He married with every legal formality, and his son, Sternhold Baskette, imbued with the firmest convictions that in the future the young city would prosper to an unprecedented extent, employed the whole of the wealth he inherited in purchasing land and erecting houses.
In the course of his transactions he desired to purchase the Wick Farm, where old Sibbold had dwelt, and the Swamp where the Baskette tribe flourished. Finding the title of the vendors imperfect, he devised the strongest safeguard he could think of, which was to make all the Sibbolds then living or known, to sign one document, and all the reputed Baskettes to sign another. He then transhipped them all to America—first, to get complete possession; secondly, in the hope that they would never return to trouble him.
He proceeded to drain the Swamp, and to convert it into the Belgravia of Stirmingham. But this project required an enormous expenditure, and just at that moment the first railway to the place, which he had largely supported, came to a standstill, and ate up all his available capital. When, therefore, a return of commercial prosperity took place, he found it impossible alone to complete the vast scheme of streets, squares, etc, which had been commenced.
Then the building lease plan was resorted to—the very keystone of all this curious history. First, the Corporation of the city took a large slice of the uncompleted property of him on a building lease for a term of years, on the expiration of which the whole reverted to him or his heirs (practically his heirs, as he was not likely to live to the age of 120 years).
After they had commenced building some uncertainty arose as to whether or no they had the power to enter into such an agreement; they could bind themselves, but could they bind their successors in office? This took place, it must be remembered, long, long before the recent sanitary legislation, which gives such extensive powers to local bodies.
In order to confirm their proceedings they obtained a private Act of Parliament, which, when it was drawn up, seemed to be worded clearly enough. But every one knows that after the lapse of thirty years or less, words in an inexplicable manner seem to lose their meaning, and to become capable of more than one interpretation. This is perhaps because the persons who read them are influenced unconsciously by a series of circumstances which did not exist at the time the document was composed.
At any rate, at the date when Marese and Theodore were thinking and scheming, there had already been a great deal of contention over the precise scope of several sentences in this Act: a part of which arose over the question of repairs to the buildings, and partly as to whether, by a little straining, the seventy years of the lease might not be construed to mean practically for ever.
This little straining was managed in this way. When did the lease commence? Had not each successive Mayor got the right to say, “This lease, as interpreted by the Private Act, means, not seventy years from the days of my predecessor, but seventy years from the commencement of my term of office.” By this way of looking at it, so long as there was a Mayor the Corporation would always have seventy years to look forward to.
Of course all such reasoning was nothing but pure sophistry; but then most law is sophistry, and sophistry when supported by a rich body of men and called Vested Interest, is often much stronger than the highly belauded and really feeble truth.
Here was a tough Gordian knot, to add to the already difficult question of original title. But this was only the preface to the complications to follow. There still remained, after the Corporation had taken a part, a huge howling wilderness of streets with walls two feet high. Companies or syndicates were formed (eight companies in all)—perhaps they had better be called in modern parlance building societies—who took this howling wilderness on the same system of building leases, to fall in at a certain date.