WILLIAMS' CASE.—3 BLAND. 219

but, that his personal estate, with the annual value of his real
estate, were insufficient to enable him to prosecute his studies with
advantage; it was enacted, that his interest in the house and lot
should be sold, and the proceeds applied towards his education
and use. 1791, ch. 48. At the next session of the General Assem-
bly, by the petition of Judith Wallace, on behalf of herself and her
children, it was represented, that her husband John Wallace died
intestate in the year 1789, leaving the said widow and five children,
and seised of a tract of land containing eighty or ninety acres which
was rich, but entirely destitute of timber and firewood; the ex-
pense of procuring which exhausted the annual profits of the land.
Whereupon it was enacted, that the land so descended should be
sold; and, with the proceeds, other land should be purchased in
which the widow should have her right of dower, and which should
be held, and pass as the land which had been sold. 1792, ch. 28.
In addition to these many other similar estate Acts have been
passed, in almost every one of which it appears, that the General
Assembly were, in some way, satisfied of the truth of the facts as
stated; and that it would be exceedingly difficult, if not altogether
impracticable, to provide for the maintenance and education of the
infants in any other manner than by the proposed sale of their real
estate. 1805, ch. 28 and 33; 1809, ch. 21 and 72: 1810, ch. 57, 74
and 158; 1811, ch. 95, 149 and 209: 1812, ch. 83, 91, 175 and 186;
1813, eh. 19, 29, 54, 80, 93, 151 and 152; 1814, ch, 31, 44, 74 and
90; 1815, ch. 31, 117, 124, 130, 134 and 136; 1825, ch. 88; Camp-
bell's Case, 2 Bland, 209.

In all, or almost all of these cases, it is evident, that the Legis-
lature interposed merely for the purpose of removing a temporary
* disability in order to give relief under a then pressing 203
necessity; and to confer a capacity on infants to do acts
necessary to enable them to obtain maintenance and education, or
to discharge a duty to creditors who had claims upon their prop-
erty. No material injustice could arise from any legislative inter-
position to such an extent; because the infant's property was not
to be applied to any purpose for which it was not generally or
specially bound. To authorize a sale of an infant's imperishable
estate for any other purpose, would be not merely to endow him
with a capacity to act for his own support, or in discharge of an
obvious duty; but, in effect, to divest him of his property, or to
force him to make an alienation of it, according to the fanciful
opinions and notions of others; in all cases with much risk to the
whole, and the certain loss of a part in commissions to the agents
employed to make the sale; and in many cases without the least
just occasion for such alienation. Seys v. Price, 9 Mod. 220; Hearle
v. Greenbank, 3 Atk. 695; Ware v. Polhill, 11 Ves. 278; Ex parte
Philips. 19 Ves. 122.