4487. LAW, Construing.—[further continued] .
It may be said that contradictory
decisions may arise in such case,
and produce inconvenience. This is possible,
and is a necessary failing in all human proceedings.
Yet the prudence of the public
functionaries, and authority of public opinion,
will generally produce accommodation. Such
an instance of difference occurred between the
judges of England (in the time of Lord Holt)
and the House of Commons, but the prudence
of those bodies prevented inconvenience from
it. So in the cases of Duane and of William
Smith, of South Carolina, whose characters of
citizenship stood precisely on the same
ground, the judges in a question of meum and
tuum which came before them, decided that
Duane was not a citizen; and in a question of
membership, the House of Representatives,
under the same words of the same provision,
adjudged William Smith to be a citizen. This
is what I believe myself to be sound.—
To W. H. Torrance. Washington ed. vi, 462.
Ford ed., ix, 518.
(M.
1815)
