256 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. the partiailnr mtent. When he has not done this, and the only gift is to granddaughters for life with remainders in fee, a granddaughter will only take a life estate ; in order for a granddaughter to take the fee, there must be a distinct gift to her of the fee, and after- wards a separate modification. ^ E. The history of the doctrine of general and particular intent in the law is well known. It was first introduced in Robinson v. Robinson, ^ in the attempt to explain, the Rule in Shelley's Case as a rule of construction ; it produced the hopeless tangle of decisions of which Lord Eldon has said, " The mind is overpowered by their multitude, and the .subtlety of the distinctions between them " ; and it was only when the doctrine of general and particular intent was repudiated, and it became firmly settled that the Rule in Shelley's Case was not a rule of construction, not a rule, however artificial, to discover intention, but a rule the object of which was to defeat intention, that any order was introduced into that chaos. Thus Lord Redesdale, in Jesson v. Wright ^ : "To say that the general intent shall overrule the particular is not the most accurate expression of the principle of decision, but the rule is that techni- cal words shall have their legal effect, unless from subsequent in- consistent words it is very clear that the testator meant otherwise. " So Lord Denman, in Doe v. Gallini* : "The doctrine that the general intent must overrule the particular intent has been much and, we conceive, justly objected to of late, as being, as a general proposition, incorrect and vague, and likely to lead in its applica- tion to erroneous results."^ The doctrine "is now exploded."^ In the fourth edition of Jarman on Wills ^ is an elaborate discus- sion, proving the futility of the doctrine ; but in the fifth edition ^ the doctrine is dealt with as now obsolete, and only a short note inserted. This piece of legal history is full of instruction. The Rule in Shelley's Case is not a rule for interpretation, it is a rule the object of which is to defeat intention. Courts struggled to deal with it as a rule of construction, and instead of saying that the testatormeant so andso, but the Rule forbade this intention being carried out, they strove to divide the testator's intention into two parts, one part which agreed with the Rule, and which they called 1 Whitehead v. Rennett, 22 L. J. Ch. 1020. ^ See Hayes's Principles, pp. 44, no. 2 Burr. 38. 6 Tud. L. C. on R. P. (3d ed. ) 618. " 2 Bligh, I. 7 Vol. ii. p. 484.
- 5 B. & Ad. 621, 640. 8 Vol. ii. p. 131 2, n.
