Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/749

 troops cooperated with those of the Americans, Oct. 9, 1779, in an attack upon Savannah. Both the American column and the French were repulsed, D'Estaing being wounded and Pulaski killed in the assault. D'Estaing re- turned to France in 1780. He declared himself in favor of national reforms, and was elected in 1787 to the assembly of notables, appointed commandant of the national guard, and chosen admiral in 1792 by the legislative assembly. But he cherished a regard for the royal family, and wrote friendly letters to Marie Antoinette which came to the knowledge of the revolu- tionary authorities; and he was arrested and imprisoned. On the trial of Marie Antoinette in 1793 he testified in her favor. He was him- self brought to trial in the following year, and condemned to death. He wrote a poem entitled Le reve, a tragedy, and a book on the colonies. ESTATE (Lat. status), in law, a term usually expressing an interest in lands, though in a general sense it is applied to both real and per- sonal property, as we sometimes see in wills and the like. But when used with a discrimi- native signification to designate the nature and limit of the interest, it properly relates to lands only. There are several classes of estates. J. An estate of inheritance, which is sometimes expressed by the term fee. Thus when we say a man has the fee of lands, it is meant that he has an inheritable estate ; and in the United States, where there is no limitation to particu- lar heirs, it is understood to be the entire pro- prietorship of the lands. But in England there are estates of inheritance in fee simple and fee tail, the former being an estate which descends to a man's general heirs, the latter being limited to certain specified heirs, as for instance to a man's issue male or female, or to the heirs of his body begotten of a certain wife. By such limitations, although the estate descends to the particular heirs, yet failing them it reverts to the grantor or supposed original proprietor, instead of descending to a man's general heirs ; and so far there is an obstruction in the enjoy- ment of the estate, because a man is perpetu- ated in and represented by his heirs. In this sense a fee simple is deemed an absolute owner- ship, in distinction from a fee tail, which is limited in descent. Another distinction was more important, viz. : that while the former could be conveyed or devised, the latter in theory could not be, yet practically it could be alienated by a particular form of proceeding called a common recovery. Yet a fee simple is not necessarily the entire proprietorship, for it may be subject to encumbrances by mortgage or judgment and otherwise; and smaller es- tates, as a lease for years, may be carved out of it, though in such a case it would be more proper to call the principal estate a fee simple in reversion or remainder. There are also qualified or de- terminable estates of inheritance, by which is meant that the estate may be determined by some contingency, and yet the contingency may never happen, and therefore by possibility the estate will be perpetual. The illustrations of this species of inheritance are for the most part hypothetical, as to a man and his heirs so long as St. Paul's church shall stand. Sometimes the qualification is residence in a particular place. Or again, there may be a restriction that the person taking the estate shall not marry, an instance of which we have in the case of a devise by a man to his wife on con- dition that she shall continue a widow. "When by the limitation an estate is to last till a certain event, there is until the event happen an in- heritance subject to being determined; though if the event become impossible, then the es- tate is converted into a fee simple absolute. A conveyance by the owner of a determinable fee will of course be subject to the disqualifi- cation or contingency upon which the estate depends. It may be a question, in the case of a limitation to a man and his heirs so long as they reside in a certain place, what the effect of alienation would be ; but probably the same rule would apply, viz. : that it would be valid to the extent of the right which the grantee him-