Sayfadaki görseller
PDF
ePub

First, it is clear that in order to establish a title to be heard by counsel against a Bill the applicants must show a particular and special interest in respect of which they are injuriously affected by it. In what respect does any such interest threatened by the Executor and Trustee Bill exist among the solicitors of England. The Bill does not propose to vest in the Company the power authoritatively to decide on the validity of testamentary papers, on the construction of wills, on the proof of the claims of persons who seek to be treated as persons interested in their administration, nor on the relative rights of creditors and legatees. All these and many other subjects of the same kind must remain as at present subject to contentuous litigation in our various Courts. In putting a stop to these sources of profitable employment for Solicitors, the proposed Company can therefore exercise no dangerous power. The world must go on much as before, and whether a sensible and bonâ fide claimant, or a mere Peter Peebles shall raise the discussion on a trust, or a will, the authorised Courts of Law and Equity can alone possess the jurisdiction to decide it. Surely then since the regular business of the Solicitors cannot be injuriously interfered with by an Executor and Trustee Company, the Solicitors can have but little claim to ask protection against a Bill to constitute such a Company. If indeed the Company proposed to engross all the law business that must necessarily be performed, and to monopolise it for the benefit of certain Solicitors appointed by itself, there would be some ground of complaint. But this is exactly what the Company expressly declares it does not intend to do. Where the testator, or settlor, or the parties interested, shall desire any particular Solicitors to perform the law business, they will be employed in preference to any one else; where no such desire is expressed, the Company will either employ one of its own Solicitors, or should they be already encumbered with demands upon their time, will select such Solicitors among its shareholders as shall have the fairest reputations in the profession for skill, ability, and integrity. In no way whatever are the honest business interests of the Solicitors interfered with, and we will not do

the Solicitors of England the injustice to suppose that they would set up, as matters to be protected, any unfair interests, and say that the present system gives rise to such interests, and that because it does so they ought to be maintained. The Solicitors are at once too honourable and too prudent to set up any such demand, and if so, then there is no other in respect of which they can appear as the private opponents of a Bill which, though only authorising a private Company to undertake a private service, will thereby confer great benefits on so many individuals that it may fairly be considered a good public measure.

It is true that, assuming to themselves the title of protectors-general of trust estates, the Solicitors raise a great objection to any trustees who are not now paid for their services, being allowed to transfer to a Company which is to be paid for its services, the right to execute any trust. They say that this is to throw on the trust property a pecuniary burden from which it was originally intended to be free, and to which it ought not now by any act afterwards arising be subjected. The objection is specious, but not sound. In the first place it is probable that there was no intention to prohibit payment for the services required, that no intention whatever existed upon the subject, but that it was assumed that the trustees would act in the ordinary way, and so no one thought one word about the subject of their remuneration. In the next place it may be that the private occupations of the trustees have been found materially to interfere with their active and regular discharge of the duties of the trust, or that circumstances have compelled them to reside at places where the active and regular discharge of those duties is very inconvenient or must be effected through expensive and troublesome processes, and in either case the testator or settlor, if he could have foreseen these circumstances, would have consented, and the parties beneficially interested would now desire that any other respectable persons who might be relied on, and who would perform the trust in consideration of a small payment for their services, should be selected to discharge it. Suppose the settlor to be, like the testator, dead,— surely the parties beneficially interested are those who

[ocr errors]

have the full right to determine whether they are ready to pay to get their business well done, or to leave it ill done, or not done at all, because they will not pay. With them will rest the determination of the matter. The Company can only be employed by those who desire to employ it. It is not to have the power to force men to be its customers; they must seek it out and invest it with authority, and set it to work, and they will have to pay for what they have so done. There are instances, well-known instances, in which large trust estates would have been much benefited could the administration of them have been taken out of the hands of the negligent and incapable individuals in whom they were vested and have been transferred to a public Company whose business was regularly and skilfully transacted.

Aye, but say the objectors, a private trustee is responsible to the whole extent of his fortune for breaches of trust, and by the Executor and Trustee Bill no personal responsibility is to exist in the Shareholders of the Company. Do these objectors think that men in general are so utterly devoid of sense that by the mere contrast of the words "responsibility" and "no responsibility," they can be led to believe that the new Corporation is to be left at liberty to play at ducks and drakes with the property entrusted to its care? They must think so, or they would not put forward such a statement and affect to call it an argument. The individual Shareholders are certainly not to be subject to any personal responsibility beyond the amount of the Shares for which they have subscribed, but that liability amounts to the whole value of the subscribed shares. In the first place, a guarantee fund is to be formed. It is to be fixed at the sum of 100,000l., perpetually kept up, so that should there be a judgment against the Company for any sum whatever, the amount of that sum being taken by the judgment from the guarantee fund, must be immediately replaced, or the Board of Trade can stop all the operations of the Company for a time, and at the expiration of that time, if the guarantee fund shall not have been made up to its full amount, the Board of Trade can wind up the Company at once. Such are the provisions introduced into the Company's own bill,

provisions more stringent than are really necessary for any purpose of reasonable security to parties interested, and the offering of which implies, on the part of the Directors, not only a readiness to guard against any possibility of loss to such parties, but a pretty strong consciousness that nothing to occasion such a loss is ever likely to happen.

On the whole there seems every reason for saying not only that the want of some machinery to supply the deficiencies of private trustees is a public want, but that the means now taken to supply it are such as to deserve the confidence and the encouragement of the public,

ART. X.- PRIVATE BILL LEGISLATION.

[ocr errors]

IT is now eight years since Lord Brougham laid upon the Table of the House of Lords, twenty-four resolutions in which he exposed the evils and anomalies of the present system of Private Bill Legislation. He showed, in forcible language, the extraordinary importance of such legislation,the amount of property interfered with, the interests affected, the rights and privileges conferred, and the total inadequacy of the judicial machinery provided by Parliament, for administering justice to the parties, and protecting the interests of the public. On the 11th April, 1854, his Lordship moved that these Resolutions should be re-printed, and they are now before us. We have been informed that his Lordship introduced his motion by observations well calculated to arouse public attention to the subject, at the present time, and that Lord Monteagle added some judicious remarks but as the discussion related neither to the War, nor to the Reform Bill, the reporters shut up their notebooks, and withdrew for the Easter holidays.

The question of Private Bills has often been discussed in this Journal, and we are not without hope that the time is, at length, approaching when one of the most important of all the Law Reforms, which we have the honour of advocating, is about to be accomplished.

When the evils and abuses of Private Bill Legislation were first exposed, any attempt to correct them was almost hopeless. The railways were paying ten per cent. dividends, and offering eight per cent. guarantees,—great companies, with the resources of monarchs, were contending with one another for territorial aggrandisement, -while powerful landowners, in Parliament and out of Parliament, were paying off the incumbrances upon their estates, by the price of a few of their out-lying acres, extorted by fear or favour, from rival companies. All the great interests of the country were then concerned in railway speculations. Lawyers, engineers, capitalists, Members of Parliament, landowners, and stockjobbers, were drawn within its influence, and Parliament was the central focus to which they were all attracted. seeking their own interests, and all but the shareholders had reason to be satisfied with the result of their exertions. Never was money more freely spent. It was a war-expenditure, incurred recklessly at the time, and grieved over, when it was too late. The railway interest is now borne down by the consequences of their recent mania. In some lines the shares are less than half their former value, the dividends of all the railways in the kingdom are reduced, and many promising undertakings have been brought to the verge of bankruptcy and repudiation.

All were

While fighting, intrigue, and jobbery were in the ascendant, and every one was soon to be rich, prudent counsels were of no avail. The Parliamentary system was part of the lottery, in which there were so many prizes, that really nothing could be better. At length, however, the parties most interested are awakening to a sense of the delusions which have been their ruin. Mr. Laing, the able chairman of the Brighton Railway Company, estimates the loss sustained by Parliamentary contests at seventy millions! other competent witnesses have shown that at least one-third of the mileage sanctioned by the wisdom of Parliament has been too bad for any one to make. And to what cause are these evils now ascribed? To the very system, which, a few years since, was pronounced so perfect! We are constantly hearing now of "the faulty system of railway legislation

« ÖncekiDevam »