with clean records, seeking to escape from the iron heels of foreign aristocracies or from the strangulation of a superabundant population, we leave our doors wide open; but shall we not refuse hospitality to all classes of alien irreclaimable maniacs, mendicants, and miscreants? And may we not refuse to become a universal almsgiver on compulsion? Our countrymen must not be coerced to support the weak, vile, and hungry outcasts from hospitals, prisons, and poorhouses, landed here not only to stay themselves, but to transmit hereditary taints to the third and fourth generation.

5. THE DEAD HAND.

BY H. L. WAYLAND, D.D., OF PHILADELPHIA,

(Read Sept. 5, 1889.)

The question which I propose very briefly to discuss is, How far shall the men of to-day allow themselves to be held motionless in the dead hand of a former generation?

That there are no limits in the premises, that it is the right of a man to get all he can under the forms of law, and to use just as he will all that he has got, and to prescribe absolutely how his property shall be used for all time after his death,- these have been reckoned axioms. And (rather strangely perhaps) it has been reckoned (if there are degrees in axioms) that the longer a man has been dead, so much more axiomatic became his right to the absolute control of his possessions. It might be an open question (though not very open, only just ajar, as it were) as to the directions of a man who died yesterday; but, as to the will of a man who died ten centuries ago, all its requirements have been gaining added sacredness each year in geometrical progression. And if, perchance, the conditions go away back into the dark ages, especially if the name, or perchance the very personality, of the founder has been lost in the remoteness of antiquity, then there is a degree of sanctity attaching to the whole affair, such that he who ventures to make any inquiries as to the obligations of the trust has occasion to consider attentively the story of the men of Beth-she-mesh, who looked into the Ark of the Lord.

A woman left by will certain property "to be used in printing, publishing, and propagating the sacred writings of Joanna Southcote." Presently, the last member of the sect founded by Joanna died; but, for all that, the English courts held that the will must be carried out, and the property devoted through all time as prescribed by the testator. A man left a foundation, requiring that each year a sermon be preached in Norwich, Eng., to the Walloons, in Low Dutch. So each year a clergyman, who does not understand the language, commits to memory a sermon, and preaches it to bare walls.

I have taken these illustrations from "The Dead Hand," a collection of very able and striking essays and addresses "upon the subject of endowments and settlements of property," by Sir Arthur Hobhouse, now Lord Hobhouse. He gives many other instances in which the effect of foundations is not only nugatory and futile (as in the above cases), but in the highest degree hurtful. In 1793, George Jarvis left a large property to be spent in charity on the poor of three small parishes, with a total population of less. than nine hundred. The result has been to induce in the people of the parishes thus cursed a habit of indolence, thriftlessness, and drunkenness, and to draw to the parishes a crowd of indolent vagabonds from every quarter, the pauper population increasing in thirty years sixty per cent. In many other instances where a bequest has been left to the poor of a town or village, the income has increased till there was ten times as much as could be wisely spent in charity in the village proposed; but the idle have been drawn thither, and thrown on the town, raising the poor rates and reducing the rate of wages. In one instance, the result of such a bequest was that one-thirteenth of the population had become paupers, equivalent to eighty-five thousand paupers in Philadelphia.

As bearing on the tendency of funds used for indiscriminate charity, Mr. Gladstone, in the House of Commons, in 1863, quoted from the report of the Poor Law Commissioners of 1834:

The places intended to be favored by large charities attract an undue proportion of the poorer classes, who, in the hope of trifling benefits to be obtained without labor, often linger in spots most unfavorable to the exercise of their industry. Poverty is thus not only collected, but created, in the very neighborhoods whence the benevolent founders have manifestly expected to make it disappear.

Of the worse than waste of money expended in indiscriminate charity, this Royal Commission, appointed to inquire into the working of the poor laws, reported:

If twice the number of millions of pounds [collected for the poor rates] were cast into the sea annually, we might still be a moral, industrious, and flourishing people; but, if the whole of the poor rates could be raised without inconvenience, if they were paid to us, for instance, as tribute by foreigners, and were still applied as they are now, no excellence in our laws and institutions in other respects could save us from ultimate ruin.

In November, 1886, at Rochester, in Kent, Eng., I saw on the front of a staid and venerable-looking house a tablet bearing this inscription:

"RICHARD WATT, Esq.

By his will, dated 22 Aug. 1579,
founded this Charity

For six poor Travelers

who, not being Rogues or Proctors,
May receive gratis, for one night,
Lodging, entertainment
And fourpence each."

The property, which, in the day of the late Mr. Watt, was waste moorland, has become valuable, and brings in an income of which only one-thirtieth is spent upon the "six poor Travelers"; but this thirtieth is enough to collect each evening a crowd of vagabonds, from among whom the proper authorities select six, who are housed and presented with fourpence each. The rest of the vagabonds, I suppose, are thrown on the town or on the charitable.

I chanced once to be in London at Easter. It was stated in the daily papers that, on that day, in one of the parishes of the city, a dozen poor old women receive each a shilling, on condition of picking it up with her lips off the grave of the founder. The struggles of the poor, decrepit, rheumatic creatures afforded no end of entertainment to the ingenuous youth of the vicinage.

Then there were the numberless bequests made on condition that each day, through all time, masses should be said for the soul of the founder. And in some instances, where the testator was a person of ardent piety and burning zeal, the will provided for an annual supply of fagots for the discouragement of religious eccentricity. These were representative instances. The number might be indefinitely multiplied from among the forty thousand foundations, called "charitable," existing in Great Britain.

In these and similar cases, the English courts have held that the will of the founder must be carried out, unless it is physically impossible. Where a fund was left to ransom Christian captives taken by the Algerines, it is held that, as no such captives now exist, the money may be used for some kindred purpose. But, where it is physically possible, the will must be carried out, even if obvious harm ensue, and even though, in some instances, a literal carrying out defeats the very spirit and purpose of the will. I shall of course be reminded that Parliament is omnipotent

in these as in all matters which affect the people living within the four seas. But what prospect is there of gaining the ear of Parliament, already overwhelmed with imperial affairs? And who is going to undertake the labor and expense of bringing these abuses before Parliament?

Such are some of the results of the cultus which Lord Hobhouse calls "founder worship." What else was to be expected, if the matter were to be looked at in a dry light, if the question were regarded as open, if we were now to take it up as wholly new? It is a great obstacle to getting just views of almost anything that while with each generation there is, an added volume of experience and material for a just judgment, yet there is also an added tendency to aberration. When we have become accustomed to anything, we regard it as belonging to the essential scheme of the universe. Nature does not more truly abhor a vacuum than does the human mind, which has inherited from the Fall a baleful' conservatism, shrink from opening questions and from disturbing the moss of ages. But let us try for an instant to enjoy a novel sensation; let us use our reason; let imagination and sentiment and a misguided reverence for the dead enjoy a moment's repose.

What might we expect would be the effect of allowing the dead to rule through their bequests the coming generations? The men of the former days were liable to all the passions, all the selfishness, which pervade every age. A man in making his will may be influenced by spite, by vanity, by jealousy. Sometimes bequests which are called in law "charitable" are really the result of the meanest and most contemptible motives. A man who dare not assert his character during his life, who does not desire to arouse the contempt and hatred of those with whom he is living, will embalm his revenge or his animosity in his will, not to be brought to light until he has found a safe refuge under ground.

Mr. Thomas Nash, who seemingly failed to find a heaven in his home, bequeathed £50 a year to the bell-ringers in the Abbey Church, Bath, "on condition of their ringing on the whole peal of bells, with clappers muffled, various solemn and doleful changes, from eight in the morning to eight in the evening (with suitable intervals for refreshment), on the 14th of May in each year, being the anniversary of my wedding day; and also on every anniversary of the day of my decease to ring a grand bob major and merry, mirthful peals, unmuffled, during the same space of time, in joyful commemoration of my happy release from domestic tyranny and wretchedness."