Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol II).djvu/246

 232 the father, and as both the brothers confeedly prung from him, it is demontrable that the half brother mut be of the blood of the firt purchaor, who was either the father or ome of the father's ancetors. When therefore there is actual demontration of the thing to be proved, it is hard to exclude a man by a rule ubtituted to upply that proof when deficient. So far as the inheritance can be evidently traced back, there eems no need of calling in this preumptive proof, this rule of probability, to invetigate what is already certain. Had the elder brother indeed been a purchaor, there would have been no hardhip at all, for the reaons already given: or had the frater uterinus only, or brother by the mother's ide, been excluded from an inheritance which decended from the father, it had been highly reaonable.

it is this very intance, of excluding a frater conanguineus, or brother by the father's ide, from an inheritance which decended a patre, that Craig has ingled out, on which to ground his trictures on the Englih law of half blood. And, really, it hould eem, as if the cutom of excluding the half blood in Normandy extended only to exclude a frater uterinus, when the inheritance decended a patre, and vice vera: as even with us it remained a doubt, in the time of Bracton, and of Fleta , whether the half blood on the father's ide were excluded from the inheritance which originally decended from the common father, or only from uch as decended from the repective mothers, and from newly purchaed lands. And the rule of law, as laid down by our Fortecue, extends no farther than this; frater fratri uterino non uccedet in haereditate paterna. It is moreover worthy of obervation, that by our law, as it now tands, the crown (which is the highet inheritance in the nation) may decend to the half blood of the preceding overeign, o as it be the blood of the firt monarch, purchaor, or (in the feodal language) conqueror, of the reigning family. Thus it actually Rh