366 SECTION VIII. Of Titles gained by the Destruction of Contingent Remainders. The rule of law which requires that a contingent remainder shall vest during the continuance of the particular estate, or eo instanti it determines, necessarily renders such remainders liable to be defeated, not only by the tortious alienation of the tenant of the particular estate, but even in some cases by his innocent conveyance. If there be legal tenant for life, with legal remainders in contingency, and he make a feoffment, or suffer a recovery, &c. this of course amounts to a forfeiture of his life estate, and destroys the remainders; if he surrender to the vested remainderman or reversioner, or join with such remainderman or reversioner in a conveyance by lease and release, or bargain and sale, &c., or if, having the immediate remainder or reversion in himself, he make an ordinary conveyance, the life estate is merged in the vested remainder or reversion, and the con tingent remainders can never arise. (a) The same effect may result from the descent of the legal fee upon the tenant for life, where such descent is not immediate from the person by whose will the limitations were created. (b) In all these cases the contingent remainders fall with the particular estate by which they were supported. The act of the tenant for life which induces the destruction of the remainders, though it work, in the instance of a tortious conveyance, such a wrong or injury to the vested remainderman or reversioner as entitles him to enter, works no wrong or injury of which the persons who might eventually have succeeded under the contingent remainders can complain in a court of justice. They are excluded by the strict rules of law, to which equity conforms. The title which is gained by the destruction of the remainders cannot be impeached on the ground of any fraud or breach of trust on the part of the tenant of the particular estate, (c) who is under no obligation, legal or moral, to abstain from those acts by which his estate may be determined before the contingency happens. It was the folly of the person creating the limitations not to adopt the precaution of limiting a legal estate of freehold to trustees to preserve the contingent remainders, or of vesting the legal fee in trustees, in order that the particular estate and remainders might arise by (a) Fearn. C. R. 241. et seq. (b) Fearn. C. R. 266. 1 (c) Ib. 252. way of trust in equity, and consequently be placed beyond the reach of the rules which subject legal contingent remainders to the power of the particular tenant. (d) This doctrine, as respects limitations of the legal estate, has long been finally settled. Lord Kenyon lamented the consequences of the doctrine, and had it in contemplation to propose some legislative remedy; (e) which, however, was abandoned from the difficulty, perhaps, of framing an act calculated to attain the end without introducing greater mischiefs, or from an observation of the ill success which had attended all attempts to legislate on such subjects. He admitted, (f) however, that it was too late, as the law then stood, to say that such was not the established doctrine of contingent remainders. That doctrine, indeed, (continued. his Lordship) involved in it difficulties which had been frequently felt by wise and able lawyers, who had wished to break through the rule; but they had been deterred from the attempt by a consideration of the consequences that might possibly en-. sue. There were two instances, it was true, where the law was otherwise; in equitable estates, where the contingent remainders were not destroyed, because the estate was vested in trustees to preserve the contingent remainders [q. the accuracy of this (d) Fearn. C. R. 246. reason] and in copyholds where the estate in the lord of the manor would support all the remainders [ib.] but in the case of freehold estates of inheritance, the rule was so established that it was not to be shaken." There is a multitude of cases in the books of tenants for life destroying contingent remainders, and recovering at law without objection, by the strength of the title so acquired. To have broken through the rule, therefore, would have been attended with a certain and immediate effect more ruinous than any consequences to be apprehended from permitting the law to take its course. It is true that courts of equity do not favour the destruction of contingent remainders. They refuse to give relief against the tenant for life, only because it is their duty to follow the law. But where the estates are purely equitable, the doctrine which would render them destructible by the act of the tenant for life is inadmissible, because the equitable freehold is not governed by the same rules, as respects the liability to forfeiture, &c. with the legal freehold. Equity leans in doubtful cases against such a construction of the limitations as would enable the tenant for life to destroy the contingent remainders; and so, I apprehend, would a court of law. In the execution of marriage articles, and executory trusts, courts of equity interpose limitations to trustees to preserve contingent estates. They punish in certain cases trustees who are guilty of destroying contingent remainders which they were appointed to preserve, and exst tend the liability to purchasers taking with notice of the breach of trust. But it does not appear that courts of equity have ever gone the length of say}} ing that where the remainders are clearly destroyed, and no fraud or breach of trust can besimit puted, it is nevertheless incompetent to the party thus acquiring, by legal means, a title perfectly unimpeachable on any judicial ground, to sue upon that title, and enforce all the rights of ownership as effectually as if the estate had been gained by any other act or consequence of law. Lord Hardwicke, when contending against the extension of the legal doctrine to trust estates, observed (g) that "the destruction of contingent remainders by the act of the tenant for life was considered as a wrong without a remedy, and so strongly a tort that it is a forfeiture of his own estate; and, therefore, works a destruction of the remainders. Now, cont tinued his Lordship, if equity never suffers other wrongful acts, or any thing similar, to gain or dee feat the trust estate, while the trustee is in póssession, why should this take place, or the Court strive to preserve a power to cestui que trust for life, the execution whereof the law calls ma wrong?" (h) This passage cannot be treated as (g) 1 Atk. 591. in Hopkins v. Hopkins. (h) The following extract is taken from a Note of the judgment in Lord Hardwicke's handwriting. 1 Jac. and Walk. 18. n. b. "The destruction of contingent remainders by the act of, |