FAMILY VINDICTIVENESS.
THE discreditable story received this week from Derbyshire, under the heading, "Outrage at Alfreton Hall," has not yet been clearly explained, and probably never will be. The few facts quite certain are that the four younger sons of the late Mr. Morewood, a very wealthy squire of Derbyshire, were bequeathed 020,000 each. The personal estate being in- sufficient, they did not receive the whole sum, and the affair was referred to the Chancery Court, we presume to decide the precise rights of each claimant. The brothers were natur- ally disappointed, and for some reason, not yet mentioned, fancied that an elder brother, who had inherited .Alfreton Hall, was the person chiefly to blame. They dined with him on Christmas Eve, country fashion, and, apparently, in good-fellowship, but after their mother had returned home began quarrelling in the library with the squire. A furi- ous riot was heard by the servants, who twice endeavoured to enter the room, but were twice told that its inmates were only at play. These facts are admitted, but what followed is still the subject of judicial inquiry. According to Mr. C. Palmer Morewood, the brothers, who had been drinking freely, produced a paper—an application to Chancery—which they required him to sign, there and then. He refused, and was then thrown down and kicked out of consciousness, the brothers finishing up their work by cutting his clothes off, inflicting in the process a wound on the leg, and leaving him naked on the floor, where he was found, after their departure, by the servants. The truth of this story remains, of course, to be shown, as does also the motive of the assaulting brothers. Whether they had preconcerted the outrage, or were suddenly drawn into it whether they intended to compel their brother by force to sign the paper, or only to punish his refusal; whether the whole affair was a mehle, or an attempt to extort by violence; above all, why they out the squire's clothes off, is utterly uncertain ; the only farther fact known being that the brothers, being admitted to bail in the total amount of 24,000, thought it better, on the whole, to forfeit their bail and escape, it is said to America or Spain.
That is a strange and rather a ghastly story, and if the parties had not borne a near relation to one another, would not have been believed. It would have been pronounced impossible that educated men in a good position in life could have placed themselves in such a position merely to obtain a pecuniary advantage, or even redress a pecuniary wrong. As they were all brothers, however, it is believed, subject, of course, to evidence, long experience having convinced the world that quarrels among relatives about money are indefinitely more bitter and incurable than quarrels among strangers, or even friends. Persons connected in business, or even friends with pecuniary matters to arrange, constantly quarrel over them, grow furiously angry, use very bitter language, and finally, if they cannot arrive at an agreement or a compromise, go to law. They hate one another very hard, for a time, and often say the most injurious things of one another, but for them to fight is the rarest of occurrences. They are almost always relatives, if they do that. If you read in the police reports that, " in con- sequence of pecuniary disagreements," John Smith has fired at Thomas Brown, or has half-throttled him in his rooms, or has struck him with his stick, you know almost certainly, without further inquiry, that the combatants are connected either by blood or marriage, and that a family quarrel has culminated in an "outrage." Only very bad-tempered business men feel murderous because they are "done," but very sweet-tempered relations will, under the same circumstances, feel a distinct accession of blood to the head. Now, why should there be that extra bitterness ; why, that is, cannot brothers and cousins, and fathers-in-law and brothers-in-law, go to law quietly, like reasonable human beings, and relieve them- selves, as business connections do, by expenditure, instead of by assaults P They are certainly under no compulsion from opinion, for it is one of the oddities of the situation that relatives take to fighting where strangers would appeal to the lawyers, in spite of a strong public feeling that relationship greatly increases the discredit of an outrage,—that, in fact, it rather diminishes than increases the original provocation. The popular explana- tion that in a family quarrel there is always something behind, that a feud of years has only found in the pecuniary dis- pute an occasion of bursting out, is very often wholly with- out foundation. It is within the experience of all men that such disputes often arise upon the money question alone, and that relatives who were friends, and even decided friends, suddenly and, to on-lookers, in ex plicably become bitter and sometimes even life-long enemies. Brothers, cousins, relatives by marriage have quarrelled over some poor legacy or trumpery bit of property, or, of all odd things, right to a distant reversion, as mere acquaintances never quarrel, with an angry soreness which no reasoning and no authority seems sufficient to assuage. Their very brains seem turned with bitterness, and they will not only say, but actually believe things of each other which are not only untrue, but so demonstrably opposed to fact that they seem to on-lookers hardly consistent with sanity. The squire who insisted, after losing a suit about a right of way, that his brown-haired brother, who won, was a "carroty villain," and called him so in the moment of reconciliation, without an idea that he was talking nonsense, is a figure with whom, in some form or another, we are all familiar. What is the root of that extra bitterness 15 People say that, like North and South, or Englishmen and Irishmen, relatives talk each other's language, and therefore understand each other's insults too well ; but enormous bitter- ness will arise between relatives separated by half the world, and is constantly seen on occasions when the first proclama- tion of hostilities is a resolute silence, allowing of no insult. Relatives no dou,bt often feel the chain of etiquette but slightly, and therefore, when quarrelling, seem to each other insolent, but there are fends in which verbal quarrelling bears no part. The injudicious interference of friends, never absent in a family quarrel, of course counts for something, and so does the latent rivalry rarely entirely absent among relatives, which lends to any pecuniary loss the additional sting of defeat. But we believe the two main causes are propinquity and the compara- tive absence of a final and peremptory arbiter, who at least can settle the fine malt, the pecuniary matter in dispute. Every- body knows how bitter quarrels grow on board ship, where the enemies must always meet, where they glare at one another over soup, and " cut " one another over grog, and where "that scamp Smith, Sir, cannot let me go up the hatchway without stumbling over me." On shipboard the enemy is always pre- sent, and almost always visible, and the great amenity of London, that if you seldom see your friends, you never see your enemies, is wholly absent. A family is a ship, to its members' feelings. They may never see one another, may be overate by the Atlantic or a continent, but a tie connects them which forbids them to forget, and they are mentally always in the same boat. Christian forgiveness is a great thing, but for washing out enmities commend us to forgetfulness. There is no Lethe for members of the same family, who cannot be soothed even when Providence sends them a little comfortable vengeance, and the brother has broken his finger, or the cousin gone out of the Bankruptcy Court with a third-class certificate. The foe is of the family, even if he is comfortably hanged. The other reason is the reluctance all relatives feel in appealing to the law. Connections in business who quarrel can, at least when, as the Scotch say, "sufficiently left to themselves," gratify their tempers by an appeal to a Judge, that is, to a perfectly disinterested and passionless arbiter, whom mine times out of ten they know in their hearts to be right, and who, besides giving an award, can enforce it with irresistible strength. They have a form of duel always provided for them. Relatives who quarrel do not like to appeal to law, have an unreasonable, yet natural, feeling that they have rights beyond law ; and when they do appeal to it, feel, if beaten, that they are oppressed, not by the Judge, but by the other party's soli- citor; and if victorious, that they ought to be ashamed of them- selves. They should have been victorious without help from others, by virtue of concessions, which, as they secretly think, the tie of blood justified them in claiming. Those are, we believe, the two main causes of a fury which is the most irrational, as well as the most un-Christian, that often displays itself in modern society, and which crops up constantly, though it does not often lead to such attempts as that reported to have been made at Alfreton
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