118 HIGH COURT OF CHANCERY.

and the payment of debts, and it is certainly a genera] rule, that

with regard to contracts respecting goods, and other things of
a merely personal nature, this court will not decree specific per-
formance, except in cases in which a court of law could not
give adequate compensation in damages. Unless, therefore, in
contracts relating to personal estate, it be clearly shown, that
adequate compensation cannot be given by an action at law,
chancery will not interfere. 2 Story, Equity, secs., 716, 717,
718.

This court, then, looking to all the circumstances of this
case, seeing that in the state of things which now exists, it
would be impossible to frame a decree which would do justice
as between these parties, being moreover convinced, that the
leading motive which induced the grandfather to make the
promise—if he did make such'promise—can no longer operate,
1 sun not disposed to carry this alleged contract into execution,
but will leave the party to his remedy at law, where the jury
can afford him the relief in damages, which they may, under all
the circumstances, think him entitled to.

If this court should decree the specific performance of this
contract, and direct the title to this property to be conveyed to
the complainant, so as to give him the dominion over it, I am
persuaded, I should be doing that which his grandfather never
intended, and for which, as I think, there is no sufficient justi-
fication in the proof; for not a single witness has spoken of the
nature or quality of the title which the complainant was to re-
ceive—and if we are to judge from the will of his grandfather,
dated but two months after the marriage, and the character of
(he interest which the complainant takes under it, there is the
ttrongest reason for thinking, that the absolute transfer to him
of the title to this property, would be most repugnant to the
intentions of the grandfather, then or previously entertained.

The Chancellor stated it as his opinion, looking to the nature
and value of the property in dispute, compared with the devise
so the complainant by the testator, that the contract, if establish-
ed, could not be considered as satisfied by the subsequent de-
vise; and referred to Koper on Legs, 46, 48, to show that if