274 WILLIAMS' CASE.—3 BLAND.

requires the contribution from each person to be in proportion to
his actual worth in property, is, that the proportion must be ac-
cording to his actual worth in such property as he has it in his
power to make annually profitable; not in unproductive abstract
naked rights of property, which may never be beneficial to him,
and the title to which he cannot be compelled to litigate. Devon-
sher v. Newenham, 2 Scho. & Lef. 211. The * annual public
264 taxes seem to have been thus assimilated to the annual
interest of mortgages, and other real incumbrances, which must
be kept down by the tenant for life in possession, upon the prin-
ciple that the annual profits should alone bear the burthen not
only of the annual interest of all mortgaged debts, but also of all
other annual charges, as well public as private. And upon this
principle, as it would seem, the collectors of the tax for some
counties were authorized to sell timber suitable for cord-wood, or
fence-rails, growing on land belonging to non-residents, to satisfy
the taxes due thereon, 1826, ch. 170; 1827, eh. 110, 114. Hence
as there is not, in such cases, any apportionment of the burthen
of interest or taxes between the particular tenant and the remain-
derman or reversioner, the putting of a present value upon such
estates is not called for, or ever made. But those legislative en-
actments which formerly, for the purposes of taxation, required a
present value to be put upon estates for life, or during widowhood,
and on terms for years, in such a variety of forms, and winch must
have been attended with much difficulty, to say nothing of the in-
justice of the operation of some of them, although now abrogated,
are yet well worthy of attention in so far as they illustrate and af-
ford evidence of the various bearings, and great importance of the
matter now under cousideratiori.

In England, as it would seem, few cases arise in which a widow
may have a proportion, or the annual interest on a share of the
purchase money of an estate awarded to her in lieu of her dower;
and therefore, there is little or nothing to be found in the English
books as to what should be considered as an equivalent for such a
life estate. Mole v. Smith, 1 Jac. & Walk. 053. But here, where
it so frequently becomes necessary, under the Act to Direct De-
scents, to have lands, of which partition cannot be made without dis-
advantage, sold in order to effect a division of the proceeds of sale
among the heirs; and also to make sale of the real estates of de-
ceased persons for the payment of their debts, it often happens,
that a widow may be called on to allow the estate to be sold free
of her claim to dower, and to accept an equivalent portion of the
purchase money in lieu of it.

In these and a variety of similar cases where relief has been
sought by means of special legislative enactments, it appears that
what should be deemed the present value of a life interest in land,