1 DECEMBER 1860, Page 12

THE ROMANCE OF THE SHEDDENS.

Is 1764, when Robert Burns was still a "small boy," another native of Ayrshire left the land of his sires to seek his fortunes in commerce, in that part of the land of the West, which was then a colony of Great Britain, but is now the "Empire State" of the great American Republic. William Shedden was descended from a Scottish house, boasting of a genealogy which traced its course back to the Royal house of Stuart, and its head was the Laird of Roughwood. He carried with him his loyalty to the crown of England and Scotland. George III. had no more de- voted subject than William Shedden ; for although he had pros- pered and his goods had increased, he made himself an object for republican hostility, and only after the Declaration of Indepen- dence and the recognition of the Republic, did he obtain compen- sation as a British subject. His nationality he never lost ; it may be that some day he proposed to return with " siller" to the Land of Cakes, and be once more known as the Laird of Rough- wood. His commercial position in New York was high ; his cha- racter for probity is still undisputed, but there is a skeleton in every house, and the skeleton which Mr. Shedden's domicile con- cealed, has been disclosed by his own surviving relatives in the glare of the light in 1860,—sixty-two years after his death. Opposite to 31r. Shedden, there lived a Captain Wilson, who had a daughter, Ann, upon whom William Shedden cast the eye .of affection. By her he had two children, a Eon and daughter. What was the state of religion and morality in New York, in 1790, it is perhaps difficult now to ascertain. But if the evi- dence given in the Court of Divorce last week, be true, the cere- mony of marriage when performed was exceedingly informal. A private room contained the altar at which mutual vows were ex- changed before a clergyman ; but sometimes this slight ceremony was altogether omitted, and marriage was made by consent and cohabitation as man and wife. It ought to be borne in mind that such was the law of Scotland, and as a native of Scotland, Wil- liam Shedden probably carried his habits with him, and formed a matrimonial connexion destined to give rise to a series of law- suits, unparalleled in history, in which there was no choice of decision that did not brand his children with illegitimacy, or his nearest relatives with fraud and robbery of the orphans.

Were William Shedden and Ann Wilson man and wife in the eyes of their neighbours in 1791? That question, so easily settled at the time' has remained for settlement till 1860. It is not con- tested that Mr. Shedden was the father of the two children, but it is contested that they were his legitimate offspring. He lived with their mother, affirms one class of witnesses, in honour and repute for years, visiting and visited by his neighbours, to whom he introduced his wife. She never was his wife, say another class, nor ever recognized as such by himself until 1798, when he married her on his death bed ; nay, it is added that so far from being visited by ladies, she only gradually insinuated herself into Mr. Shedden's house, and was in fact his mistress. Between the two, it is impossible to do more than inferentially pronounce a de- cision as to the truth. But some light is shed on the matter by a letter written (as alleged on one side and denied on the other) by Mr. Shedden himself, on the 12th of November, 1798, two days before his death, to one of his nephews, in which, he says, he has married Miss Annie Wilson, with the full approval of his friends, which "restores" her and her children to "honour and credit." It is almost impossible to ascertain the exact mean- ing to these words. They might refer to the restoration of Mrs. Shedden and her children in the eyes of American society, which had feelings in favour of ecclesiastical marriages. They might also be treated as an admission, that his connexion with Miss Wilson, until that day, had been an unholy one, which created feelings of remorse, that, lying on his death bed, caused him to do the only act yet remaining in his power, by seeking the sanction of the Church to his connexion with iiss Wilson. There were persons related to William Shedden, who had these two definitions forced upon the their consideration. If Ann Wilson had been William Shedden's wife by habit and repute, then the death-bed marriage was wholly unnecessary in Scotland to legitimatize his son, and pass the lands at Itougliwood to him as heir-at-law. But if Ann Wilson had never been William Shedden's wife until the day of the death-bed marriage, then the Roughwood estate passed to William Shedden's eldest nephew. That Mr. Shedden himself supposed the marriage would place the legitimacy of his children beyond doubt is certain, for it is assumed in his letter. To his nephew, whose elder brother was heir to the estate failing lawful issue from William Shedden, the boy was consigned, in full faith and affection, and with money to educate and place him in the world.

Mr. Shedden had three nephews—John Patrick, who was his partner in New York ; Robert, the eldest, who was in practice as a medical man in Scotland ; and William, an agent, also in Scot- land, who was appointed guardian to William Patrick Ralston Shedden. These three nephews were all honourable men, and seemed to deserve their uncle's confidence. The boy came to Scotland, was educated with great care, placed out in the world, first, in the Indian Navy, and secondly, in the mercantile pro- fession in India. In 1823, he returned to Scotland, and visited his cousin, Robert Patrick ; turning over the pages of a County History, he read to his dismay that Robert had assigned a part of the lands of William Shedden, of New York, to his brother William. Astounded, he demanded explanations ; they were given ; his father had been under bonds to the Patrieks, and his father's papers were also put into his custody, including the all- important letter of November, 1798, a fact which he himself denied the other day in the Court of Divorce, but not to the satis- faction of the judges. If Mr. Shedden were indebted to his nephews in a sum equal to the value of the estate, no fraud could be perpetrated. But two facts require consideration, even assuming that the disputed letter establishes the fact of there having been no previous marriage. William Shedden left a will, and in that will he distinctly indicated his children as his legatees. Even if they were illegiti- mate, that will was entitled to take effect, and it is only on the improbable supposition that Mr. Shedden did not know his own affairs, and was really insolvent, that the case set up is justifiable. Early in the century, a suit was instituted in the Court of Session, in which a Mr. Hugh Crawfurd acted as the " Tutor " of young Shedden, to ascertain if the boy was his father's heir. The court decided he was not; a decision not at all necessary if the property was in debt, and scarcely necessary in presence of the will, if that solemn exposition of the mind and will of a dying man had been freely translated in a court of conscience, instead of the Court of Session. In after years when the full truth, or what he sus- pected, it may be unjustly, to be the truth, flashed upon him, William Shedden set himself to work, to clear the memory of his mother from the foul stain cast upon it. Nor did he standalone; by kilt side, leading the legal battle, stood a daughter, even in her defeat acknowledged by her judges as a heroine, who has given the best years of her young life to the recovery of what she be- lieved to be her father's right, and the reestablishment of her grandmother's good name. The battle was long and obstinately contested, and the fortunes of the day varied. One side struggled for estate and liberty, the other for estate and honour. The Patricks have been successful. and we do not grudge them the triumph, because it would have teen painful to believe that an old and honourable family stooped to what the Sheddens suggested. An old man standing on the threshold of the grave, at more than ninety years of age, asked that he might be released from imputations of robbery of the or- phan, forgery, and a life of deceit. He has been absolved by law from such imputations. But the cost of the absolution is awful ; it is purchased by proving his own uncle an immoral man, by disclosing his frailty, and by a reliance upon the letter of the law of legitimacy, branding his uncle's children as bastards. That uncle made all the reparation he could while life remained, and consigned his "charming boy" to his nephew's care. Nothing was done that was not perfectly regular, as regular as law could make it. But a will is set aside, and the property inherited and acquired by the testator, passed over his children's heads to his nephews. It was lawfully done. Only this is just one of the cases which cannot be met by law, which law makes worse if consulted. Such cases can only be met by affection and a large-hearted faith. The customs of society create laws, and society protects itself by making statutes, but no statute, no artificial rules, ought to over- ride the greater rights of fatherhood and childhood. We have no quarrel with the litigants in this particular case ; but we do do quarrel with the customs and statutes, be they of New York or Scotland, which presume to set aside the laws of natural affec- tion. The inheritance of the innocent orphan is sacrificed as an offering to the mere feeling in favour of customs or forms which are held to sanctify every exclusion of the bar sinister from our escutcheons.