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Updated: May 19, 2025
A single picture on the opposite wall the portrait of an elderly gentleman stiffened over a corresponding volume, which he held in invincible mortmain in his rigid hand, and apparently defied posterity to take from him seemed to offer a not uncongenial companionship.
Is it better that estates should be held by those who have no duty, than by those who have one? by those whose character and destination point to virtues, than by those who have no rule and direction in the expenditure of their estates but their own will and appetite? Nor are these estates held altogether in the character or with the evils supposed inherent in mortmain.
Consider for example, that the Pope, in his decree Ne Temere, has declared that all persons who have been married by civil authorities or by Protestant clergymen are living in "filthy concubinage"! Consider, in the same way, the problems of education, burial, prison discipline, blasphemy, poor relief, incorporation, mortmain, religious endowments, vows of celibacy.
By this instrument he devised the Holmford estate, and all other property, real and personal, of which he might die possessed, to certain charitable institutions, in varying proportions, payable as soon after his death as the property could be turned into money. "The statute of mortmain does not give me much uneasiness," remarked the vindictive old man with a bitter smile.
You have done, I trust, what you can to care for them, even from your grave: you think sometimes of a poetical figure of speech amid the dry technical phrases of English law: you know what is meant by the law of Mortmain; and you like to think that even your dead hand may be felt to be kindly intermeddling yet in the affairs of those who were your dearest: that some little sum, slender, perhaps, but as liberal as you could make it, may come in periodically when it is wanted, and seem like the gift of a thoughtful, heart and a kindly hand which are far away.
He was the author of all the pamphlets that had been written on the subject of mortmain; and as he was an intimate friend of the ambassador's, M. Mocenigo had furnished him with an account of the proceedings of the Venetian Republic against the monks. He might have dispensed with this source of information if he had read the writings of Father Paul Sarpi on the same subject.
It is so hard to get anything out of the dead hand of medical tradition! The mortmain of theorists extinct in science clings as close as that of ecclesiastics defunct in law. One practical hint may not be out of place here. It seems to be sometimes forgotten, by those who must know the fact, that the tongue is very different, anatomically and physiologically, from the stomach.
The seigniorial rights abolished by the Revolution of 1789, tithes, mortmain, statute-labor, &c., were different forms of the rights of property; and they who under the titles of nobles, seigneurs, prebendaries, &c. enjoyed these rights, were neither more nor less than proprietors. To defend property to-day is to condemn the Revolution.
It is equally worthy of observation that at the same time the cultivation of the land is diminishing; and that the estates in mortmain that is to say, delivered into the hands of the priesthood have been increasing at the yearly rate of from £60,000 to £80,000 a year. Is mortmain indeed the hand which kills?
The perpetual allotment and destination of this fund, indeed, is not always guarded by any positive law, by any trust-right or deed of mortmain. It is always guarded, however, by a very powerful principle, the plain and evident interest of every individual to whom any share of it shall ever belong.
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