N. B. The certificates contain about 61 acres. There
are three pieces of improved land, said in the whole to be
about 10 acres. How strange it would be to correct the
certificate by excluding the three pieces! Whom would it suit
to take them? Would an individual sell lands in such a way?
&c. &c. &c.
JOHN MOALE )
vs ) In the Land-office, July 15th 1805.
JAMES CROXALL)
The chancellor has considered this case deliberately, and
at length hath fully satisfied himself.
In cases arising on the 12th clause of the act of
November 1781, ch. 20, it was the practice or rule of the
chancellor's predecessor to dismiss the caveat, suffer the defendant
to take a patent, and leave the parties to contend before a
jury, unless he was perfectly satisfied that the caveat was well
grounded, that is to say, that the land attempted to be taken
up as vacancy was originally comprended in an elder tract,
and now left out by the variation of the compass. This
practice appeared to the chancellor perfectly right, and therefore
he has invariably pursued it. The present case however
differs from any that has come before him under the said act.
It is probable, from a view of the plats, that the several tracts,
between which the vacancies are supposed to exist, and which
were taken up at different times, cannot, on account of their
different dates, be now run, either with or without
allowances of variation, so as not either to interfere with each other,
or to leave some very trifling opening between them, of the
breadth of a few feet, or yards. No rule has ever yet been
established by which variation has been ascertained and
allowed. It is true, that commissioners and even some juries
have allowed for a variation of one degree for 20 years. But
the chancellor has never understood that any rule whatever
has been fully established in the general court. When on
proof of the original or former running of one line, the other
lines are corrected so as to vary from the present running 1,
2, 3, or more degrees, this cannot properly be called an
allowance, by rule, for the variation of the compass. It is in fact
only allowing the proof of actual running to prevail. For if
the first line of a tract appears at this day to be 3 degrees
different from what it was at the original running, 50, 60 or 70
