440  BULB  AGAINST  PEBPETUITIB8  (Part  4

that  an  executory  devise  is  good,  if  it  must  necessarily  happen  within
a  life  or  Hves  in  being,  and  twenty-one  years,  and  the  fraction  of  an-  ^
other  year,  allowing  for  the  time  of  gestation."  In  Wilkinson  v.
South,  7  T.  R.  558,  LrOrd  Kenyon  says,  "The  rule  respecting  execu-
tory devises  is  extremely  well  settled,  ^nd  a  limitation,  by  way  of  ex-
ecutory devise,  is  good,  if  it  may  (I  think  it  should  be,  must)  take
place  after  a  life  or  lives  in  being,  and  within  twenty-one  years,  and
the  fraction  of  another  year  afterwards."  We  would  not  wish  the
House  to  suppose,  that  there  were  not  expressions  in  other  cases
about  the  same  period,  from  which  it  might  clearly  be  collected,  that
minority  was  originally  the  foundation  of  the  limit,  and  to  raise  some
presumption  that  th^  limit  of  twenty-one  years  after  a  life  in  being
was  cbnfined  to  cases  in  which  there  was  such  a  minority;  but  the
manner  in  which  the  rule  was  expressed  in  the  instances  to  which  I
have  referred,  as  well  as  in  text  writers,  appears  to'  us  to  justify  the
conclusion,  that  it  was  at  length  extended  to  the  enlarged  limit  of  a
life  or  lives  in  being,  and  twenty-one  years  afterwards.  It  is  difBcult
to  suppose,  that  men  of  such  dii^criminating  minds,  and  so  much  in
the  habit  of  discrimination,  should  have  laid  down  the  rule,  as  they
did,  without  expressing  minority  as  a  qualification  of  the  limit,  par-
ticularly when,  in  many  of  the-  instance^,  they  had  minority  before
their  eyes,  had  it  not  been  their  clear  understanding,  that  the  rule  of
twenty-one  years  was  general,  without  the  qualification  of  minority.
