LAST WILLS AND TESTAMENTS. 529 



It suggests a familiarity with laws past and laws present, and it means, 

 if it means anything, that competent intelligence must guide the hand 

 which guides the pen. 



In view of these facts, there is small reason to complain at the 

 litigation so frequently entailed in connection with estates. To pre- 

 pare or draw a will is not the simple matter some imagine it to be, 

 even when short and free from intricate questions of law. The 

 slightest ambiguity in language, giving opportunity for dispute as to 

 the testator's real intentions ; ignorance of the legal effect of certain 

 dispositions made in the instrument ; wishes imperfectly expressed ; 

 illegible writing ; erasures ; interlineations, and circumstances similar 

 in character, are all fruitful of evil consequences. The books are full 

 of instances where instruments have been propounded as wills, but 

 which have proved to be still-born, or, if initiated into existence as 

 living, genuine wills, only so after the ordeal of many years' litigation 

 to determine their genuineness, sufficiency, or construction, has been 

 endured. Like surgery, law is a science. The unscientific man may 

 with equal propriety endeavor to amputate his own limb as draw his 

 own will. In each case he has ventured upon a field in which he has 

 neither knowledge, experience, nor skill. He may succeed, but every 

 probability points to a fatal result. 



The antiquity of testaments is such that many imagine that to pre- 

 pare and execute one is a matter of general information one concern- 

 ing which all are competent to speak. It is true that this mode of 

 transferring title or ownership dates far back into remote ages. 

 Writers assert that abundant evidence exists that wills were in use 

 among the Hebrews in the earliest times. Plutarch speaks of their 

 introduction by Solon into Athens, some six hundred years before the 

 Christian era. The Twelve Tables gave to the Romans the right of 

 bequeathing their property, a power which in England is coeval with 

 the invasion of the Saxon, for no record or memorial exists of a 

 period when this right did not obtain. But this antiquity proves 

 nothing. Other sciences are equally old. 



To prepare or draw a icill can only safely be undertaken by him 

 whose intelligence and experience have earned him the right to assume 

 the task. 



The subject of incapacity and undue influence is not embraced in 

 this inquiry, but a word in reference to it may not be out of place. 

 No will was ever yet drawn, nor can one be, which was or will be 

 proof against attack from this quarter. That many have been dis- 

 gracefully contested by shameless relatives is true; for, to forget such 

 in his will, even if related to the deceased but in the remotest degree, 

 is conclusive evidence to the minds of some that the sanest or most 

 self-willed man while living has proved, in spite of all, weak and in- 

 sane at death. Because contests frequently arise, however, from this 



cause, it does not follow that this is not at times a very proper ground 

 vol. xxiv. 34 



