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| LAND-HOLDER'S ASSISTANT.
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and only those parts are resurveyed, the surveyor has not
pursued the authority given by the warrant.¾
3. That by the established rules of the land-office, two
tracts cannot be granted by the same patent, nor can they
afterwards be included in a patent, on a certificate of resurvey,
unless they are certified, and appear to be contiguous to each
other; and that the defendant's parts of the two tracts
aforesaid do not lie contiguous to, or any where touch, each other.
After a careful deliberation on the merits of this caveat,
the chancellor is of opinion, that it ought to be overruled.
It is his duty to determine according to equity, without
violating positive laws, or established rules.
1. The defendant, being seized of a certain number of
acres in Q. A. county, part of which lies in the tract called
Bishopton, and the residue in the tract called Collins's lot, has
perhaps inaccurately given to his whole body of land the name
of Bishopton and Collins's lot ¾but the intention of the
warrant appears sufficiently clear; and the surveyor, and every
other person, is sufficiently informed of the land intended to
be resurveyed, viz. the defendants land in Q. A. county,
Bishopton and Collins's lot. It could not indeed be mistaken,
unless there were actually in Q. A. county a single tract of
land called " Bishopton and Collins's lot." The caveator
himself alledges there is no such tract, and therefore the
chancellor thinks himself in equity obliged to construe the warrant
so as to authorize the surveyor to resurvey a tract of land
called Bishopton, and a tract of land called Collins's lot, the
warrant would otherwise be void; and by the chancellor's
yielding to a nice objection, he might, perhaps justly, be
accused of rather encouraging subtlety than of promoting
substantial justice.
2. It is almost every days practice to issue a grant where
the party seized of part of a patented tract of land has
obtained a warrant, generally, to resurvey that tract, and has
returned a certificate of the resurvey of his part only; and this
practice prevailed along time before the judge of the
land-office was, by law, directed to determine according to equity.
3. It is certain that by the established rules of the land office,
a man cannot obtain a patent including several distinct tracts
of land, nor can he obtain a patent on a resurvey of several
tracts which do not lie contiguous, or in one body. But this
objection can be of no avail to the caveator; because it is also
an established practice, where a certificate of resurvey
includes several tracts, and one, or more, is separate from the
rest, to issue a patent only for those which lie contiguous to
each other, with the vacancy adjoining them. ¾Suppose, then,
the defendant, agreeably to this practice, to demand a patent
of his part of Collins's lot, with the vacancy adjoining it:
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