facts but contests their legal sufficiency must conclude in law. Confusing the two produced a formal defect that could be exploited by opposing counsel.
Core Elements
A valid conclusion to the country required:
1. A preceding traverse — the party must have denied a specific material allegation of fact rather than admitted it or demurred to its legal sufficiency.
2. The formal concluding formula — some variation of "and of this he puts himself upon the country," signaling the demand for jury trial.
3. Joinder in issue — the opposing party was required to respond with a reciprocal formula ("and the plaintiff does the like"), completing the issue and making the case ready for trial by jury.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is encountered almost exclusively in sources predating the procedural reforms of the nineteenth century. In England, the Common Law Procedure Acts of 1852 and 1854 swept away most of the formal requirements of special pleading, including the rigid distinction between conclusions to the country and conclusions in law. In the United States, the Field Code of 1848 in New York and subsequent code pleading reforms in other states similarly displaced the old pleading system. Researchers working with pre-reform case reports, plea rolls, or pleading manuals — particularly English materials before 1852 and American materials before code adoption in any given state — will encounter this term regularly.
The phrase is a reliable diagnostic marker: its presence in a document almost certainly places it within the formal common law pleading era. Be alert to the fact that older American decisions sometimes cited English pleading authorities interchangeably with domestic ones, so the underlying doctrine may have English roots even in an American case.
Researchers should also note that "conclusion" in pleading contexts carries a technical meaning distinct from its use elsewhere in legal writing. The Rapalje & Lawrence entry cross-references several related senses of "conclusive" and "conclusive and final" that appear in different procedural contexts (agreements, statutes, rules of reference) — these are distinct usages and should not be imported into the pleading sense.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence does not provide a standalone entry for "conclusion to the country" but cross-references it under the heading for CONCLUSION, directing the reader to TRY (evidently a cross-reference to trial). The entry also catalogs related uses of "conclusive" and "conclusive and final" in non-pleading contexts, citing Pennsylvania and New York authorities. This reflects the broader pattern in nineteenth-century American legal dictionaries: pleading terms of art were often compressed or cross-referenced rather than fully defined, on the assumption that practitioners working in the formal pleading system would already possess the necessary background from treatises such as Chitty on Pleading or Stephen on Pleading. Researchers relying solely on dictionary sources for this term will find them insufficient and should consult the pleading treatises directly.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is a product of common law pleading and applies wherever that system operated. Retention of common law pleading in American states varied; some states preserved formal pleading well into the late nineteenth century while others adopted code pleading early. The term has no operative significance in modern American or English procedure.