_Attainment of Majority_ (Vol. viii., pp. 198. 250.).--In my last
communication upon this subject I produced undeniable authority to prove
that the law did not regard the fraction of a day; this, I think, A. E. B.
will admit. The question is, now, does the day on which a man attains his
majority commence at six o'clock A.M., or at midnight? We must remember
that we are dealing with a question of _English_ law; and therefore the
evidence of an English decision will, I submit, be stronger proof of the
latter mode of reckoning than the only positive proof with which A. E. B.
has defended Ben Jonson's use of the former, viz. _Roman_.
In a case tried in Michaelmas Term, 1704, Chief Justice Holt said:
"It has been adjudged that if one be born the 1st of February at eleven
at night, and the last of January in the twenty-first year of his age
at one o'clock in the morning, he makes his will of lands and dies, it
is a good will, for he was then of age."--_Salkeld_, 44.; _Raymond_,
480, 1096; 1 _Siderfin_, 162.
In this case, therefore, the testator was accounted of age forty-six hours
before the completion of his twenty-first year. Now, the law not regarding
the fraction of a day, the above case, I submit, clearly proves that the
day, as regards the attainment of majority, began at midnight.