154 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



Trusts. 



The first, and perhaps the largest, group of cases which 

 ought to be taken out of the cognizance of our courts of 

 law are those which may be comprised under the general 

 term of " trusts." At present any one may place property 

 in the hands of another, either during his own life or to 

 take effect after his death, for certain specified purposes, 

 and if these purposes are neither illegal nor positively 

 immoral, the law will compel the trustee to carry out 

 these purposes to the very letter. They may be trivial 

 or absurd, or even injurious, but the man who once gets a 

 trustee to accept a trust (and even this is not necessary 

 when it is created by a will) becomes thereby an absolute 

 potentate, who has at his command the whole power of a 

 great State employed to see that his most minute directions 

 are carried out. The number of cases of this kind is 

 enormous, including all those which involve the interpre- 

 tation and carrying into effect of the provisions of trust- 

 deeds, settlements, and wills ; so that a considerable por- 

 tion of our machinery for administering justice is devoted 

 to ascertaining and giving effect to the whims of individuals 

 for years, and often for scores of years, after they are dead. 

 Under the same general head may be included the power 

 of determining by deed or will the contingent succession 

 to property, and of creating any number and kinds of 

 disqualifications with regard to it. The supposed necessity 

 for providing for every imaginable exercise of this power 

 has led to such endless complications in the law relating 

 to the transfer of land in all its forms and modes, that years 

 of study are required to comprehend them. They furnish 

 the materials for perhaps the majority of the cases that 

 come before our civil courts, and give occupation to a very 

 large section of the legal profession. 



But in the whole group of cases here referred to there 

 is no question of administering justice. For a Govern- 

 ment not to carry out a man's wishes after his death is 

 not a wrong, but quite the reverse, since it may with much 

 reason be maintained that, for any Government to occupy 



