Kirk V. Smith. 1824. interest in the lands legally seated, previous to their approp.iation. The words are, "tenths, or manors, duly surveyed and returned into the land office." But who will deny, that these words are to be construed with reference to the intent and effect of such surveys? And what was that intent and effect? simply to appropriate unseated lands. Would these proprietaries have been content in laying off these surveys, to have been precluded and deprived of half their interest by previous surveys, over which they could not have exercised the right of selling or retaining, as they thought proper? If not, then, so far as relates to previously ceded lands, they never were appropriated by them, and it cannot be predicated of them, that in the sense of the parties they were surveyed and returned. The construction now contended for, is obviously an after thought of the plaintiffs below, growing entirely out of a supposed ambiguity in the words of the confiscation act, and would have been strenuously resisted, had they been so applied when their surveys of manors were first made. Again; the rule of construction applicable to leases and wills are not essentially different in their principles. In legislating on this subject, the State had assumed all the rights, and, at least, could exercise all the powers of a manor-holder, in making his last will. Although by the charter, the purchasers under manors are restricted from any alienation of their purchases, by which they might be devested of the incident of holding directly of the manor, it is obvious that such a change of estate might be produced, by the act of the manorholder. Suppose, then, the grantees of the manor of Springetsbury had sold any portion of the soil, and devested it of this incident, lying, we may suppose, in the very centre of the whole, would a devise in the very words of this act," to wit, of the manor of Springetsbury, as duly surveyed and returned," have been construed to carry the portion previously disposed of? Or, to pursue the analogy further; suppose the purchase money unpaid, and a covenant by indenture of the tenant to pay the money to the vendor and his heirs, and even to hold the land charged with the payment, would a devise of the manor carry the money so reserved, or the devise of the debt carry the freehold in the land sold? But, on this doctrine of implication I will make another observation. It is rebutted by the provisions of the instrument itself; and, in the case of will, would be considered as an undisposed residue; for, when we look through the whole act, and find this 8th section to be the only one which purports to give any thing to the proprietaries, their whole interest having been previously confiscated; and when, in this section, we find their in-. dividual interests in the soil of the State, whether acquired as other individuals, or as proprietary appropriations, carefully designated, and even to the arrearages of quit-rents on such lands, expressly reserved to them; surely the implication arises, that this section was intended to embrace the whole provision meant to be made for them out of the common patrimony of the State. 1824. Kirk V. Smith. 1824. Kirk V. Smith. The omission to mention and reserve the arrearages of purchase money due on the manorial sales, might, with much greater reason, be urged as raising a presumption against their claims even to those balances. This, however, I reject; and for a reason which serves to throw some light upon the subsequent clauses of this statute; which is, that as the Legislature, in so many words, recognises these alienations as individual sales, they very properly considered the balances due thereon as private debts; and, as no confiscation of private debts could be implied from the enacting clauses of the act, so no express reservation of such balances was deemed necessary. The subsequent exceptions in favour of balances due on manorial lands, therefore, I consider as intended only to guard against an extension of the words of the law to such individual contracts. The nine tenths of the soil, and the balances of purchase money due on such parts as had passed to individuals, they considered as the property of the body politic, and appropriated it as such to the State. The one tenth set apart for the proprietaries, they propose to put on the same footing with their individual interests, properly so called, and with it, to reserve to them the balances due on the lands appropriated to themselves. These are fair and consistent inferences, if not positive enactments; but it would be much more consistent with the positive enactments, to hold, that all the balances due on the lands circumscribed by the manorial lines, were still at the disposition of the Legislature, than that they meant to confer on the Penns more than they have declared, 1824. or made discriminations among the citizens at large, which no reason or policy could justify. Upon the questions that have been raised upon the operation of the law, commonly called the seven years law, or the law of 1705, (though of much greater antiquity,) it may be proper to make a few remarks. I cannot see a reason why this law should have been supposed obsolete, more especially with reference to the early day in which it must have acted upon the interests of the parties in this cause. On the contrary, it appears to have been a favourite law of the colony, for we find it enacted and re-enacted, in opposition to reiterated repeals by the King in council, as will be seen by reference to Carey and Bioren's edition of the Laws. In the same work, we find it printed under sanction of the Legislature, and republished under the same authority, as lately as 1810. Indeed, upon reference to the concessions which composed the fundamental laws of the colony, we find the very law in its present terms; and are led to the conclusion, that its constitutional character gave it a peculiar sanctity in the eyes of the Commonwealth. Another consequence, also, results from its very early enactment; which is, that, contrary to a ground taken in argument, it must be construed as having a prospective effect, since it was adopted at a time when there could not have existed a case for it to govern, if solely retrospective. Of this law it has been remarked, that for 116 years it does not appear that a cause Kirk Smith. 1824. Kirk V. Smith. has been won or lost on the basis of it. And had the decisions of the State Courts, prior to the revolution, been preserved, the observation would have had its influence. But in the absence of reports of such adjudications, there cannot exist such satisfactory evidence on the subject as to sustain the fact. One thing is very certain, that some beneficial influence must have been felt from its existence, or it would not have been so often and so pertinaciously insisted on by the colonists. If it covered their estates in no other way than by preventing suits, its great purposes were answered; and its sovereign influence, in this respect, may well be inferred, from the assumed non-existence of decisions at law. It preserved health, if it did not cure disease. At present, it is unquestionably repealed by the act of 1785, for the two acts cannot stand together. The latter act extends the limitation of suits to twenty-one years; but if the limitation of seven years would produce the same effect, then would the prior law repeal the latter, or render it a mere nullity. And this accounts for its not having been heard of for the last forty years, which may be called the period of reported causes. Its repeal, however, at that time, has no influence upon its previous effect upon the rights of these parties. It has been remarked of this law, as incontestable, that it could not convert an equitable into a legal estate: But-this doctrine appears to me to do more than render the law obsolete; it renders it a mere nullity in its origin. What is gained by an estate's continuing an equitable estate? From |
