Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol II).djvu/242

 228 try, then B might have inherited; not as heir to A his half-brother, but as heir to their common father, who was the peron lat actually eied. total excluion of the half blood from the inheritance, being almot peculiar to our own law, is looked upon as a trange hardhip by uch as are unacquainted with the reaons on which it is grounded. But thee cenures arie from a miapprehenion of the rule; which is not o much to be conidered in the light of a rule of decent, as of a rule of evidence; an auxiliary rule, to carry a former into execution. And here we mut again remember, that the great and mot univeral principle of collateral inheritances being this, that an heir to a feudum antiquum mut be of the blood of the firt feudatory or purchaor, that is, derived in a lineal decent from him; it was originally requiite, as upon gifts in tail it till is, to make out the pedigree of the heir from the firt donee or purchaor, and to hew that uch heir was his lineal repreentative. But when, by length of time and a long coure of decents, it came (in thoe rude and unlettered ages) to be forgotten who was really the firt feudatory or purchaor, and thereby the proof of an actual decent from him became impoible; then the law ubtituted what ir Martin Wright calls a reaonable, in the tead of an impoible, proof: for it remits the proof of an actual decent from the firt purchaor; and only requires, in lieu of it, that the claimant be next of the whole blood to the peron lat in poeion; (or derived from the ame couple of ancetors) which will probably anwer the ame end as if he could trace his pedigree in a direct line from the firt purchaor. For he who is my kinman of the whole blood can have no ancetors beyond or higher than the common tock, but what are equally my ancetors alo; and mine are vice vera his: he therefore is very likely to be derived from that unknown ancetor of mine, from whom the inheritance decended. But a kinman of the half blood has but one half of his ancetors above the common tock the ame as mine; and therefore there is not the Rh