David Josiah Brewer

“ The rights of parties are not to be sacrificed to the mere letter; and whether the language used was reversed, modified, or affirmed in part and reversed in part is immaterial. Equity looks beyond these words of description to see what was in fact ordered to be done. ”

“ We think the ruling of the circuit court was correct. The amount of the allowances for these five months was separately stated, and such allowances were sustained by this court. While the former decrees were in terms reversed, and the cases remanded for the entering of new decrees, yet the terms of those new decrees were specifically stated; and, in so far as the separate and distinct matters embraced in the former decrees were ordered to be incorporated into the new, it is to be regarded as pro tanto an affirmance. Equity regards the substance, and not the form. ”

“ These decrees were based upon and confirmed final reports made by the master. Back of these reports was an immense volume of testimony upon which they were founded. They stated the amounts due the intervenors, separately and for different periods,-one, from August 1, 1883, to August 1, 1884; and the other, from thence on to January 1, 1885. With these reports it was a simple matter of arithmetical computation to determine the amount due to each intervenor for the four months from August 1, 1883, to December 1, 1883; that being simply one-third of the year. ”