"This unlimited power is what the best legislators of all ages have endeavored to deposit in such hands, as would preserve the people from rapine."——Swift, vol. 2. Contests, &c.
"Would preserve" seems to have no nominative, for hands cannot be inserted without changing the form of the sentence; in those hands which would preserve.
"A hypocrite hath so many things to attend to, as make his life a very perplexed and intricate thing."——Tillotson.
This mode of expression is however well established and occasions no obscurity. The truth is, as is an article or relative equivalent to that or which; and the criticisms of Lowth on the conjunctions, where he condemns the use of as and so in a number of instances, prove that he knew nothing about the true meaning of these words. See Diversions of Purley, page 283.
Another form of expression, peculiar to our language, is the participial noun, a word derived from a verb, and having the properties, both of a verb and a noun; as, "I heard of his acquiring a large estate." Acquiring here expresses the act done, the acquisition; yet governs the following objective case, estate. When a noun precedes the participle, it takes the sign of the possessive, "I heard of a man's acquiring an estate." This is the genuin English idiom; and yet modern writers very improperly omit the sign of the possessive, as, I heard of a man acquiring an estate. This omission often changes the sense of the phrase or leaves it ambiguous.
The omission of the sign of the possessive in the following example is a very great fault.
"Of a general or public act, the courts of law are bound to take notice judicially and ex officio, without the statute being particularly pleaded."——Blackstone Comment. vol. 1. p. 86.
The preposition without here governs the phrase following, which might otherwise be properly arranged thus, without the particular pleading of the statute, or without pleading the statute particularly. But as the sentence stands, there is nothing to show the true construction, or how the sentence may be resolved: Being and pleaded both stand as participles; whereas the construction requires that they should be considered as standing for a noun; for without does not govern statute; without the statute, is not the meaning of the writer. But it governs pleading, or refers immediately to that idea or union of ideas, expressed by being particularly pleaded. As these last words represent a noun, which is immediately governed by the preposition, without, the word statute should have the sign of the possessive, as much as any word in the genitive case, without the statute's being particularly pleaded; that is, without the particular pleading of the statute by the parties; for in order to make grammar or sense, statute must be in the possessive.
To confirm these remarks, I would just add, that when we substitute a pronoun in such cases, we always use the possessive case. Suppose the word statute had been previously used, in the sentence; the writer then would have used the pronoun in the close of the sentence, thus; "without its being particularly pleaded;" and I presume that no person will contend for the propriety of, "without it being pleaded."