70 CECIL COUNTY. [ART. 8.

19. The sheriff shall, before the jury proceed to act, administer
to each an oath that he will justly and impartially value the
damages, and if any of the jurors summoned do not attend, the
sheriff shall immediately summon as many jurors as shall be
necessary with those in attendance to finish the panel of twenty,
and from them each party or his agent, or if either be not pre-
sent in person or by agent, the sheriff, for him, may strike off
four jurors, and the remaining twelve shall act as a jury of in-
quest of damages.

20. The jury in estimating the damages, shall take into esti-
mate the benefit resulting to the owner from the opening and
laying out said streets, lanes or alleys, through, along or near
to the property of said owner, but only in the extinguishment of
the claims for damages; and the jury shall reduce their inquisi-
tion to writing, and shall sign and seal the same, and it shall
then be returned by the sheriff to the clerk of the Circuit Court
for said county, and shall be confirmed by said court at its next
session, if no sufficient cause to the contrary be shown, and when
confirmed shall be recorded by said clerk, at the expense of said
commissioners.

21. If said inquisition be set aside, the said court may direct
another to be taken in the same manner as the first; every in-
quisition shall describe the property taken or the bounds of the
land condemned, and the quantity and duration of the interest
in the same, therein valued, and such valuation when paid or
tendered to the owner of the property or Ms legal representa-
tives, shall entitle the said commissioners to the estate, use and
interest in the same so valued for the purposes aforesaid, as fully
as if the same had been conveyed by the owner, and the valua-
tion, if not received from the said commissioners when tendered,
may at any time thereafter be received, with costs, by the owner
or his legal representatives.

22. The said president and commissioners shall have power
to levy and collect taxes in said town not exceeding in any one
year thirty cents in the hundred dollars, on the assessable pro-
perty of said village; and they shall once in every five years,