BOOKS.

TRUSTEES.*

WE have always sympathised with the American who, when he heard a number of vigorous and earnest political philan- thropists discussing what reforms the nation most needed, -declared as his view, "Wall, Sir, in my belief what this great people really wants is something that will prevent its trousers bagging at the knees." In our more depressed moments, however, and when the thought of our six "express executory trusts" comes over us, or when we have to answer a letter from the cestui que trust, who thinks "a good cycle company like that one there was so much about in the papers the other day really much safer than a played-out concern like the London and North-Western," we feel inclined to think that, after all, the supreme need is not so much the suppression of bagging at the knees as of all trusts. "Why should one be worried to death like this," we say in the wrath of our ,souL Truly the very word "trustee" is a terror, and we believe that we are understating, not exaggerating, when we +say that if Sir William Harcourt would only insert a clause in his next Newcastle Programme forbidding any one to be a trustee under legal penalties, he would sweep the country. Fancy the joy of being able to write:—"Dear John,—I should have much enjoyed being your dear daughter's trustee, but as to consent would now make me liable to seven years' penal eervitude. I must, I fear, decline.—Your affectionate brother, Henry. PS.—Why not try our nephew Will P His iron nerves -and his Colonial experience would doubtless make him in- -different to the risk of discovery which perhaps, as you will say, I exaggerate, but Ellen is so nervous just now, and insists on my declining."

But in sober truth trusteeship is among the worst of the minor ills of life, and hence any attempt to lighten the burden for the plain man in this respect is sure to be accepted with gratitude. Hence there should be a success in store for Mr. Birrell's able and yet popular and straightforward little book on the duties and liabilities of trustees. Here the trustee, if he will take the trouble to read and understand, will find much excellent sense expounded in easy language. No doubt for very nervous men the book is a possible source of danger. -Just as some men cannot read even a dictionary of domestic medicine without danger of panic, so there are certain "sub- jects" to whom this book will be a source of torment. As

arthritis," " tonsilitis," and " phlebitis " send the blood from the cheeks of the sensitive man with a stuffy cold in the head, .so "resultant trusts," "implied trusts," " laches," and "the umle in re Corsellis" will strike like a dagger through certain

• Tits Duties gond LiubLitios of Trustees. Six Lectures by Augus•ine Birrell, London: 31,,enlil1An mud Co. hearts. In truth, there is nothing more alarming than a sonorous but unintelligible terminology, and hence trustees with weak nerves had better not venture on Mr. Bir- rell's pages. If they do, they run the risk of imagining that they have committed all the breaches of trust in the leading cases, and that theirs is a worse busi- ness "than even poor Lord Dartmouth's was." Fancy the horror of an unhappy creature imagining that he was in the position of the trustee in "Broughton v. Broughton" or in "in re Chapman," and recognising all the symptoms as he read. It is true that Mr. Birrell does not dwell too minutely on the details of his cases, following here, no doubt intentionally, the popular books on disease, but there is always the fear of the patient or trustee being tempted to go to the sources. Just think of the result if a nervous trustee were to buy the Chancery Division Reports and wade through them on the look-out for breaches of trust. But, after all, the majority of men are made of sterner stuff, and these may

read Mr. Birrell without dread of fancying they have done something "awfully illegal," and may learn therefrom how to keep in legal health with no little advantage.

We shall not attempt to make an abstract of Ur. Birrell's lectures, but will quote instead his excellent account of how men get let in for a trusteeship under a will almost without knowing it :—

"Some old friend has died leaving a wife and seven children, the eldest of whom is fifteen the youngest two, and when the will comes to be read, it turns out that the testator has appointed you an executor and Trustee, and has bidden you, after paying his debts and funeral expenses, to stand possessed of the clear residue ef his estate upon trust, either to retain it in its then state of investment, or to sell and re-invest in certain specified securities, to receive the income and pay it to the widow during her life, and after her death to divide the trust estate equally amongst such of the children as being boys shall live to attain twenty-one or being girls shall attain that age or marry under it. Well, it does not do to be disagreeable at funerals. The widow, poor thing, takes you apart and after casually mentioning that she has always liked you the best of her husband's friends, tells you how the burden of her sorrows will be lightened if you con- sent to act. You do consent, and after a glass of sherry and a biscuit, leave the house of your old friend the Trustee of his wife and of his children, and even it may be, of his children's children. Or possibly your sister is about to marry a man in whom you see no reason DO place any unusual degree of confidence. A settle- ment is proposed of her small fortune—the trusts being the usual trusts of a marriage settlement, and resembling those I have above briefly indicated. You are asked to be a Trustee,—it would be churlish to refuse—you give your consent, the deed is prepared and executed by the necessary parties, the marriage is solemnised, the married couple start for the Riviera or the Isle of Wight, whilst you return to your chambers a Trustee, to find on your table instructions to settle a writ in an action seeking to make some estimable members of the class you have just joined, per- sonally liable to make good a breach of trust."

That is a really spirited rally, and we congratulate Mr.

Birrell on it sincerely. To speak quite frank, we did not think, though we have always liked Mr. Birrell's work, that his irony could have been laid on quite so spontaneously and freshly. There are touches here worthy of Mr. Bagehot. As the Persian letter-writers say at the end of their compliments, "What can I say more ? " Almost as good is the description of how the trustee is worried by the cestui que trust to commit

breaches of trust :—

" The third duty of a Trustee is to adhere to the terms of his trust in all things great and small, important, and seemingly unimportant. This is his very plainest duty; no Trustee would ever deny it, or pretend to be ignorant of it, yet it is his hardest, unless from the very beginning he makes up his mind to it, and then it is as easy as eating bread and butter. The posi'ion of a Trustee tempted to commit a breach of trust by the importunity of widows or the necessities of orphans is not so very heartrending—if only he recognises from the first what he ought to recognise, namely, that he has no right to make a new will for a dead man or to depart from the eontents of duly executed deeds. /Von possunius is the one and the only answer for badgered Trustees to give when pressed to sell out London and North-Western stock and to pur- chase s• ares in South African Gold Mines. Never argue or reply to arguments, but barricade yourself behind your will or your deed and whilst profoundly regretting your inability to oblige, refuse to budge a foot The storm will eventually blow over, it may for a few days rain black-edged envelopes on your table, full of domestic details of increased expenditure—now Jack is at school, and Jane has to have a resident governess—but non pos- sunius will carry you through, and after a while there will be once more peace in your Israel."

Another delightful passage is that in which Mr. Birrell warns trustees against the danger of withholding information about the trust-property of the beneficiaries :— " A Trustee must never withhold information. This seems

easy, but it is not, for very often the demand for information comes to the Trustees in a disagreeable and even insulting form. There are still too many solicitors who, such is their ignorance, conceive they are best consulting the interests of their clients by writing the most offensive letters it is possible to imagine, imputing motives and half-hinting at fraud. Either to put such letters into the fire and forget all about them, or to write a furious reply is the alternative which too frequently pre- sents itself to the honest and justly indignant Trustee. But if he is wise he will do neither one nor the other, he will keep the letter and send the information. In the interesting ease of Low v. Bouverie, 1891, 3 Ch. 99, the Lord Justice Lindley says : 'The duty of a Trustee is properly to preserve the trust fund, to pay the income of the corpus to those who are entitled to them re- spectively, and to give all his cestui quo trust on demand, informa- tion with respect to the mode in which the trust fund has been dealt with and where it is.'"

We really do not feel quite easy at the way in which we have reviewed Mr. Birrell's book. A casual reader might suppose that the volume was entirely of a light order, and that there was no real law in it. If any one were to think thus he would be quite mistaken. The work before us is a

serious popular law-book, in spite of its wit and humour. But after all the fault, if any mistake takes place, is Mr. Birrell's, not ours. If he will put so many amusing things

into a grave book he must expect to have them quoted. We refuse to extract his analysis of "Somerset v. Poulett," sound and excellent though it is, when instead we can give our readers the things we have given.

Before we leave Mr. Birrell's work, without which no

trustee's library is complete, we must add one serious com- plaint. There is no appendix of forms at the end. This is a grave error. There is nothing which is more needed than a

good series of precedents for trustees' letters. For example, there should be :—(1) Form of letter declining to act as trustee for settlement of Irish estate. (2) Form of letter to widow pointing out the impossibility of further considering her pro- posal that the trustees need know anything about her re- marriage, but might continue to pay the dividends as before. (3) Form of letter to solicitor who had suggested that, "under the special circumstances of the present case, a technical breach of trust would be of no importance." (4) Form of letter to firm of Irish solicitors declining to pay the trust-moneys over to their client "without delay" in spite of the fact that he was asserted by them to be "twenty-one years of age, the last of his race, and had determined never to marry." (5) Form of letter (most useful of all) to lady who declares that everybody else's truatees always do it, "and I do not see why we should be worse treated than other people, and if you

think otherwise you ought to resign and allow some younger man, Harry's nephew for choice, to take your place."

These forms, drafted as Mr. Birrell would have drafted them, would be simply invaluable, and we sincerely trust that he will make good this omission in his next edition. If he does, he will not only increase the gaiety of nations but greatly help the perplexed trustee, who is seldom an accomplished master of the gentler forms of irony, and is too apt if left by himself to talk of "preposterous proposals," "truly monstrous schemes," "unheard-of illegalities," "notions hardly consis-

tent with honesty and certainly not with law," and the like. It is letters like these that make uncles and nephews send messages by the club waiter to the effect that "the gentle-

man at the next table would be glad to have the window closed

if you have no objection, as he feels it very much." Mr. Birrell's forms would, we feel quite sure, be quite firm and

yet leave no sting.