354 



conditional direction, wliicli would have given certainty to favorite 

 purposes, in defiance of jealous legislation and strained judicial con- 

 struction. 



An Act of Assembly of 26tli April, 1855, contains a section (11) 

 in these words : " No estate, real or personal, shall hereafter be be- 

 queathed, devised, or conveyed to any body politic, or to any person, 

 in trust for religious or charitable uses, except the same be done by 

 deed or will, attested by two credible, and at the same time, disin- 

 terested witnesses, at least one calendar month before the decease of 

 the testator or alienor ; and all dispositions of property contrary 

 hereto shall be void, and go to the residuary legatee or devisee, next 

 of kin, or heirs, according to law : Provided, that any disposition of 

 property within said period, honafide made for a fair valuable con- 

 sideration, shall not be hereby avoided." 



This statute has been the subject of judicial determination before 

 the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. A will was made in 1856, and 

 the testator died within less than a calendar month from its date. 

 The residue of the estate, after payment of debts and liabilities, was 

 left '^in trust for the uses and purposes of Friends' Boarding-School 

 at West Town." The heirs and next of kin filed their bill, alleging 

 that the school was a religious and charitable institution ; that they 

 were the parties who would have been entitled to the estate if there 

 had been no will ; and asking for an order upon the executors to 

 transfer the same to them. Learned and able arguments were sub- 

 mitted on both sides. It was contended for the complainants that 

 the words of the statute, ^^ religious and charitable uses," are used 

 in their broadest significance. The effect of the will would be to 

 cheapen education to those who could pay, and give it gratuitously 

 to those who could not. This, it was submitted, constitutes a chari- 

 tahle institution. It was also a religious institution. It was esta- 

 blished to encourage "a guarded education of their youth." It was 

 confined to them, and was to be managed with "religious care and 

 circumspection." On the other side it was contended that the words 

 of a statute are to be taken in their ordinary and familiar significa- 

 tion, for jtis et norma loquendi is governed by usage. But if the 

 usage have been to construe the words of a statute, contrary to their 

 obvious meaning by the vulgar tongue, and the common acceptation 

 of terms, such usage is not to be regarded. It was plain that the 

 Legislature was using words in their popular, and not in their scho- 

 lastic or technical, sense : that not a single instance was to be found 



