In England, the heir-at-law who takes his father’s freehold estates is not thereby deprived of his share, or any portion of his share, of the personalty. But in Scotland, the heir must bring into account or collate the value of what he has received in that capacity, before he can claim any part of the movables.
If a son or daughter be possessed of real and personal estate, and die unmarried, or widowed without children, and without making a will, leaving a surviving father, he would take the real estate as heir-at-law, and the personal estate as sole next of kin. If he were dead, the mother would take a share of the personal estate with the surviving brothers and sisters, and the eldest brother would inherit the real estate as heir-at-law. If the mother were living, but no brothers or sisters, nephews or nieces, she would have the personal estate, but could not inherit the real estate so long as any heir could be found on the paternal side. The children of deceased brothers and sisters take equally amongst them the share of personal estate which their deceased parent would have taken if living.
The law of Scotland is not so favourable to the father and mother of intestates. The father does not succeed to real or heritable estate if there be a brother or sister, and in the same event his right is limited to that of one-half the movable estate. When the father has predeceased, and the mother survives, she takes one-third of the movable succession, and the rest goes to brothers and sisters or other next of kin.
Having thus considered the rights, duties, and liabilities of parents with respect to the persons, the necessities, and the property of their children, and the corresponding rights and obligations of children with regard to their parents, we must offer a few remarks on the authority of parents over their children, and the extent to which that authority may be delegated to others.
A parent may control the actions of his children so long as they remain under his roof, and may insist upon his regulations being observed and his commands obeyed. While they are of tender years, he may inflict any reasonable punishment for disobedience or other offence, either by personal chastisement or otherwise; but he must not torture them, nor endanger their lives or health. He may also instruct his children himself; or he may send them to school; in the latter case, delegating to the schoolmaster so much as may be necessary of his power to restrain and correct the children so intrusted to his care. Since compulsory education became law, he must use reasonable means to get them educated. If a child should prove incorrigible, the parent may apply to the justices of the peace to send him or her to an Industrial School; which they have power to do on being satisfied by evidence upon oath that the child is altogether beyond the power of its parent to manage or control; and an order may be made upon the parent to pay the expense of the child’s maintenance and education in such school, if his means are sufficient to enable him to do so.
The liabilities imposed by marriage differ to some extent from the responsibilities of actual parentage. Thus, a man may be compelled to repay the expense incurred by the maintenance of his own father, but not of his wife’s father, in the workhouse. And though a married man is bound to keep his wife’s children, born before his marriage with her, until they are sixteen years of age respectively, if his wife live so long; yet, if she were to die while any of them were under that age, his responsibility would immediately cease. And if any of them were to become chargeable upon the poor-rates when more than sixteen years old, the stepfather could not be required to contribute towards the expense of their maintenance, even though their mother should be still living.
IN A FURNITURE SALEROOM.
A DAY-DREAM.
I just missed by a neck, as they say in steeplechasing dialect—though on second thoughts I think it must have been liker a full horse-length—my lot being cast among second-hand furniture. I believe I was of too philosophic a nature to make a practical auctioneer and furniture-broker of. At least, such was something like the opinion held by my employer—the old gentleman was a bit of a wag—who told my father, when the latter went to see why this knight of the hammer had dispensed with his son’s services, that my mind, like the late lamented Prince of Denmark’s, was of too speculative a character ever to ‘mak’ saut to my kail’ at his profession, and advised him to bring me ‘out for a minister.’ I need not say that this advice was, for divers reasons, never acted upon.
I suppose it must have been my twelve-months’ sojourn in this old worthy’s service which gives me to this day a certain meditative interest in brokers’ shops and old furniture salerooms. I am not at any time much of a stroller about the streets and gazer into shop-windows; but next to looking into the windows of book or print and picture shops, I have a weakness for sauntering into musty old salerooms, and staring idly at the miscellaneous articles of second-hand furniture huddled within their walls, and moralising on the mutability of human hopes and possessions. A spick-and-span new furniture and upholstery establishment has no more fascination for me than a black-and-white undertaker’s. But out of the bustle of the street and the broiling heat of the mid-day sun—which is my favourite time of indulgence—and in the dusty and shadowy corners, festooned with cobwebs, of a broker’s shop or old furniture saleroom, I forget how the time goes, as I join over again the sundered human relationships to the pieces of furniture at which I stand staring in half-reverie. I fancy it must have been this same dreamy tendency which, peeping forth in my boyish career, led my shrewd master to forecast my future with so much certainty to my parent. I care not about purchasing any of the articles that so absorb me. It is not the barren desire of possession which makes me haunt these dusty salerooms. When the place becomes crowded with people, and the auctioneer mounts his little pulpit, I gather my wandered wits together and ‘silently steal away.’