Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/101

Rh cleaver, being, as master Bracton well observeth, unworthy to ride on a horse.

Littleton, Sect. 315. saith, If tenants in common make a lease reserving for rent a horse, they shall have but one assize, because, saith the book, the law will not suffer a horse to be severed. Another argument of what high estimation the law maketh of a horse.

But as the great difference seemeth not to be so much touching the substantial part, horses, let us proceed to the formal or descriptive part, viz. What horses they are that come within this bequest.

Colours are commonly of various kinds and different sorts; of which white and black are the two extremes, and, consequenty, comprehend within them all other colours whatsoever.

By a bequest therefore of black and white horses, gray or pyed horses may well pass; for when two extremes, or remotest ends of any thing are devised, the law, by common intentdment, will intend whatsoever is contained between them to be devised too.

But the present case is still stronger, coming not only within the intendment, but also the very letter of the words.

By the word black, all the horses that are black are devised; by the word white, are devised those that are white; and by the same word, with the conjunction copulative, and, between them, the horses that are black and white, that is to say, pyed, are devised also.

Whatever is black and white is pyed, and whatever is pyed is black and white; ergo, black and