"Endowed with so many excellences of character the years as they have passed have brought you. 'Honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, You have not only been for a number of years chosen to preside over the deliberations of your local professional brethren, first as Vice-Preses and afterwards as Preses of their Faculty, but you have had the higher honour conferred upon you of being upon two occasions elected President of the General Council of Procurators for Scotland. In both positions you have displayed a lively and intelligent interest in the preparatory education and training for the legal profession, one instance of which was the admirable series of lectures delivered by you some winters ago in Dundee upon the Civil Law. The Supreme Court has recently shown its appreciation of your exertions in this direction by appointing you one of the Examiners of Law Students under the Act of last year, and the interest taken by you in the improvement of the Laws procured you a few years ago the distinction of being appointed a member of the Royal Commission upon the Law Courts of Scotland, in which capacity your services were of great value. Your ungrudging and invaluable labours in all these positions have laid the public as well as your professional brethren under a deep debt of gratitude to you, and demonstrated the propriety with which these honourable positions were conferred upon you-as your acquirements in classic and other literature also justify the high literary distinction recently conferred upon you by our neighbouring University. "The appreciation of your character and services by your brethren and friends has led them to take advantage of the present occasion to congratulate you as they now do upon the happy completion by you of half a century of official duty, and to obtain your bust in marble, executed by the skilful hands of Mr. William Brodie, which is this day placed in the Court Buildings, where it is designed permanently to remain. "Notwithstanding your long professional and official career, your brethren and friends trust that you will still be long spared to enjoy the position of honour and esteem you have attained, and to give them the benefit of your example as well as your experience and counsel. And they know that at the close of your useful life, whenever that may be, you will leave behind you an honourable name and reputation that will not soon be forgotten. "JOHN SHIELL, "DUNDEE, 4th June 1874." J. W. THOMSON, The Magistrates of Dundee, who were present in Court, also offered Dr. Baxter their congratulations; and the Chairman and a deputation from the Directors of the Dundee Chamber of Commerce tendered to Dr. Baxter an extract of a resolution adopted by the Chamber, expressing their high esteem for him as a public official, and personally, and their sense of the efficient manner in which the duties of his office had been discharged for so many years. After Dr. Baxter had made his acknowledgments, the subscribers and others met in the Faculty Library, where the bust has been placed, when Mr. John William Thomson, on behalf of the subscribers, formally handed it over to the Faculty of Procurators, the gift being acknowledged by Mr David Small on behalf of his partner, Mr. John Shiell, the Vice-Preses, who was absent through indisposition. We may add that the bust is not only an excellent likeness, but is in every respect considered to be one of the happiest efforts of the accomplished sculptor. Religious Education of Infants.-The strongest passion of human nature is self-conceit. Most men are so well satisfied with themselves that they like to look at themselves in the mirror of offspring. If a man can only have a son, name him after himself, see him growing up to look like him, fix on him his peculiar thoughts and habits, teach him his profession or business, coax or bully him to marry to suit him, to vote his political ticket, employ his doctor, and join his church or be a heathen like him, as the case may be, his happiness is complete. It is because these capabilities are to be found only in boys that men prefer male offspring. If he would look for it here, Mr. Darwin might find a stronger argument in favour of his theory of the descent of man than in the mere fact that all men have a good place for a tail, and some men can wriggle their ears. We have always regarded this characteristic of mankind as one of the meanest, in a small way, to be found in the long catalogue of human weaknesses. The only good that ever comes of it to our knowledge is, that it sometimes defeats itself by exciting opposition in the subject. The human clay sometimes is unpliable under the potter's hands. How vividly has Dickens portrayed this characteristic in "Dombey and Son," in the person of the senior Dombey. "This young gentleman has to accomplish a destiny," is the utterance of thousands of tiresome Dombeys in our world. The earth was made for them to trade in, and the sun and moon were made to give them light; rivers and seas were formed to float their ships; rainbows gave them promise of fair weather; winds blew for or against their enterprises; stars and planets circled in their orbits to preserve inviolate a system of which they were the centre." The paternal foresight is not confined to sublunary matters. As it has insured for the offspring material prosperity, so also it has worked out for himself, and the object of his affection and vanity, an unerring scheme of eternal welfare. Consider, then, how harrowing it must be to the paternal heart to see its precautions neglected or despised! What an ungrateful return for all the father has done and suffered, when the child proposes to work out his own salvation in his own way! How short-sighted on the part of the child when the father has saved him all the trouble of thinking for himself. We have a good deal of sympathy for the father who is a believer in "immersion," when the child hankers after sprinkling, when confession gives place to the exercise of private judgment, predestination to free-will, and the faith that the world was made between Sunday and Sunday, to the developments of modern science. The law has very uniformly ordered that the child shall be brought up in the religion of his father. Of late years this has been done with great impartiality, whether the father were Catholic or Protestant. (Davis v. Davis, 10 W. R. 245.) True, the English Court of Chancery had engrafted upon this rule an exception, where the Catholic father had permitted the child to be brought up in the Protestant faith until the age of seven to nine years, and the child had acquired an attachment to that faith; there the father was held to have abdicated his right to direct the child's religious education; and, in ordering a scheme to be settled for his education, the court disregarded a direction in the father's will that the child should be brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. Stourton v. Stourton, 8 De G., M. & G. 760; Hill v. Hill, 31 L. J. Ch. 505. But the courts of law adhere very strictly to the rule as we have given it. In the most recent case (In re Andrews, 8 L. R., Q. B. 153, A.D. 1873), there had been an ante-nuptial arrangement between Thomas Andrews, a Roman Catholic, and Ellen Fleetcroft, a Protestant, who were about to contract marriage, that if they should have issue, the boys should be educated in the religion of the father, and the girls in that of the mother. The marriage took place in 1854, and they had issue a son, who was baptized and brought up a Roman Catholic, and a daughter, the infant in question, who was born in 1862. This daughter, with the assent of her father, was baptized a Protestant, with Protestant sponsors, approved by him, the same year. The father died in 1863, leaving a writing, executed two days before his death, by which he directed that his children should be baptized and brought up as members of the Roman Catholic church, and in the event of his death, appointed his brother guardian of his children for the execution of that direction, with power to appoint any other Roman Catholic as guardian in his stead, in case of his death or resignation. The daughter, from the time of her father's death, was maintained and educated by her grandmother, and from the age of two years had been accustomed to attend a Protestant church, and brought up in its principles, without objection or interference on the part of any one, until 1871, when the guardian claimed the custody of the infant that he might carry out her father's wishes, and caused her to be sent to a Roman Catholic school, from which, however, the grandmother afterward withheld her. The court awarded the custody of the child to the guardian, "notwithstanding the lateness of the application, and the apparent harshness of such a proceeding toward the grandmother of the child." This, however, was put on the ground of the limited discretion of the courts of law in such matters. This case illustrates, in a very forcible manner, the religious impartiality of the British courts, as between two opposite faiths, and the extreme absurdity of the British distinction between law and equity. This impartiality is placed in a still stronger light when contrasted with the severity of the same courts, as between different sects of the Protestant faith. For instance, examine the case of Thomas v. Roberts, 3 De G. & S. 758, A.D. 1850. In July 1845, one of the followers of a dissenting preacher (who styled himself the Servant of the Lord), having no property of his own, married another of the sect who had a property of about £5000, under circumstances leading to the inference that the marriage was brought about entirely by the influence of the preacher. In February 1846 the wife, having manifested insubordination to the chief of the sect, was deserted by her husband, who, with the chief and others of his followers, went to reside together at an establishment which they formed and called "Agapemone." They there professed and acted upon the doctrines that the day of grace had passed and the day of judgment commenced, and that by reason thereof prayer was superfluous and unnecessary. They also professed and acted upon the doctrine that no day of the week ought to be set apart as one of peculiar holiness. Shortly after the desertion of the wife she was delivered of a boy, who remained in the care of his mother and maternal grandmother, at the residence of the latter, who properly provided for his maintenance and education. Held, a proper case for restraining the father from acquiring possession of the infant. It appeared in this case that no settlement was made of the wife's property; that she was one of three sisters, all of whom married followers of the Servant; and that she was between twenty-eight and thirty years of age. "Brother Thomas," for so the father was called, regarded his wife's pregnancy as a punishment for her backsliding. He writes to his "best beloved," that "the Servant of the Lord told me that you would not be in your present state unless you had rebelled months ago; and thus you will suffer for it in not being able to go about with me as you otherwise would." This pleasant fancy excites the ire of the Vice-Chancellor, who exclaims, one is driven with shame and indignation to hope that there may not be a second human being capable of such extravagant indecency." The Vice-Chancellor then goes on to discuss the character of the home to which the father proposed to remove the child. It had a fair outside, for on the top of the building was a flag with a lion and a lamb depicted on it, and inscribed, "Oh, hail, holy love." The Vice-Chancellor is startled at the existence of such an institution, "not on the Euripus, but on the Bristol Channel," and suggests that its name was "adopted in order to make the people of Somersetshire understand or guess its object; which however, unluckily, I fear that very few either there or elsewhere in any very clear manner do." He thinks it may be described "as a Spiritual แ Boarding House." He thinks that "their stable, according to the description which Mr. Thomas gave me of it, must be unexceptionable. It does not appear whether the Agapemonians hunt, but they seem distinguished both as Cavaliers and Charioteers. They play moreover, frequently or occasionally, at lively and energetic games, such as hockey, ladies and all. So that their life may be considered less ascetic than frolicsome." The "hockey" business was resented, it seems, by the Agapemonians, six of whom deposed that it "is not a game like foot-ball, and which deponents consider very ridiculous to be obliged to refer to." This deposition winds up by the declaration that their "peace is like a river, and their strength the munition of rocks." On the whole, we quite concur with the Vice-Chancellor when he says, "as lief would I have on my conscience the consigning of this boy to a camp of gypsies." Similar doctrine was held in Re Newbery, 1 L. R. Ch. 263, A.D. 1866. A father, being a beneficed clergyman of the Church of England, appointed his widow and a clergyman guardians of his infant children; the widow became a member of the sect of Plymouth Brethren; the children, aged respectively fifteen and twelve years, were ordered to be brought up as members of the Church of England, and the mother was restrained from taking them to a chapel of Plymouth Brethren, although it appeared that the father was unsettled in his faith, and associated much with dissenters, and the elder infant made an affidavit stating his attachment to the Plymouth Brethren and his desire to be brought up in that community. Vice-Chancellor Bruce says, the "proposal of the mother amounts to nothing more than the bringing up of the children to no religion at all." Turner, L.J., also remarks: "The congregation may be taught by any person who believes himself inspired at the time. But this is not the way in which children should be brought up." And the Vice-Chancellor also declares that "if this young man and young lady were to profess themselves in favour of ascribing themselves to a society of this description, I should still feel it my duty to them to prevent it."-Albany Law Journal. The Report of the Select Committee on the Homicide Law Amendment Bill. This Bill only applies to England, but it is of interest to us, because there can be no doubt that, if it had been carried, there would have been with us an attempt of a similar sort to distinguish between the different kinds of homicide, and to mark their varying degrees of culpability. The views of the Committee on codification, it will be observed, are not very hopeful. The following is the report :- Your committee have examined Mr. Justice Blackburn and Baron Bramwell, and have received from the Chief Justice of England a letter containing an elaborate criticism of the Homicide Law Amendment Bill. They have also examined Mr. Stephen, Q.C., by whom the Bill was drawn. |