PART V. on the plain and natural construction of the language of the 3rd section, and to hold that the right of the defendant in this case to distrain must be taken to have first accrued on the 15th day of January, 1825, when the last payment was made, and so that the distress made in May, 1845, was unlawful, all right to the rent having been extinguished before that time." The same point was afterwards pressed in argument in the same case in error (1), and on this, Patteson, J., in delivering the judgment of the Court, makes the following observations (2): "The inconvenience of a person coming under disability after the receipt of rent and before the right of action, &c., accrued, was strongly pressed, and is indeed more substantial; but it is to be observed that the legislature in passing this Act has in a much more important instance left the rights of persons under disability unprotected, inasmuch as sect. 42, which bars the recovery of arrears after six years, has no proviso in favour of such persons. The circumstance therefore of their not being perfectly protected by the 16th section does not afford a ground for presuming against a construction which involves that consequence." The case of Owen v. De Beauvoir in the court below was heard before Parke, Rolfe, and Alderson, BB., and in error before Patteson, Coleridge, Coltman, Maule, Cresswell, Erle, Wightman, and Williams, JJ., so that these eleven judges seem to have been unanimously of opinion that in the 16th section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27 (now the 3rd section of 37 & 38 Vict. c. 57) the words "the time at which the right of any person to make an entry, &c., shall have first accrued as aforesaid," mean not the time at which the right has actually accrued, but the time at which by the 3rd and following sections of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27 the right shall be deemed to have accrued, whether any right shall have actually accrued (1) 5 Exch. 166. or not, even though by this construction the rights of persons under disability may in such cases be virtually unprotected. Lord St. Leonards, in his treatise on the Property Statutes (1), seems to think that this construction is wrong, and that the time at which the right &c., shall have first accrued in the 16th section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27 (now the 3rd section of 37 & 38 Vict. c. 57) may even, with reference to cases which fall within the 3rd section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27, be construed as if the 2nd section stood alone and the 3rd were not in the Act. This reasoning would of course equally apply where, by the operation of any other of the sections, the time at which the right shall be deemed to have accrued is different from that at which it actually accrues, or would be thought to accrue for any purpose if the 2nd section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27 (now the 1st section of 37 & 38 Vict. c. 57) stood alone. The case of Owen v. De Beauvoir (2), as Lord St. Leonards observes, turned on the construction of the 3rd section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27, and not of the 16th; but, after the unanimous expression of opinion in the Court of Exchequer and the Exchequer Chamber, the point would probably be treated in any court below the House of Lords as concluded by authority; and considering the words with which the 3rd section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27 is introduced, namely, "in the construction of this Act, the right, &c., shall have first accrued," and that the 16th section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27 speaks of the time at which "the right, &c., shall have first accrued as aforesaid," it seems almost necessary to hold that the time referred to in the 16th section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27 (and now in the 3rd section of 37 & 38 Vict. c. 57) means as to cases falling within the 3rd section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27, or the 2nd section of 37 & 38 Vict. c. 57, the time as defined by those sections and by the 4th section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. (1) Page 71, et seq. (2) 16 M. & W. 547; 5 Exch. 166. PART V. CH. XV. PART V. c. 27. Although the words "in the construction of this Act" are not repeated in the 6th, 7th, and 8th sections of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27, still it would seem that all those sections must be treated in the same way, and that in those cases to which they apply the time therein specified is to be taken as the time at which the right accrues not only in the construction of the 2nd section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27 (now the 1st section of 37 & 38 Vict. c. 57), but in the construction of the 16th section and every other section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27; and, as the Act 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27 is to be construed as one Act with the amending Act 37 & 38 Vict. c. 57 (1). the sections of 37 & 38 Vict. c. 57 must be treated in the same way. The 2nd section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27 (now the 1st section of 37 & 38 Vict. c. 57) must itself in all cases which fall within the 3rd section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27 and other defining sections of the Act be read by the light of these sections, or they would have no force whatever. This, it is submitted, is the answer to Lord St. Leonards' question (2), " Why should not this (i.e. the 16th section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27) refer, as it was no doubt intended to do, to what it expresses, the time when his right to enter, &c. first accrued, or in other words to the 2nd section (i.e. of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27), instead of to a period when he had no such right, which is arbitrarily appointed by the 3rd section for a distinct object?" By the 14th section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27, when a signed acknowledgment has been given, the right is to be deemed to have first accrued at and not before the time at which such acknowledgment is given; and if the interpretation of the 16th section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27 (now the 3rd section of 37 & 38 Vict. c. 57) above contended for is the true one, it would seem to follow that, if the person to whom the acknowledgment is given is then under disability, the savings provided by the 16th (1) See 37 & 38 Vict. c. 57, s. 9. (2) Prop. Stat. p. 73. CH. XV. section of 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 27 (now the 3rd section of PART V. 37 & 38 Vict. c. 57) will apply. The case of persons being under disability at the time of making an acknowledgment as to specialty debts is, as we have seen, expressly provided for by 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 42. ing dis It will be observed that the allowance of ten (now six) Transfer of years after the person to whom the right shall have estate duraccrued shall have ceased to be under disability or shall ability. have died is given to such person or to the person claiming through him, so that if the section be interpreted strictly, it would seem that if a person under disability is dispossessed and then conveys to another (which would only be possible now in cases of coverture not governed by the Married Women's Property Act, 1882), then the period during which the grantee could recover possession would depend upon how long the grantor remained under disability, though the grantor is from the time of the conveyance a perfect stranger to the land. This, if the right interpretation, might have a curious operation; for if a trespasser took possession of the land when the owner was a feme covert, and such owner immediately afterwards conveyed the land to a person under no disability and remained under coverture for twentythree years and then died, the grantee would not be barred till the end of twenty-nine years from the time of the conveyance, though he might have brought his action at any time within that period; while on the other hand, if the grantor conveyed the land just before her death or the termination of the coverture, the grantee would only have six years within which to bring his action. On the other hand, it might be contended that a disability may fairly be considered for the purposes of these sections, as existing only with reference to the subject-matter of such disability, namely, the title to the land in question, and that consequently, when the person under disability ceased to have any connection with the title to the land, by conveying it away, the disability PART V. Disability of one coparcener. may be considered for the purposes of these sections as ceasing to exist. The effect of the Married Women's Property Act, 1882, is, it would seem, to make these questions of little practical importance; for if, as is submitted, the effect of that Act is to abolish the disability of coverture as regards real property, except as to women married before the 1st January, 1883, and as regards property, to which any married women have become entitled after that date, and as the disability of absence beyond seas has been abolished by 37 & 38 Vict. c. 57, it is hardly likely that many questions will in future arise as to the effect of a conveyance by a person under disability. It was held in a case that arose under 21 Jac. I. c. 16, that where an estate descended to two co-parceners, one of whom was under a disability which continued more than twenty years and the other did not enter within the twenty years, the disability of the one did not preserve the title of the other after the twenty years had elapsed (1). (1) Doe d. Langdon v. Rowlston, 2 Taunt. 441. |