nation of the term, is likewise valid. The law allows a long term to be carved, as a separate self-existent interest, out of the absolute ownership, and thenceforth to continue as an independent estate, and it would be a clear contradiction to hold that a valid interest could not subsist expectant on that estate. It is in no wise, however, a consequence of this state of things (but something essentially different), to admit of the limitation of remote interests (whether forthwith alienable or otherwise), in forms which do not spring out of, or take their origin in, the necessary legal relation of one estate which is subsisting, to other interests which are likewise subsisting (although future, because subject and postponed to the former). One other observation remains: - The test ordinarily allowed for determining the presence or absence of the danger of perpetuities in respect of future limitations, is not their capacity of being alienated, but of being destroyed. Extinction and not co-operation is what the law requires to be attainable, in respect of remote future estates, before it acknowledges their remoteness to be harmless. It is to reverse the policy of the law, to rely on the vitality, for the purposes of transfer, of a remote expectancy, as a condition which ought to ensure its validity. If a case be supposed of an estate limited to arise and take effect upon a remote event or contingency, in such a way that it would be uncertain until the actual happening of that event or contingency, whether the gift would ever take effect at all, such a limitation, by our law, would be void, and yet it would fall within the provisions of the new enactment, rendering such possibilities alienable. Now, not any executory devise or shifting use, whether limited to a person in esse or not, vests any estate in the party to whom it is made, before the event on which it depends has taken place. Supposing, therefore, an executory limitation so constructed that it may possibly not take effect until after the limits of perpetuity are passed, it is, ex necessitate, a case where the interest under the limitation will remain unvested for all that time, and where, consequently, until such time has elapsed there will be no estate in any one by virtue of the limitation; and, as the result of such a condition of the gift, it must upon all principle fail as being a perpetuity. The instance has been put of a vested remainder expectant upon a long beneficial term of years, that is, postponed to a term not created for limited purposes merely, but which will carry along with it the beneficial use and ownership of the land; and it is said that here is practically a perpetuity, quite as much as in the case of an executory limitation to a person in esse and ascertained, to arise upon an indefinite event. But, how, in an argument of this kind, can anything turn upon the distinction between a beneficial and a trust-term? There is no difference between them in the estimation of a Court of law; and if law allows the validity of the expectant remainder in the one case, equity must allow it in both. The conclusion, then, is, that the circumstance of contingent and executory interests having been rendered alienable at law as well as in equity, does not avail to render valid a contingent or executory limitation which would in other respects be too remote, even though it happen to be limited to a person in esse and ascertained, who might forthwith dispose of the interest. SUPPLEMENT TO THE CHAPTER ON THE HISTORY AND PRO GRESSIVE ESTABLISHMENT OF A RULE FOR PREVENTION OF REMOTENESS UNDER THE NAME OF THE RULE AGAINST PERPETUITIES. SOME of the cases which have occurred since the year 1833 have given occasion to an examination of the older authorities by which the history of the Rule against Perpetuities is traced; and which it was the object of this chapter to place before the reader. The result has always been an adherence to the limits of remoteness as defined and adjusted in 1833, by Cadell v. Palmer; a decision which the ultimate Court of Appeal has on several recent occasions shewn itself well satisfied with (c). But the case of Taylor v. Biddal (d), which first seemed to sanction the period of lives in being and twenty-one years for a perpetuity, has been the object of some just strictures in the case of Lord Dungannon v. Smith (e). In reference to Taylor v. Biddal, it was well observed that no objection was raised in that case, that the devise (ƒ) to the "heirs of the body of B. as they should attain their respective ages of twenty-one," might let in a succession of minorities of children and grandchildren, so as to exceed the limits of twenty-one years after a life in being before the estate would vest; but, on the contrary, that the case was argued and decided upon the facts that had actually taken place. It was observed that Taylor v. Biddal was decided when the rule by which executory devises were to be governed was in its infancy, and that it was the first case which seemed to extend the time for the vesting of executory (c) Lord Dungannon v. Smith, 12 Cl. & Fin. 546; Broughton v. Broughton, 1 House of Lords' cases, 406; Cole v. Sewell, 12 Jur. 927. (d) 2 Mod. 289. devises from the termination of lives in being to the period of twenty-one years beyond. It is a clear ground of objection, however, to Taylor v. Biddal, that it would go to prove too much, viz., that a bequest simply to the first heir of the body at twenty-one, would be good. The case is, consequently, an unsound one, although probably a reason may be found for the conclusion adopted in the conjecture offered by one of the learned judges in Lord Dungannon v. Smith. Sir Nicolas Tindal remarked that the case of Stephens v. Stephens (g) indirectly afforded decisive proof that Taylor v. Biddal was dealt with as if the executory devise had been limited to sons, because Stephens v. Stephens was a case of a devise to such son of the body of W. S. as should attain twenty-one, and the Court of B. R., on certifying their opinion in the latter case, referred to Taylor v. Biddal as the only authority applicable to a suspension of the vesting until a son unborn should attain twenty-one. The result, then, as intimated in the previous work (h) is, that the extension of the limits of Perpetuity to twenty-one years beyond a life in being, was not thoroughly settled until the decision of the case of Stephens v. Stephens. Two other decisions of later date than Taylor v. Biddal, viz. those of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke in Gower v. Grosvenor (i), and Trafford v. Trafford (j), have likewise been overruled (k), after repeated animadversions upon them in other cases. Turning to another question, and considering whether the case of Cadell v. Palmer (1), which concluded the long line of authorities comprising the history of the Rule against Perpetuities, has finally and conclusively settled the utmost boundaries of legal remoteness, the writer desires to speak again of the case of Smith v. Farr (m), in which a contention arose that seems (g) Ca. T. T. 228. (h) Treat. Perp. 143, 147. (i) 5 Madd. 337. (j) 3 Atk. 347. (k) Lord Dungannon v. Smith, 12. Cl. & Fin. 627; Rowland v. Morgan, 6 Hare; 12 Jur. 348, affirmed by Lord Cottenham, C., on appeal. (1) 7 Bligh. N. S. 202. (m) 3 You. & Coll. 328. See Treat. Perp. 726. not to be excluded (in terms at least) by the decision in Cadell v. Palmer. In Smith v. Farr the gift was to the testator's children for their lives, and after their decease, to the testator's surviving grandchildren who should be then living, until the youngest of them should attain twenty-one, and upon the youngest of them attaining such age, unto and between all such his said grandchildren and the children of any such grandchild who might be then dead leaving issue; such children to take only the parent's share. It was contended that the gift to the children of grandchildren was void for remoteness; and the objection was directed to the consideration that, in ascertaining the operation of the gift to those great-grandchildren, a term of nine months as the ordinary period of gestation might be required to be used (in addition to the lives in being and twenty-one years recognised by the rule) under circumstances or for purposes which, according to the principle of Cadell v. Palmer, would exclude the case from those excepted instances in which a term of gestation is allowed to be taken into account. The precise ground upon which this conclusion was drawn is not to be easily collected from the report; in some parts of which the ground of objection suggested seems to refer to a different circumstance or feature in the case from what is intimated upon the same point in other places. However, it is clear that the objection was urged upon one of two arguments :-First, the gift to the great-grandchildren was possibly contended to be void on the ground that some of the great-grandchildren might be in ventre sa mere on the attainment by the youngest grandchild of the age of twenty-one, which would be a contingent period for gestation added on to the full term of lives in being and twenty-one years, in obtaining which term itself two several periods for gestation might have been already used, namely, one in respect of a child who might be in ventre sa mere at the time of the testator's decease, and the other in respect of a grandchild who might be in ventre sa mere at the determination of the life-estates. If this formed the ground of the |