JB/095/065/001

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TURNPIKE - TRUSTEES.

Observations continued --

may be said of them; and doubt against doubt, that expression is the least exceptionable which is the shortest
and most familiar.

The original seems to have been framed upon these considerations: 1. that a man may There are two ways in which
a man makes an advantage of his estate; either 1st by taking either 1st the specific profits of it himself, or 2. a
price in lieu of them: the word possession was therefore inserted to express the 1st of these cases. The words "Receipt
of the rents and profits" to express the 2d — rather indeed for the sake of explanation than that the word "possession"
was insufficient in a legal sense to include them both. 2. that this however, to understand it literally would comprize might include
the condition of a bare Steward or Trustees; and therefore the restriction "in his own right" was added.
Lastly that these words being frequently put in contradistinction in "his wife's" might of themselves be understood to
be so here; & therefore the last mentioned words were coupled with them.

Now I can see no reason why the word "enjoyment" should not be understood to express all this. A Man may
be said to enjoy an estate indifferently, where nothing more than a present enjoyment is required, whether it be
in his own right that he has comes to it, or his wife's; whether it be by taking the specific profits himself or
a rent instead in lieu of them: and he can not be said to enjoy it, by taking the profits or the rent of it as a
Trustee or Steward for another.

I have said, a present enjoyment; for it is remarkable that nothing more is here required: & it is from
this circumstance that it seems as if the design were rather to secure a certain rank in the persons invested
with these trusts, than a certain fortune; under the notion that a real estate to the amount specified is not
likely to have been though for ever so short a time in the hands of persons of that mean condition which
it is endeavoured to exclude.— In the other view the provision is manifestly imperfect. In any view indeed
consequences seem to arise from this latitude that are not scarce consistent with the design; that an Estates holden of
Will; by Sufferance; by Statute — Merchant or Eligit in satisfaction for a small debt, by the discharge of
which they might be annihilated in an instant; that all any of these, I say, might respectively constitute a qualification
: estates that most of which might easily be created for the purpose. were there any thing in the office that to
make it worth the while.

[... Lands Tenements and Hereditaments... O.] These 3 terms, it is observable, although the last of them, besides
what may be peculiar to itself, possesses the full import of the other two, are constantly brought in in a string like
To Mio and Arrio in the farce. The practise indeed, whatever may have been it's origin, whether an attachment
to a particular kind of jingle, or the common propensity of in the dealers in this kind of were to fill the bushel,
, will not, while the people have so little opportunity as they have at present of acquiring legal knowledge,
be altogether without a reason. The word Hereditaments were it to stand singly, would be absolutely unintelligible
to the greatest number: there is not one man in ten who knows an Hereditament from a salamander:
nor one in a thousand, even among persons of education who has an adequate Idea of it; and thence it is
that the others, ill-defined as their own meaning is in the conceptions of most men the generality, are yet become notwithstanding in a manner
necessary to put them men upon the scent of it's signification

[... Lands, Buildings Tithes Offices & Franchises ... N.] These are all the sorts of Hereditaments which (Annuities excepted
which from the difference in point of notoriety and security it seems hardly to have been intended to rank
with these) which can produce an annual income: take them together, they form an the expression which is as short as that in the original; & which would be
quite so, were the word [Franchises] omitted as perhaps it might be without any inconveniences, that is without having
the effect of excluding any person who would be admissible if it were inserted. However this be, the compiler it is plain
set no great store by any of the Hereditaments besides Lands, since he has dropped them in the case of Heirship
a few lines after

When nothing is to be gained in point of brevity, it is to no purpose to have recourse to generic expressions
which always the more general they are, that is the more abstract, are the less familiar, and therefore the less intelligible.
Now what a man is obliged to swear to, it is fit he should be able to understand.

Identifier: | JB/095/065/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 95.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	095	Main Headings
Folio number	065	Info in main headings field	sect. ii turnpike-trustees
Image	001	Titles	observations continued
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks	[[watermarks::[gr with crown motif] [lion with vryheyt motif]]]
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	30951
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