THE PATERSON CASE.
THERE must be a curious grudge latent in the minds of most Englishmen at the idea of the State benefiting by a pecu- niary windfall, or Colonel Alexander would never have obtained 134 votes for his client, Mr. Paterson, of Montgomery. The case in itself was exceedingly simple. A Mr. Paterson, of Jamaica, died worth £80,000, half of which he bequeathed to his sister and her descendants, of whom Mr. Paterson of Montgomery is the representative, and half to his ille- gitimate son William, whom he had recognised and brought up in his owu house. William came to Scotland, and according to evidence which convinced Mr. Smith, the Secretary to the Treasury, and the Law Officers, led an eccentric and secluded life, avoiding his father's connections, carefully concealing his wealth from them, trusting no one but his solicitors, and according to them betraying even a decided antipathy to his father's kinsfolk. The evidence of these solicitors was attacked in the debate, on the ground that they hoped for some advantage from the property, but as it was shown by Mr. Smith that they could have kept £28,000 of the money merely by remaining silent—that sum actually standing in their names alone, without Mr. Paterson's—their honesty must be taken for granted, and their statement is entirely in accord- ance with the observed facts of hum-an nature. Illegitimate children rarely like their legitimate kinsfolk. They rebel against the unfairness of the laws, they grudge them their recognised and secure position in society, they imagine slights where none are intended, and they are very often right in considering themselves injuriously slighted. Except in cases where the father is of immense rank or long pedigree—as in the case of the illegitimate branch of the Percies, where the bar sinister is openly announced to the world through the Peerage—they are apt to be morbidly sensitive about their illegitimacy, secretly brood over their sepa- rateness from those around them, and in particular frequently seek unusual ways of disposing of their possessions. Mr. Neeld did that, it will be remembered, selecting the Queen as his legatee ; and many more cases are recorded which have not become quite so public. Mr. William Paterson, unmarried, childless, and odd, may have wished to do the same thing, or may have pon- dered over some benefaction to the public of the kind which the Scotch, with unconscious humour, call a "mortification," or may merely have been unable to select fitting recipients for his bounty; but at all events, he died leaving no will, nor any instructions for a will, nor any indication that had time been given he would have disposed of his property in one way rather than another. His only trusted friends seem to have been his solicitors, the Messrs. Andrews, who voluntarily surrendered the concealed £28,000, and who think he meant it for them ; but they produce no evidence in support of that opinion, except Mr. Paterson's illimitable trust in their integrity, whin is creditable to them, and which they have amply justified, but which, curiously enough-:-considering the popu- lar opinion about lawyers—is the commonest thing in the world. There is not a considerable firm in the country which is not con- stantly asked to place itself in a position in which it could steal at discretion, but the confidence of clients is no proof of their testamentary designs. The Baillies of Kilmarnock think he would have left property to them, and so does the minister of the parish ; but they produce no evidence, and the assumption that a man with money, but without relatives, cares for the place he lives in or the church he attends is unfortunately in this kingdom a rather violent one. There is, in fact, no evidence that the deceased had any idea of bequeathing his property to any- body, or any wish that it should not go to its natural heir, the State, and so it escheated to the Crown. Of course, the nearest relative, Mr. Paterson, of Montgomery, a cousin-german by blood, does not like that, and protests, and demands his money ; but why 135 Members of the House of Commons should endorse his claim is a puzzle only explicable on the theory of a general though latent dislike of luck happening to the State, which is impersonal, to the detriment of an individual, who can be seen and talked to, and may possibly be nice. The State has so much that no fortune benefits it, while a very modest amount may benefit individuals. That a great body of gentlemen should think that a natural son has a claim, or an illegitimate half-brother, we can understand, for the rules about illegitimacy are rather essential to society than founded on natural instinct, and are expressly repudiated on some important points by all Christian Churches ; but the right even of a legitimate cousin- german to inherit property is a mere creation of law, and law may be fairly invoked to set it aside. The natural and right heir to a kinless man is the State, which has protected him all his life, which has enabled him to accumulate property, or which, if he gained it by inheritance, has maintained the social order that admits of that artificial devolution. The right of relatives of the first degree, though not so completely indisputable as Englishmen accustom themselves to fancy, has the sanction of implicit con- tract, and also in England of positive law, people being respon- sible for a contribution towards such relatives' maintenance in the poor-house ; but the right of a cousin-german is only a useful fiction, sanctioned by the law. One can marry one's cousin, and one can hate one's cousin, without breaking any instinctive rule ; and the natural right to property, undevolved by will, which exists in an intimate friend, is distinctly closer than the right produced by those half-accidental relationships. The right is only legal, and a legal right dies in the absence of legal claim. It was suggested, indeed, in the debate that there was a legal claim, the immemorial practice in Scotland having been to treat the natural kinsfolk of an intestate bastard as his legal kinsfolk, but the Treasury—which has no interest in the matter, or rather, has an interest in being " kindly " and " gener- ous " at the expense of the taxpayer—denies this assertion, alleging, what is much more probable, that the practice has been to distribute in accordance with the presumed desire of the in- testate, or with any natural and universally recognised claim of kinship, such as in this instance does not arise. In Scotland, it appears from the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, owing to some excessive stretching of the feudal ideas, the children even of a bastard cannot by law inherit unless he has left a will—which, again, he has only been enabled to do by special statute—and the Crown, therefore, has very frequently used its prerogative to regrant to children or nephews of an illegitimate intestate the escheated estates, and has thus created a precedent,— which, however, does not apply to more distant relationships. The only reason, in fact, for postponing the claims of the State to those of Mr. Paterson of Montgomery is that it is better for the community to enrich an individual than to enrich the Treasury,— a contention hardly defensible by argument. The moral right of the State to every inheritance is a defensible theory, is indeed Ithe moral basis of all legacy and succession duties, and certainly
cannot be barred by any relationship not within the prohibited degrees.
The dislike to see property lost, as it were, and become in- visible in the huge swamps of the Miscellaneous Receipts of the Treasury is, as we have intimated, very strong ; and we are by no means certain, that a shrewd legislator would not neutralise it by a law settling that windfalls like Mr. Paterson's property should not be absorbed in the general revenue, but should be devoted to the formation and increase of some specific and if possible popular fund. They could not be expended every year, because they fall in so irregularly, but they could be devoted to a fund which in half-a-century would produce an important and a regular disposable income, —and if popular, might even attract legacies from the rich. Nothing is more curious in a country like this, where the Constitution is almost an object of worship, than the non-occurrence of legacies to the State, and it may very well be due in part to the apparent hopelessness of benefiting the country by the bequeathal of any private fortune. Nobody would feel, even by farthings, that anything had been be- queathed. A popular fund would actually and visibly be benefited by such a fortune, and might attract the regard of many wealthy men who are quite willing to do something posthumously for the public, but are still undecided how to do it. Why, for instance, should not all windfalls go to the British Museum ; or to the fund for granting pensions for literary or scientific service, which Ministers say is always too small ; or to the Fund, so frequently suggested, for the Endowment of Scientific Research ; or to any one of the numerous objects which Ministers from time to time admit ought to be kept in view, but for which there is never any available money ? Such a fund would be jealously guarded by the public ; the occurrence of a windfall into it would be regarded, not with jealousy, but with pleasure ; and it would be a conspicuous object, towards which the eyes of vacillating testators would be directed. We had much rather they left their money to the Municipalities, but there is no hope of that, the traditional idea that municipalities are corrupt, being absolutely incurable. There is no such idea about the State, and we should greatly like to see the experiment tried, say, for some twenty years. We venture to say thatat the end of that time Members who " stretched a point " in order to vote for the individual against the State would find themselves very severely taken to task by their constituencies.
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