Joseph Story

“ The spirit of the act must be extracted from the words of the act, and not from conjectures aliunde. The common law carries back in certain cases, the descent to the heirs of the first purchaser. But the common law cannons of descents, are overturned by the statute of descents of Rhode Island. How then can we resort to the common law, to make up the supposed defects in the language of the statute? Here, there is not a causus omissus; but a complete scheme of descents; and the only question is, how much the proviso carves out and saves from the operation of the general rule. ”

“ Among the reasons for the construction of the act of the legislature, claimed by the plaintiff, Mr Whipple urged, that
'Descent, gift, and devise,' are connected on account of blood. Whose blood? That of the devisor and devisee, not that of the purchaser. The consideration being their blood, the reward ought to be to their blood.
The three modes of transmission are the acts of the party. The person who bestowed the bounty is the only person having any claim. His claim extends only to the person upon whom he bestowed the bounty, his heir. ”

“ Then, again, if the argument now urged at this bar for the defendants, is well founded, it goes (as has been already stated) far beyond, and indeed to the overthrow of the common law on the very point of first purchasers. Indeed, at the common law, a man might sometimes inherit, who was of the whole blood of the intestate, who could not have inherited from the first purchaser. ”

“ But no right in the inheritance shall accrue to any persons whatsoever, other than to the children of the intestate, unless such persons be in being, and capable in law to take, as heirs, at the time of the intestate's death. ”

“ The intestate, Mary C. Gardner, was her mother's heir for one-third; that was the extent of her bounty. To her brothers for two-thirds. For the same reason that Mary Collins has a claim for one-third, the brothers have for two-thirds.
She transmitted her portion of her father's estate to her children. This gives her a claim upon each. If her children transmit their portion of her estate, they have the same claim upon those to whom they transmit it.
The plaintiff's counsel denied that the construction claimed by the counsel for the defendant was the received law of Rhode Island. ”

“ If there be no great-grandfather, then to the great-grandmothers, or great-grandmother if there be but one, and the brothers and sisters of the grandfathers and grandmothers, and their descendants, or such of them as there be, and so on in other cases without end ”

“ Thus, Littleton in his sixth section says, that none shall inherit 'as heir to any man, unless he be his heir of the whole blood; for if a man hath issue two sons by divers ventres, and the eldest purchase lands, &c. ”