moral sense is so low that the wit can hide the crime. As a specimen of the species of the logical faculty that was the pride and boast of his numerous admirers, there probably can be cited no better one than Doner v. Stauffer, i Penna. (P. & Watts) 198. The actual thing decided was that the sale "of the title of one who had no property in the chattel passed the perfect title as against the real owners. That out of nothing something could and did arise by the legerdemain of legal proceedings. The case was this. Two men, being partners and insolvent, owned the property; and while it was admitted that the sale of the partnership effects under an ex ecution against one passed no property, it was held that a sale under similar executions against them both passed the whole prop erty, and yet that the proceeds could not be applied to the joint debts. The particular point decided was that while an execution against one would sell nothing, the executions against both sold the whole, and the pro ceeds belonged to the separate creditors. If the two partners had elected to apply the partnership funds to pay their separate debts, it would have been a fraud; the magic of an execution sanctified the transaction. The reasoning (and ratiocination it certainly is) is on page 205. The fact that the sale of the right of one partner passed nothing being admitted, because of his interest's being validly pledged for the joint debts, it was overlooked that the same result followed when the sale of the other partner's interest was effected. The purchaser took subject to the pledge, just as he does when one part ner's interest is sold. Catching hold of the rule that the creditors have no rights in the property, it was overlooked that the property was pledged by each partner to the other, to secure the joint liabilities. Neither (the firm being insolvent) could release this pledge without consideration, nor use the thing pledged for one class of debts (the joint) to pay another (the separate). To apply joint assets to a separate debt where there is in solvency, is to apply the property of A to
pay the debts of B while A is insolvent, which is just as objectionable as for A to settle it on a wife or child. The Chief-Jus tice says : The first [execution] in order of time would have passed the interest subject to the equity of his copartner, but the second would have passed that equity and the in terest of the other. He forgot that the socalled equity of the partner included a duty to the other partner to relieve him so far as the assets went. Even the analogy of a sur viving partner did not occur to him. But the point of all this is, not that he made a blunder, but that a result so absurd and so dishonest as that joint property should be . applied exclusively to separate debts in case of insolvency raised no doubt as to the soundness of a string of mere logical deduc tions. The problem was solved and the ab surdity exposed by Cadwala'der, J., in Winter v. Ludlow, unfortunately not to be found in any book of reports, but only in pamphlet. Cavett's Appeal, 8 W. & S. 21, is, I think, another. It is- that a signature by a marks man is no signature to a will. The clause of the statute authorizing the signature of an other, upon the Judge'sconstruction, prohibits any man not able to write his name in letters from making a will under any circumstances, except where he is so reduced by illness as to be unable to do what on the hypothesis he never could have done at any time. The logic that reaches such a conclusion is most amusing. He says the license to employ an other depends on his incapacity to do it him self, caused by the extremity of his last sick ness. If the statute meant this, plainly it forbids the making of a will by one who can not write. Apply this to contracts under the Statute of Frauds, to Bills and Notes, and a few years ago half the community would have been excluded from the ordinary trans actions of life. Such consequences had no weight to his mind, when balanced against a string of smooth sentences. It is hardly necessary to say the Legislature removed this folly. It was well said by Lewis, C. J., that we cannot assume that such a construe
