GOODBUBN VS. STEVENS. 4^9

dark, 5 Metcalf, 575, and in other cases to which it is unne-
cessary to refer. It must, therefore, be regarded as an estab-
lished principle resulting from the nature of the contract, and
necessary for the protection both of the rights of the surviving
partners, and the estate of the deceased, that the death of either
of the partners produces, ipso facto, a dissolution of the concern;

unless there is inserted in the contract some provision imposing
upon the surviving partners, and the representative of the de-
cedent, an imperative obligation to continue it. There is to be
found in this contract of partnership no such stipulation, and
we think that the death of Samuel Hayes, on the 20th of May,
1826, is to be treated as the true period of the dissolution.

The counsel for the appellee have, however, contended, that
if his partnership was continued from the death of Samuel
Hayes, to the 31st of August, 1841, with the express or implied
consent of Mrs. Hayes, the order of the Chancellor in this re-
spect was correct, and that the consent of the widow and ad-
ministratrix, to its continuation is to be inferred from her con-
duct, and especially from the character other bill, in which she
claims a right to participate in the profits earned by the partners,
between the death of her husband and the period of the institu-
tion of her suit.

Samuel Hayes died on the 25th of May, 1825. On the 26th
of September, of the same year, Mrs. Goodburn obtained letters
of administration upon his estate, and on the 15th of January,
1830, she filed her bill, in which she charges, "that the per-
sonal property of her husband, bad been employed in the busi-
ness of the partnership, by the defendants," and prays, "that
they may be compelled to account for the profits made since his
death, out of the personal property, and that she may have a
reasonable and just allowance for her dower in the lands." And
assuming the facts stated is the bill to be true, it was the un-
questionable right of the administratrix, at her election, to de-
mand either the actual profits made by the survivors from the
use of her husband's share of the prrtnership property, or inter-
est upon the capital thus employed.

In Story on Part., sec. 343, it is stated—"That dissolution