[2] Citing Warburton in the 1836 English case of Becke v Smith, James Parke (1st Baron Wensleydale, later Lord Wensleydale) stated: It is a very useful rule, in the construction of a statute, to adhere to the ordinary meaning of the words used, and to the grammatical construction, unless that is at variance with the intention of the legislature, to be collected from the statute itself, or leads to any manifest absurdity or repugnance, in which case the language may be varied or modified, so as to avoid such inconvenience, but no further.
I have been long and deeply impressed with the wisdom of the rule, now, I believe, universally adopted, at least in the Courts of Law in Westminster Hall, that in construing wills and indeed statutes, and all written instruments, the grammatical and ordinary sense of the words is to be adhered to, unless that would lead to some absurdity, or some repugnance or inconsistency with the rest of the instrument, in which case the grammatical and ordinary sense of the words may be modified, so as to avoid that absurdity and inconsistency, but no farther.
[7] In its broad sense, the rule may be used to avoid a result that is contrary to principles of public policy, even where words may prima facie carry only one meaning.
Under the plain terms of section 46, as the woman had died intestate her murderer stood to inherit substantially her entire estate, which would then have passed to his descendants.
The court used the golden rule to find in favour of the family members, preventing the son's descendants as a matter of public policy from profiting from his crime.