s been frequently decided that where a
father, having a limited power of appointment among his children,
appoints the whole fund to an infant child, who is in no need of the
appointment and who is ill, in the expectation of the death of the child
whereby the fund will come to him as next of kin, such appointment is
void as a fraud upon the power. Where an execution is partly fraudulent
and partly valid the court will, if possible, separate the two and only
revoke that which is fraudulent; if, however, the two parts are not
separable the whole is void. The same rule is applied in cases of
excessive execution where the power is exercised in favour of persons
some of whom are and some of whom are not objects of the power. The
doctrine of _Election_ (q.v.) applies to appointments under powers, but
there must be a gift of free and disposable property to the persons
entitled in default of appointment.

The appointment must in law be read into the instrument creating the
power in lieu of the power itself. Thus an appointor under a limited
power cannot appoint to any person to whom the donor could not have
appointed by reason of the rule against perpetuities, but this is not so
in the case of a general power, for there the appointor is virtually
owner of the property appointed. In applying this rule to appointments a
distinction arises between powers created by deed and will, for a deed
speaks from the date of its execution but a will from the death of the
testator, and so limitations bad when the will was made may have become
good when it comes into operation. Since the Conveyancing Act 1881 all
powers may be released by the donees thereof, unless the power is
coupled with a trust in respect of which there is a duty cast on the
donee to exercise it; and this is so even though the donee gets a
benefit by such release as one entitled in default of appointment, for
this is not a fraud upon the power. (E. S. M. B.)

APPOMATTOX COURT HOUSE, a village of Appomattox county, Virginia,
U.S.A., 25 m. E. of Lynchburg, in the S. part of the state. It is served
by the Norfolk & Western railway. The village was the scene of the
surrender of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under General
Robert E. Lee to the Federal forces under Lieutenant-General U.S. Grant
on Sunday the 9th of April 1865. The terms were: "the officers to give
their individual paroles not to take up arms against the government of
the United States until