in a manner most prejudicial and disastrous to themselves.

I cannot regret, then, that the conclusion which I arrive at, and which I trust I have arrived at independently of any other considerations than those which, sitting here to interpret the law, are the only ones which should influence my mind, should carry with it the consequence, that those who have had the benefit shall pay the price, that those who have had the uninterrupted enjoyment of these estates shall abide by the condition on which that enjoyment was secured to them.

On account of the extraordinary novelty and importance of the case, each of the three puisne Justices of the Court who had heard the arguments in the cause (Mr. Justice Willes, Mr. Justice Williams, and Mr. Justice Byles,) delivered a full judgment, in which each dealt with the several points as they assumed more or less prominence to his view. In In the conclusion, many of the points taken by the Lord Chief Justice in his general judgment were much enlarged and illustrated; but as no additional principle was stated, it is unnecessary to do more than to say that these learned Judges concurred with the Lord Chief Justice in every point.

The rule Nisi obtained by the defendants to enter the verdict for them, was therefore discharged.

lish lawsuits, has come to a final end and determination. The great Thellusson Will Case was a sound of note to our grandfathers, and of wide-eyed astonishment to our fathers; but to ourselves there has been a long void, a chasm of time connected from bank to bank by a suspension bridge of chancery suits, traversed only by lawyers and the few heirs to the immense estates, who eagerly peered into the drear abyss only to see the torrent of their fortunes rush intangibly by. The case has been well described by one of the admirable essayists who moralize the lessons of the day:-*

"Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of vanity, and pursue with eagerness the phantom of a name, attend to the history of one richer than Rasselas,-even to the history of one Peter Thellusson, late of the city of London, merchant.

"It is now sixty-two years since Peter Thellusson took stock of his worldly possessions, and found that he had 600,000l. in money, and land of the annual value of 45007. Peter Thellusson had satisfied the ordinary ambition of an English bourgeois

he had founded a family. Peter Isaac, the son of his youth, and the prop of his house, was heir to 35,000l. a year in money and land, and might claim to be a born gentleman. Peers and peeresses might hereafter spring in intermediate succession from the loins of that denizen of a

CASE.

The most ancient and most enduring, and, in many respects, the most extraordinary of Eng

the Bank. The best men upon 'Change envied the rich and prosperous Peter Thellusson,

The Times, July 5.

who had no object of ambition unsatisfied. Peter was of a different mind; he had not nearly money enough. Let other men be satisfied to found one family; Peter was lucky enough to have three sons, and he would found three families. It was not that he loved his sons, or his sons' sons; but it was the hope and desire of this magnificently posthumous miser to associate his name in future generations with three colossal fortunes. If he did not love his sons, he did not hate them; he was simply indifferent to everything except to his one cherished object. Peter Thellusson took the very best legal advice, and made a will. He left a few trifling legacies, probably to show that no unnatural antipathy to his children tainted that will with mania. But his great fortune was all conveyed to trustees. It was to accumulate until every man, woman, and child of the offspring of Peter, and alive or begotten at the moment of Peter's death, should also be defunct. No one of the children or grandchildren who had ever looked Peter in the face, or trembled in his presence, or squalled at the sound of his harsh, hard voice, should ever be the richer for Peter's wealth.

of the general public. There were three sons and six grandsons of this malignant old merchant then alive-all destined to live the life of Tantalus; to see this great pagoda-tree growing up before them, yet never to pluck one unit of its fruit. The terms of the will enjoined, that when the last survivor of all the nine children and grandchildren should yield up his breath, then the charm was to end; the great mountain of accumulated wealth was to be divided into three portions, and one-third was to be given to each of the eldest male lineal descendants' of his three sons. Having thus done what he liked with his own, and excluded all his living progeny from all benefit, he ends with a whine to the Legislature worthy of Shylock appealing against mercy-he had earned his money with honesty and industry, and he hoped the Legislature would not alter his will. Of course, the first thing that followed was a chancery suit of the fattest bulk. The common-sense view of the case would have been to set aside the will, as the product of a diseased mind-a mind rendered morbid as to its disposing powers by dwelling upon an irrational object. But Lords Loughborough and Alvanley and Eldon, and Judges of kindred sympathies, seem to have been led by their love of art to admire the skill with which the technicalities of our blessed real property law had been adapted to the object of this old trader. Perhaps, also, they saw something eminently sane and matterof-fact in this good old sordid vice of accumulation, or were excited to admiration by seeing

the meanest vice of man expanded into something like sublimity in its gigantesque proportions. The litigation went up to the House of Lords, and the will was confirmed. This affair naturally made a great noise. The Legislature took it up, and, although they would not set aside the will by an ex post facto law, they branded Peter Thellusson's memory with the imputation of vanity, illiberality, and folly; and enacted by statute, 39th and 40th of George III., cap. 98, that the power of devising property for the purpose of accumulation shall be restrained in general to twenty-one years after the death of the testator. Persons of an arithmetical and statistical turn of mind also occupied themselves with the matter, and, with the aid of life insurance tables and Cocker, they calculated that this fund, accumulating at compound interest, could not amount to less than nineteen millions at the moment of distribution, and would very probably reach the tremendous figure of thirty-two millions. But nothing is so false as facts, except figures.' The calculators had forgotten to take account of that unknown quantity which must, in practical matters, be represented, not by the lettera, but by the word litigation. Contemporaneously with the chancery suit to set aside the will there was a crosssuit to have the trusts of the will performed under the direction of the Court of Chancery. That suit is now sixty years old, and, although children and grandchildren are dead, the suit is as hale and lively as it was in their earliest youth. That suit was

the true heir to Peter Thellusson, and it is still spending his money like a frolicksome young cornet.

"The last survivor of the nine

lives died in February, 1856, and four new bills were immediately filed. The property is now to be divided, not into thirds, but into moieties. There is, however, a question raised as to who is entitled. Who were the eldest male lineal descendants of old Peter Thellusson in February, 1856? There are two who are eldest in point of lineage, and two who are eldest in point of personal age. This point is still sub judice. It would not be very difficult to guess how it will be decided; but that is no matter of ours, nor would it have been a matter of the least interest to old Peter Thellusson. His object was to make the heap very large; he evidently cared not one lock of wool as to which of his descendants might be the possessors. The public interest in this long line of litigation is confined to its general aspect. Peter Thellusson's clever scheme has turned out a foolish failure. No single Thellusson will stalk over the land, overshadowing our dukes and crushing our barons by the magnitude of his territorial possessions. No thirtytwo millions of money are expanded into broad acres, where men may travel and say-Behold the conquests of the great Peter Thellusson.' Whether Lord Rendlesham and Charles Sabine Augustus Thellusson divide the estate as the eldest in lineage, or whether Thomas and Arthur take as eldest in years, we should equally desire to be able to call up old Peter Thellusson to see the division of his antici

pated accumulations. The court of Chancery has so clipped and pollarded his oak, that it is not much larger than when he left it. It would be fit punishment for that purse-proud, vain, cruel old man, to see that he disinherited his own children only to fatten a generation of lawyers; that he was the dupe of his own subtlety, and that his name, instead of being associated with the foundation of a house of fabulous wealth, is only known in connection with an abortive scheme of vulgar vanity.""

The popular language of this admirable paper contains a clear account of Peter Thellusson's will; but the demerits of the case and the absurdity of the arrangements become more clear when set forth in the proper jargon of the law. The ambitious miser devised to trustees all his real estates and the residue of his personal estate to be converted into real estate, upon trust, to accumulate the rents and profits during the lives of his three sons, Peter Isaac, George Woodford, and Charles, and of their sons, and the issue of such sons of the testator's three sons living at or born in due time after his death; and after the death of the survivor of such several persons to make an equal partition of the trust premises; and he directed

"The whole thereof divided into three lots of equal value, or as near thereto as possible, and that the premises contained in one of such allotments shall be conveyed to the use of the eldest male lineal descendant then living (and who shall be entitled to the first choice of such allotments) of my said son Peter Isaac

Thellusson in tail male, with remainder to the second, third, and fourth, and all and every other male lineal descnedant or descendants (who shall be incapable of taking as heir in tail male of any of the persons to whom a prior estate is thereby directed to be limited) of my said son Peter Isaac Thellusson successively in tail male, with remainder in equal moieties to the eldest and every other male lineal descendant or descendants then living of my said sons George Woodford Thellusson and Charles Thellusson, as tenants in common in tail male, in the same manner as herein before directed, with respect to the eldest and every other male lineal descendant and descendants of my said son Peter Isaac Thellusson, with cross remainders, between or among such male lineal descendants as aforesaid of my said sons George Woodford Thellusson and Charles Thellusson in tail male, or, in case there shall be but one such male lineal descendant, then to such one in tail male with remainder to the use of them, the said Matthew Woodford, James Stanley, and Emperor John Alexander Woodford, their heirs and assigns for ever, upon the trust and to and for the intents and purposes hereinafter mentioned and expressed and declared of and concerning the same.'

In consequence of the failure of male lineal descendants of George Woodford, the second son, when the period of partition arrived, the trust property became divisible into two lots only, one of which was to be conveyed to the "eldest male lineal descendant" of the eldest son Peter Isaac, the other to the

"eldest male lineal descendant" of the youngest son Charles.

In the suit "The Hon. Arthur Thellusson v. Lord Rendlesham and others," the question was, who was the " eldest male lineal descendant" of Peter Isaac. The plaintiff, who was born in 1801, and was the only surviving son of Peter Isaac, the first Lord Rendlesham, the eldest son of the testator, claimed to have one of the lots conveyed to him as the eldest male lineal descendant; the defendant, Lord Rendlesham, who was born in 1840, and was the only son of Frederick, third Lord Rendlesham, an elder son of Peter Isaac, contended that, though he was younger than the plaintiff in age, he was the eldest male lineal descendant according to the true construction of the will, as being the son of the plaintiff's elder brother, and therefore older in blood.

The cause was first heard before the Master of the Rolls, who decided in favour of Lord Rendlesham, the defendant. The cause was brought on appeal before the House of Lords, happily for the litigants the court of supreme and final jurisdiction. So great a cause, distinguished by such remarkable peculiarities, received all honours at their Lordships' hands. It was twice argued before their Lordships, sitting with the Judges as assessors, by the ablest counsel that wealth could command; and their Lordships, by the advice of the Lord Chancellor, put the following questions to the learned Judges:

First. Whether the devise by the testator of his lands, tenements, and hereditaments after the decease of the several person

Vor.. CI.

during whose lives the rents and profits of the same were directed to be accumulated (if it had been a devise of legal estates) to the eldest male lineal descendant then living of Peter Isaac Thellusson, George Woodford Thellusson, and Charles Thellusson respectively in tail male, is capable of an intelligible construction, or is void for uncertainty.

"Second. If at the time directed by the testator for the division of the estates into three lots, and for the conveyance to be made thereof, Peter Isaac Thellusson had had three sons, all of whom were dead, and the eldest of the three sons had left a son under age, and the second son had left a son of 21 years of age, and the third son had left a son of 30 years of age, and supposing it had been a devise of legal estates, which of the sons of the three sons would have been entitled to take under the devise?"

The learned Lords, having taken time to consider, delivered their several opinions. In answer to the first question, they were unanimous that the devise was capable of an intelligible construction. With regard to the second question, there was a diversity of opinion; but the majority concurred in holding that the word "eldest" used in the will as descriptive of the person who is to take a lot as a purchaser, when the time of accumulation ceased, does not mean the oldest man among his male lineal descendants, but that the testator meant and intended that the person who would be heir-at-law of Peter Isaac in tail male should take one of the lots as purchaser, by the designation of his eldest male lineal descendant.

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