TILLY v. TILLY,—2 BLAND. 425

full age or death of the youngest, or last of the infants, when the
interest sold, expired; and the distribution of the net proceeds of
sale must be made upon those principles among those infants, or
the representatives of those who died before their shares which
thus vested had been actually paid.

It is said that the death of the petitioner's intestate, is only pre-
sumed from his long absence. The general rule is, that any one
who has not been heard of for the space of seven years may, for all
legal and equitable purposes, be presumed to be dead. Therefore,
in this instance, the deatli of Horatio Tilly may be assumed to
have happened just seven years after the day on which it is shewn
by proof, that he was last heard of.

It is expressly declared by the law under which the sale of the
interest of these infants appears to have been made, that no part
of the principal arising from the sale shall, in any wise, be applied
towards the maintenance of the infant unless the Chancellor shall
consider it necessary. 1816, ch. 154, s. 8. Now, whether these
proceeds are to be * considered as arising from a sale of the
infants' real estate, or only from a sale of the rents and profits 445
of such an estate during a given period, to which alone these infants
were entitled; still, this is a legislative regulation in relation to the
matter, which no trustee can be allowed, at his pleasure, to violate
or disregard; he, of himself, cannot have a shadow of authority to
make any application of the proceeds of sale in any way whatever.
But, apart from the express provisions of any Act of Assembly,
upon general principles, no trustee, appointed to make sale of prop-
erty under a decree, in the usual form, directing the proceeds to
be brought into Court, can be allowed, in any manner whatever,
to dispose of them without the express previous sanction of the
Court. This is a very ancient rule of this Court, and a due regard
to the interests of suitors, requires that it should be inflexibly ad-
hered to. Therefore, all the causes shewn by this trustee as such,
why he has departed from the positive command of the decree re-
quiring the money to be brought in must be wholly disregarded.
Bennett v. Hamitt, 2 Scho. & Lefr. 580.

But it appears by the proceedings, that Nicholas Brewer has
been clothed with several offices in connection with the rights of
these infants, and that lie has acted in two distinct characters. It
is a settled principle, that where two or more capacities are vested
in one and the same person, each capacity, for the purposes of jus-
tice, may be considered in the same light as if they were several
persons. Coppin v. Coppin, 2 P. Will. 295: Johnson v. Mills, 1
Ves. 283; Binney's Case, ante, 108. Nicholas Brewer was appointed
a trustee, under the will of the late Richard Higgins; and I have
described what were his rights and duties as regards the estate so
plaeed in his hands for the maintenance of the infants. Consider-
ing him as a distinct person, while acting in that capacity, he must