tenth is a term of comparison and quantity, and has direct relation to that interest which the proprietaries had acquired, and might acquire, as a distinct individual property in the soil. I consider, therefore, both manor and tenth, as here used, as designating estate and interest, and not geographical limits. And why should it be held a reservation, by geographical limits? Let it be remarked, that it is no immaterial question to the defendants in the Court below, not only as it affects their interests, but as it affects their claims upon the justice and impartial legislation of country. There can be no reason assigned, why they should be excluded from the benefits which this act confers upon citizens of their class, and, in fact, subjected to confiscation. There are important interests growing out of this act to all other landholders, upon common terms; they are exempted from quit-rents, and the lien for the balance of purchase money is taken from off their lands. Can there be a reason assigned, why those of this class who, by the caprice or cupidity of the proprietaries, or their agents, have been embraced within the lines of their surveys, should be excluded from the common benefits extended to their fellow citizens? The injustice of such a discrimination is conclusive on the construction of thea ct, if an act is to be construed according to the intent of the Legislature. With regard to those who held of the manor, or held, as is usually said, on terms.agreed, the case is widely different. It is the effect of their own individual contracts with the proprietary. They are, by the nature of 1824. Kirk V. Smith. 1824. Kirk V. Smith. their relation to the proprietaries, distinguished from those of the other class, and have nothing to complain of. Their quit-rents and arrears were considered as debts due to their landlord, and the Legislature intended to take from the Penns nothing which belonged to them in their individual capacity. Again; extending the construction of the act to the geographical limits of the manor, leads to the most absurd consequences. It has been insisted, that it was lawful, in surveying the manors, to include within their boundaries the grants to individuals. This is readily conceded; and the inference from the fact, is directly the reverse of what has been attributed to it. Did the Legislature mean, by the proviso in favour of the Penns, to reserve to them their legitimate tenths; or did they mean, by possibility, to reserve to them half the State? There cannot be a doubt that, although any particular survey had embraced half a county, yet if the vacant land within it had amounted to no more than a tenth, the appropriation would have been duly made, and valid. But could the Legislature ever have intended to exclude all the individuals thus circumscribed, from the common benefits of grantees on the common terms? to have subjected them to the most odious and unmerited exceptions? Could the State have intended to permit the proprietaries, under the pretext of surveying a tenth, to cast their net over half its limits? It was for the very reason that including individual surveys made them no part of the manor, that the right to include previous locations to individuals was tolerated. It had not entered into the mind of man to conceive, that they thereby produced any change in the relation which subsisted between those individuals and the Commonwealth; or could expose them to be separated from the mass of the community, in the several legislation of the State; or exclude them from an equal participation in all the benefits of the revolution. But by this geographical construction, without any act or offence on their part, they are shut out from immunities extended to others, who had no greater claims upon the community than themselves. But again; if we are to construe this act without a reference to its general spirit and intent, we have but to carry the principle through, in order to involve us in irreconcilable absurdity, and such as will oblige us, for the purpose of common sense, to come back to the very principle of construction which I would apply to the law throughout. A liberal construction of the 8th section, vests in the Penns the whole geographical contents of their manors, whether sold or unsold; and then adds to the grant the rents reserved out of the parts sold. The words are, "All the lands, &c. duly surveyed, &c., together with the quit or other rents, or arrearages of rent, reserved out of the said proprietary tenths, or manors, or any part or parts thereof sold." Now, to reduce this section to the standard of common sense, we have at once to reject the geographical limits, and circumscribe the thing granted to the estate or interest existing in the Penns at the time specified, 1824. Kirk V. Smith. 1824. Kirk 1. Smith. Nor is it immaterial, to note the particular phraseology here made use of. The words are, "reserved out of the said proprietary tenths, or manors, or the part or parts thereof which have been sold." Now the lands sold to these defendants below, were sold out of the general funds of the State, and the quit-rent on these was reserved out of the land of the State, and not of the manor, for that had no legal existence when this sale and reservation were made. The land was not sold as part of the manor, nor was the rent reserved out of part of the manor. But, secondly; there is not a pretext for this supposed resulting legal estate in the Penns, except the assumed reservation to them of the balance of purchase money on the grants held within their lines upon common terms. And how does this stand? It will be found to be only an implied grant, to which this implied legal estate is appended; an implication tacked to another implication; and finally, as the concluding link of this chain of implication, that ejectment is the remedy reserved for the recovery of that balance of the purchase money, which is itself the subject of the first implication. If the rights of the Penns be circumscribed by the positive enactments of this law, then are they not only precluded from all claim to the balances due by this class of grantees, but also from those due by every description of purchasers; for there is no positive provision in the law which vests those balances in them. Their quit-rents are expressly reserved to them in the manors, but not so Kirk Smith. with their balances of purchase money. But in 1824. the 9th and 10th sections, these arrearages of purchase money are excepted from the provisions of the law, without any express declaration to whom they shall belong; and from this, an implication is supposed to result in their favour. But surely, so far as relates to the balances due by the general grantees, the implication is so far from being a necessary implication, that its bearing is altogether the other way; the implied intent of the Legislature is against a construction so obviously inconsistent with the general purposes of that body; a construction producing such an unjust, unreasonable, and improbable discrimination between innocent and equally meritorious men of the same class. Construe the act so as to confine the grant to the Penns to their private interests in the manors, and it becomes sensible and consistent throughout; and while it secures to them, on the one hand, all the interests which, as individuals, they are entitled to; on the other hand, you extend to all other indiv:dual citizens, one uniform rále of legislation and relief. Again; there is no reason for supposing that when the Legislature uses the terms tenths and manors aforesaid, in the 9th section, or the said tenths and manors, in the 10th section, that it uses them in any other sense than that in which they are used in the 8th section. The terms used, in fact, identify their meaning. But a correct construction of the terms used in the 8th section, in describing these tenths, or manors, is fatal to all implication in favour of the Penns, with reference to any |