564 NEALE v. HAGTHROR—3 BLAND.

declares, that he is entirely ignorant of the matters contained in
the bill, and leaves the plaintiff to make out the best case he can,
or any language to that effect; and the plaintiff' files a general
replication, all the allegations of the bill are thus denied and put
in issue; and, consequently, all of them must be proved at the
hearing against a defendant who has thus answered. Potter v.
Potter, 1 Ves. 274; Amhurst v. King, 1 Cond. Chan. Rep. 407.

This, in England, is said to be the usual form of the answer
of the Attorney-General; and no exception can be taken to such
answer, nor, indeed, to any answer of the Attorney-General. 2
Mad. Chan. Pra. 335. The same form and rule prevails here
where the Attorney-General appears for the State. This also is,
commonly, the form of the answer of an infant, or person nan com-
pos mentis, who answers by his guardian or committee. And, by a
long established practice, * individuals, who are, in truth,
580 ignorant of the whole matter as to which the bill requires
any disclosure; but who are made defendants as having an interest
in the matter in controversy, have been permitted, by this general
mode of answering, to deny the whole bill, and to put the plaintiff
to prove all its allegations at the hearing. Drury v. Connor, 6 H.
& J. 291. If, however, it appears from the bill, that the defend-
ant has any knowledge of any matter in it, he may be required to
answer more fully and particularly to the extent of his knowledge
or belief.

Divesting this case then, of all extraneous matter; of all that
relates to the two first administrators of the late Anthony Hook;
because this plaintiff is incompetent, in the representative char-
acter in which he sues, to recover any thing, but so much of the
personal estate of his intestate as remains in specie; or has re-
mained, and is now in the hands of any one who can be regarded
as a trustee for the use of the late Anthony Hook and his repre-
sentatives. Of alt that which relates to the next of kin of the

not, he cannot rely on the silence of the respondent in relation to any mate-
rial allegation, but must prove it."

Whence it would seem that a new rule has been thus laid down, differing,
in some respects, from any spoken of in the text.

On what authority this cited dictum of Chief Justice Marshall was
founded does not distinctly appear from the case as reported in 6 Cranch,
51. It certainly does not entirely accord with any of the above mentioned
English or Virginia adjudications, and still less with the controverted deci-
sion of Chancellor HANSON, as reported in 2 H. & J. 301. But as an appeal
lies in Virginia from an interlocutory order dissolving an injunction, 5
Rand. 333, it is clear, that the judgment of the Court on the principal matter
in the case of Young v. Grundy, declaring, that no such appeal would lie in
that case, although it came, most probably, from the Virginia section of the
District of Columbia, must have been founded on the Act of Congress, 24
September, 1789, ch. 20, s. 22, which declares, that appeals shall be allowed
only from final decrees and judgments.