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Leader (1850-1860), 3rd April 1858, Edition 1 of 2, Page 324, Untitled Article

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      to have it should she marry without the unanimous consent of four guardians . A gallant officer saw her , loved her , ana was loved in return , but - when he came to consider his chances of bringing the guardians to a unanimous assent , he found that one of them had a strong prejudice against military men , and that { mother had a son who was himself a pretender to the lady ' s hand ( and fortune ) . This was a difficulty for the two ardent lovers : the will was positive , and the gallant lover was poor . A young lawyer read the will , drawn up in short stem sentences " by the father himself , and nothing could

      be more clear than that the young lady was to lose the . property should she marry without the consent of the four guardians . But the document omitted to specify any person to whom the property was to revert on the daughters disobedience . " You may get married to-morrow , " exclaimed the lawyer to the young pair . " Yes , " rejoined she , " and by the wiH lose the property . " " Yes , lose it by the win , but retain it as only child , and , therefore , heirat-law . The will falls to the ground , and you succeed as if your father died intestate . " The lovers were married , and were doubtless as happy as the honeymoon was long . A similar defect may lurk in 3 & . Barkworth ' s forbiddinar will .

      There is a serious side to the question . Should the will be set aside on the ground that it is immoral and unreasonable , how may the rule act as regards other classes of wills ? In the great Thelusson case , a will which set aside for several generations an enormous sum of money to accumulate at compound interest was declared null and void , on the ground that the money at the expiration of the time would amount to a sum so large that the owner of it might make his power dangerous to the State . In the case of the Bridgewater will , the testator gave his property only on condition that the legatee should obtain , a Marquisate , and the condition was declared null and void , as it was considered detrimental to the interests of the

      State to induce any person , by offer of material advantage , to compass the attainment of a title , as it might prompt him to use corrupt means . These a > e instances where , on grounds of public polity , the wishes of testators were unceremoniously set . aside . Conditions incompatible with the primary , or principal , intentions of testators have also been declared null and void , as in the case of Oxford oolleges , to which money was left for the encouragement' of learning , but on the condition that masses were said for the founder ' s soul . There is a class of wills which , though they offend no public feeling ,

      and do not militate against the interests of the State , yet are , in the full sense of the word , contra bonos mores . There are cases where old men , marr ied to young wives , have prohibited a second Carriage ; and if the widow be young and childless we know of nothing so decidedly against good morals as prohibitions to marry , unless the will or the law could at the same time secure the young widow against loving . We have heard , though on no better authority than the talk of private circles ,

      that such wills have in some instances been set aside , and we should certainly approve any action of the law which would interpose to set aside provisions dictated by this curious dog-in-the-manger jealousy of dying husbands . Where children , deprived of their father , are left in the charge of the mother , there is a good ground for providing against JT second marriage , or at least of securing that the interests of the children shall not suffer by such event . But to shut up in compelled celibacy a young widow is a barbarous device of malicious testators , is , in fact , as directly against good morals as the excess of nunneries in Spain , and should be discouraged by the law .

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      THE INDIAN COLONIZATION COMMITTEE . The duties of the committee appointed , on the motion of Mr . William Ewart , to inquire into the propriety of colonization in India , are of vast importance at this moment , for the results may go fw ^ to ^ aBBiat ^ or-tO'retard ^ a-movemont ^ cqqittdJunjiti } influence only to the transfer of the government to the British Crown . From whatever causes , India has remained to the present time a field closed to British enterprise ; the masters of the 301 I have been the last ; to seek to rqap the harvest . The first want of India has been overlooked ; . we have hold tmt not secured our possession . The one tlnntr necessary to make it ours , and to give us the full advantages of so noble an acquisition , wo have kept from it—English mind . The service which Mr . Bwart's committee has to perform is to demonstrate

      the practicability of supplying to India what has hitherto been denied to it ; that the practicability of doing this is demonstrable we entertain not the smallest doubt . Objections such as those urged by Mr . Bmllie and Colonel Sykes in discussing Mr . Ewart's motion , as to the insalubrity of the climate and the consequent impossibility of establishing a large European population in India , are of no account . It is not necessary to assume that a large

      European po pulation is needed to work out the ends of the colonization absolutely necessary to develop the resources of the country . It is not a question of numbers , but of quality . Meld labour and skilled labour are in demand in our colonies of Australia and America , but the demands of India are of a totally different sort . There , the demand is for intellect , knowledge , the power of applying to the productivity of the earth and of the native mind the scientific and moral advantages of Western Europe , and , before all , of England .

      The great articles of Indian produce are—opium , cotton , and indigo . The cultivation of these has never been placed upon a reasonable footing . The land has been held , often by a tenure amounting to little more than villainage , farmed with insufficient capital , and with an utter lack of any but the most primitive apparatus ; the products have always found their way into the hands of a class of traders not very unlike the middleman of Ireland , "whose interest it is rather to keep the cultivator poor and needy than to enable him to attain the means of large and independent action . One of the main objections urged against attempts to develop the natural products of the

      country is , that such development can only be looked for in the employment of large capital ; precisely so , and the furnishing of that element would be one of the natural consequences of a proper colonization . The chief hindrance to the cultivation of cotton , according to Mr . Mangles , is the dishonesty of the Natives in whose hands it lias to be transferred from the spot where it is grown to the seaport , the only remedy for such a state of things being the employment of European agents . Why should they not be employed ? But , doubtless , it would be found that not only European agents but European system is what is required to obviate this obiection . It is admitted that almost any amount

      of cotton may be grown in India , the obvious advantage of the development of this great faculty being to make us , by means at our fingers' ends , independent of America . If the Manchester cottonmerchant wants Indian cotton , let him go to India and grow it—if he can , say the opponents of Indian colonization ; but the merchant is not called upon to step out of his own province : what he wants is , to find cotton grown for him , in quantity and quality equal to his needs , and he wants everything to be done that is needful to assure him against disappointment . How ready India herself is to meet large demands upon her even at the present time

      and under the pressure of great disadvantages , is to be judged by the effects produced by a rise in the price of cotton , consequent oa the falling off of the American crop : 220 , 000 bales of cotton were obtained from India last year more than had ever before been obtained—a sufficient proof that the powers of India have still to be developed . Whatever the views of the East India Company at the present moment , it is certain that they nave in past times put every possible impediment in the way of on extensive European colonization . Their supreme dread , as Harriet Martineau has said , was of the colonization of India from Europe . They

      have never appeared competent to the management of the finance , or the commerce of their vast possession . " Several of the best men in India—among whom was Mctcalfe—testified that the plainest and shortest way of obtaining a revenue was to develop the resources of the country by the utmost freedom of trade and colonization ; while others , among whom was Malcolm—preferred debt and difficulty to any experiment which should throw open the country to European residents , by whom ( they took

      JlPlLgn ^ tt ! d ) j 4 onat > yes would be oppressed and insulted , so that the English woutd" D 6 ~" dHveTr * ffom the country . The events of the day , " remarks Miss Martineau , " spare the necessity of rebuke or reply . " JBut with the removal of the India Company wo have no longer to look for a polioy of cxolusivencss . That great impediment has boon removed , or rather , lias crumbled with ago . Wo have railways , telegraphs , vast canals , already at work j wo now wane men to tarn to best account all those advantages , and to bo ready to apply a thousand more .

      We want to have the means of bringin g cotton safely to the seaport ; of raising crops of indigo and sugar , and opium , with all the advantages of a lavge and systematic cultivation ; we want to grow tea to the full extent of the power at hand ; we want to open up trade with Thibet ; and we want to do other things , all promising profit to ourselves the good of the native population , the stability of our empire in India , and all withiu the scope of British intellect , perseverance , and capital . By means of a large and intelligent European colonization we say that all we want to do can be done by us , if we have a fair field laid open . Now it is precisely the determination of the best means

      of opening this field that falls to the task of Mr . Ewart ' s committee . What it is most desirable to obtain from the gentlemen forming it is , not a big blue book , exhausting the subject , and useless from its very completeness ; but such a clear , well-defined statement of the present agricultural and commercial condition of the country as may enable us to judge of the remedies needed for obvious defects ; the feasibility of applying capital in this or that direction ; the nature of the tenure , under which land is held , with the quality of the land in reference to the uses to which it is obviously most applicable . In short , if they will furnish us with a well-digested and well-arranged handbook , they will do exactly that which is required to enable us to decide the feasibility of what we term most vital to the interest of Indfa , morally and commercially —its European colonization .

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      TURKEY SINCE THE WAR . Thuee Continental tourists have visited the Turks in their European encampment since the Peace of Paris , and M . St . Marc Girardin has compared their rep orts . * What we are told is , in substance , what we believed when , during the Russian war , grand theories were afloat concerning the possible regeneration of the Ottoman Empire . Turkey , as a Power in Europe , is condemned to dissolution , and the only question is , how rapidly will her Christian population reclaim the dominion now held by a race of foreign conquerors who have never been naturalized during the four hundred years of their ascendancy upon the soil . The question is : will she merge under a great Christian government representative of her several provinces and populations , or will she part into detached states , which , unless united by a political confederacy , will become the ? rey of her natural enemies and unnatural protectors ? 'hat , in process of time , the Turk must abdicate , every circumstance of his history appears to prove . He is a soldier , altogether unfitted for citizenship . When he no longer wields the sword , he becomes inferior to the merchant , the agriculturist ,

      or the priest of another religion . For a century , at least , he has been corrupting himself in the belief that to French-polish a Tartar is to render him a civilized being . The experiment has , been tried , and failed . A bad Asiatic does not make a good European . To wear Paris boots , to eat pork , to wallow in wine-bibbing , to substitute one form of sensuality for another , to a P westcm fashions and trample upon Mohamcdamsm without embracing Christianity , is not to progress but to recede , and this has been the policy ot tue Turks in "TCnrnnfi . Their immense territory lies

      under a weight of heterogeneous despotism ; their Pachalics hang loosely together ; their borders are in a chronic state of insurrection ; and their bultan , devoting one-sixth of the public revenue to his personal expenditure , personifies the atrophy ana atony of his empire . The classes under Ms rule characterized by activity , energy , industry , scientific culture , courage , hope , nnd public spirit , are the Christian ; the indolent , fatalistic , and improvident subjects of the Porto , aro the religionists of Islam . If the late war was undertaken to promote the regeneration of Turkey , it was a gigantic failure . However , it was not undertaken with tuai view , nor was it altogether inoperative . It wiwu check to Russia ; it saved tlic Danubian Armcipalitics from immediate absorption ; it modinw an avowed supromaoy in the Black Sea ; and it gaw

      a morJaT ti ^ Sultanate . „ , nf Tho Hatti Humayoun and the Mogna Cbartai 01 Gulhantf arc among tho Christian titles to possession , after the Turkish ascendancy has dwappoufM . They benefit without conciliating the uiajoiity , they are Christian charters and monumentsi « Turkish humiliation . Not that they aro ftowj upon , except in tho spirit in which thcy worcjon

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      324 THE LEAPEB . [ No . 419 , April 3 , 1858 .

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      * Jievuo ties Deux Mondeo , March , 1808 .

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), April 3, 1858, page 324, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2237/page/12/