JB/028/120/003

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11)

Common Law

4. As to the Rules of expounding Wills, what those may
be I do not properly understand: one such rule but one only our
Author himself has given us at the end of a list of six
rules for expounding deeds.† † B.II. ch.23. p.270 381. To this rule no possible
objection can be made: it is an excellent one for expounding
Wills: and not a whit less excellent for expounding Billet-douxs or Newspapers. It is neither
more nor less than to bethink one's self what it was
the writer meant: which is precisely I trust that the
course a man would take who was to sit down to the
business without a rule. That the good King Alfred or
any of our Saxon legislators in the simplicity of their ignorance ever sat down to frame
such a rule, is what I see no reason to suppose: it
savours much more of the pompous nothingness of
half-learned pedants, such as the law swarmed with in
the beginning of the last century and close of the preceding.
The truth seems to be, that as a an original rule, nobody
would ever have thought of giving it:– nobody would have
ever thought of giving laying down a rule so nugatory. The character view
in which it came to be given is that of an exception to
another rule: in wh which character it is far from being
nugatory. To the knavery or imbecility one knows
not very well which to impute it to of the antient Lawyers, we owe it, that
this rule is not a nugatory one: that it is necessary in
order to warrant the doing that by this particular species
of written instrument [of volition] which ought to be done
by all. It is because on account of no rule that powers, that Deeds inter vivos are not
to be construed according to the intent that a rule becomes

Identifier: | JB/028/120/003 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 28.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	028	Main Headings	comment on the commentaries
Folio number	120	Info in main headings field	common law
Image	003	Titles
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	4
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	b9 / e10 / b11 / e12
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks	[[watermarks::[monogram] [britannia with shield emblem]]]
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	9385
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