A private Act of Parliament, as unwieldy in dimensions as
the person to whose misdeeds it owes its origin, was passed during lest SeesiOn, and has now been printed by the Queen's Printers. Its object is to authorise the raising of money on the sedurity of the Tichborne and Doughty estates, to discharge the costs of the defence against the " Claimant " The settlement of the estates, which commences nearly seventy years ago, is strict, and of course no provision was made for the supply of ready money that was required to repel the audacious attacks of Arthur Orton. When the rights of the infant heir were attacked, the trustees had no option but to fight, and from the collapse of their assailant they had no peentiaty recompense to expect. No indemnity was to be redotered from the Claimant when his mask of good birth and breeding was stript off, and he was discovered to be the Wapping butcher after alL But the task of proving this cost the Tiehborne family a sum Of more than £90,000, as-was ascer- tained and settled by the Cote of Chancery a few Months ago,— not to speak of the immense sum which the Government had sfterWards to expend in bringing the impostor to justice. The expenses are to be raised out of the value of the estates by trustees appointed wider the Act, and it cannot be denied that the charge laid upon this family by the daring aggression of Orton is a heavy one. It shows, indeed, that every one who Owns property is still exposed to the chances of private wax in its defence, and if the aggressor be a penniless adventeter, the loss may be serious, and even crushing. People with great estates ought to be eager law- reformers.
Previous page
