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became entitled to the testator's personal estate. [256] That the making purchases with the testator's money which lay dead in the Bank, and the taking new securities for old ones, could not in this case be considered as acts of disposition, or as converting and changing the estate of William Lightburne, into the estate of Mary Lightburne; for she never designed to vary the disposition made by her father, but considered herself bound by it, and looked upon her cousins as entitled to her father's estate. The money which she laid out in purchases, and the money which she called in and invested in new securities, were parts of that estate, and continued really and substantially to be so, although differently modified. And it seemed too harsh to say in a Court of Equity, that acts intended by Mary to secure and improve her father's estate, for the persons entitled thereto under his will, should be construed into acts to deprive them of that estate, contrary to her intention.
On the other side it was said (W. de Grey, A. Forrester), that this was a bequest of a mere personality to the testator's daughter, with a power to dispose of it as she should think fit, and if all was to go to the appellants by the latter clause, she could not have disposed of any part as she thought fit, contrary to the express power given her; so that the latter clause of the will was contradictory to the first absolute bequest, and must therefore be rejected, as repugnant and void; since an absolute and a partial interest in one and the same thing, are a contradiction in terms. That here was no partial interest in the things given to Mary, which would render her an usufructuary owner, entitled to the annual produce only, but without power over the capital: she might have sold, given, or wasted the whole capital itself, as her absolute property and no Court of Equity could have interfered to prevent her, either at the instance of the appellants, or any others. Had the like bequest been of a particular or specific chattel, her power over it would have been the very same; and the rule holds the stronger in the case of a residue, compounded of every species of effects, than in that of a specific thing, which carries its own ear-mark; as this last may be pursued through several hands, which the other cannot. That as she had the full property and right of disposal in herself, so she exercised that right, by turning what part of the testator's effects she pleased into money, changing the old securities for new ones taken in her own name, and mixing and confounding the whole with the other parts of her effects, as making but one bulk or mass, which she considered as entirely her own; none of which she could have done, if she had but a partial interest, without the concurrence of those entitled to the capital of the residue as left by her father; who might have stopped her hands upon intermeddling therewith, or pretending to make any variation therein. That the appellants had not the least colour of right to the intestate's separate estate, whether under the settlement, or derived from other relations, or acquired by her own œconomy. And after the abovementioned confusion of her whole effects, the impossibility of taking an account of her father's sup-[257]-posed residue, as it stood at his death, was an additional argument in support of the construction of his will made by the two decrees appealed from; and therefore it was hoped that they would be affirmed.
Accordingly, after hearing counsel on this appeal, it was ordered and adjudged, that the same should be dismissed, and the decrees therein complained of, confirmed. (Jour. vol. 30. p. 475.)
Case 44.—Arthur French, and Another,—Appellants; Richard Caddell, and Others,—Respondents [15th March 1765].
[Mews' Dig. x. 1566; xii. 98; xiv. 1575; xv. 1028.]
Sarah Farrel had issue by Iriel Farrel, Esq. her first husband, three sons, James, Fergus, and Ulick, and six daughters, namely, Mary, mother of the respondent John
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