The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents / Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes

by Robert Green Ingersoll

The next point raised by Mr. Pancoast is that the oral agreement to provide well for her in the will is void under the statute of frauds.

Well, I am free to say that I do not know how it is in New Jersey, but in every other State in which I am acquainted with the law, the statute of frauds, to be operative, must always be pleaded. I do not know how it is here. That statute has not been pleaded in this case, and I never heard of it until the argument to-day. If it is to be pleaded before it can be invoked, it is too late to cite it now. But let us go on the supposition that he is right, that the antenuptial contract is void, and that the other contract to provide for her in the will is also void. Then where does that leave us? That leaves us exactly as though no contract had been made. That leaves us without any antenuptial contract, without any agreement to provide liberally for her in the will. Then what is our condition? Then the wife is entitled to her dower in the real estate; that follows as a necessity. She loses her interest in the personalty, because that is given away by the will, but if the antenuptial contract and parole agreement are both dead—one because disproportionate to the estate and because of the fraud of Russell, and the other on account of the statute of frauds, then she is left with her dower in the real estate. It is impossible, it seems to me, to arrive at any other conclusion. It certainly would be inequitable to say that she had been estopped on account of what was done with the five thousand dollars in the hands of the trustees.

There is another view of it. There has been, if the contracts are good, a partial performance; and that of itself would take it out of the statute of frauds.

Then the question is, if it is out of the statute of frauds, and if it is out because the contract has been partially performed, the next question, and, it seems to me, the only question that arises, is, has a court of equity the right to determine what the words "You shall be well provided for," "I will provide for you liberally in my will," or "I will make a liberal provision for you in my will"—what those words mean?

According to the idea of counsel on the other side, the Court is bound to decide according to the meaning that was in the mind of Mr. Russell. But there comes in here another principle. The only way we can find the meaning in his mind is by finding the words that he used; and we are not to import his meanness into the words, if he had meanness; neither would we import his generosity, if he had generosity. We would give to those words their natural meaning, apart from the thought of the one who used them, and apart from the thought of the one who heard them, because the words are known, their meaning is known and can be ascertained by the Court.

Now, the word "reasonable" is about as hard a word to define as a court was ever called upon to define, and yet courts of law and courts of equity, in hundreds and thousands of instances, have passed upon the meaning of the word "reasonable," and have not only passed upon its meaning, but have given it from time to time definitions.

A man must give reasonable care to the property of another given into his keeping. Well, what is reasonable care? Is it reasonable for him to take such care of it as he does of his own? Not if he is unreasonably careless of his own. And the law takes another step, and says you must take such care of it as is reasonable, as a reasonable man would, and the courts then go on to define what a reasonable man under the circumstances would do. Now, there is no word in the language that courts have been called upon to define that is vaguer—where the line between dawn and dusk, between light and dawn, has to be drawn with greater care or greater intelligence—than that word "reasonable." The word "appropriate" has been decided again and again. The word "necessary," the word "convenient," the word "suitable"—"suitable to his or her condition in life"—"suitable to the condition of the party"—all these words have been given judicial meaning hundreds and thousands of times.

And now we come to the word "liberal," is that a hard word to define?

Everybody in the world has his notion of what liberal means. Given the circumstances and the actions of the man, and everyone you meet is ready to decide whether he is liberal or illiberal. A man loses his pocketbook; five thousand dollars in it; a boy finds it, returns it to him, and he gives the boy five cents. There is not a man in the world, no matter whether he is a judge or not, who would say that was liberal—nobody. If there was only a dollar in the pocketbook and he gave him half of it, you would say that was liberal. You would have to take the circumstances into consideration. You also take into consideration the circumstances of the man who found it. If he is a poor man you can not be liberal unless you give him more than you would give the man who did not need it.

What is a liberal provision for a wife that has no means of making her own living? If the man is able, nothing less than a sufficient sum to take care of her. Suppose Mr. Vanderbilt, who is worth two or three hundred millions—I do not know what he is worth, and I do not care, but I suppose he is worth a hundred millions—should agree to make a liberal provision for his wife, and make it so that he gets away from the statute of frauds, and thereupon leaves her twenty-five hundred dollars. Nobody would say that was liberal. Why? Because that word is capable of a clear and reasonably exact definition. To be liberal, he would have to leave her enough to live in the same style that she has been living in with him, and enough to keep her during her life. Anything less than that would be illiberal, mean, contemptible.