400 History of the English Landed Interest. 



the absence of any lineal descendants at the proper period, the 

 estates, which at the lowest computation would not have been 

 less than nineteen millions, were to be applied to the Sinking 

 Fund under the direction of Parliament, " As I have earned," 

 the deponent adds, " the fortune which I now possess with 

 industry and honesty, I trust and hope that the legislature 

 will not in any manner alter my will, or the limitations there- 

 by created, but permit my property to go in the manner in 

 which I hereby dispose of it." 



For upwards of sixty years this request of the testator was 

 respected ; for Mr. Thellusson, only too likely as a foreigner to 

 be badly informed on the niceties of the law of English suc- 

 cession, had been too shrewd a man of business not to employ 

 the services of some legal expert in his difficult undertaking. 

 The laws as then constituted not only allowed the postpone- 

 ment of the possession of a property, but the accumulation of 

 its income. Going to the utmost limit which the Acts against 

 perpetuities allowed, he had left, as a legacy to the Chancery 

 bar, a puzzle in proportion nearly as great as the property 

 which he had demised. He had driven the proverbial coach 

 and four through the English statute book, and a fresh Act,^ 

 for ever afterwards associated with his name, was the inevitable 

 consequence. That part of the difficulty was disposed of easily 

 enough; not so the great Will Case. The family, naturally 

 wishing to set aside the will, instituted proceedings in Chan- 

 cery. Thereupon two suits arose ; the one brought in by the 

 widow and children in order to invalidate the trusts, the other 

 by the acting trustees and executors in order to substantiate 

 them. The suit was taken into Lincoln's Inn Hall, and thence 

 to the House of Lords ; and though Mr. Thellusson's provisions 

 passed successfully the scrutiny of the Lord Chancellor and 

 other law-lords, the parties whom they kept out of possession 

 never wearied in their hostility, and not till 1858, when it had 

 long acquired the dignity of becoming the oldest lawsuit on 

 record, did it finally disappear from the courts. 



^ By 39 and 40 Geo. III. c 98 the accumulation of income beyond the 

 life of the grantor and twenty-one yeais after is forbidden. 



