The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-03-23 00:00:00

THE VOLUNTEERS AND FOREIGN
SERVICE.

The Times publishes the following letter :7

Sir,—The public prints tell us how the strong feel-
ing aroused in this country by events in the East has
led some Volunteer regiments to volunteer for foreign
service, while the reply of the Prime Minister to a,
question addressed to him by Lord St. Leonard's con-
veyes the impression that the Government may pos-
tibly be induced to accept their patriotic offer. Against
any such use of the Volunteers I would respectfully
protest.
I do so in the interests of the force, with which it
has so long been my pride to be connected, and of the
nation for whose home defence we have for nineteen
years voluntarily taken upon ourselves what is
properly the duty of every citizen. No one who
knows the spirit which animates the Volunteers can
doubt that many efficient regiments might thus be
obtained for foreign service, and that they would on
trial be found not unworthy to stand shoulder to
shoulder with their comrades of the Regular Army
and Militia; but any such use of the force would be
a departure from the principles of our military
system and would endanger the permanence of our
Volunteer army at anything like its present numerical
strength. The principles upon which our military
system rests are, if properly applied, incontestably
sound and admirably suited to our national wants.
Thus we have (1) a paid regular Army raised by
voluntary enlistment for service at home and abroad;
(2) a paid Militia raised, in theory—the law of
ballot being =tally suspended by compulsion,
whose service is nominally for home defence, but who
may also volunteer for foreign service and have
frequently done so to the gTeat benefit of the State;
lastly, we have an unpaid Volunteer force raised for
home defence only, whose voluntary service exempts
them from compulsory enrolment in the Militia.
Such is our present statutory military system, and if
it is not in force, and we consequently find the Militia,
which is rightly called in its back-bone, always below
their established strength, while we have no effective
hold on the Volunteers whereby their more complete
efficiency may be assured, the blame of such an un-
satisfactory state of things cannot be charged against
the system, but lies at the door of our administrators—
Liberals and Conservatives alike—who, lacking con-
fidence in the spirit and patriotism of the nation, have
not had courage to put the law in force.
The employment, therefore, of Volunteers on
foreign service, whether in garrison or in the field,
would, as I have said, be a direct departure from the
principles of our military system. A word now as to
the effect of such employment on the force itself.
4' The great value of our Volunteer army consists in
its numbers; it represents an armed nation. Six
hundred thousand men have passed through our
ranks; 190,000 are at the present time serving in
them, and in any national crisis this number would at
least be doubled. Many Volunteers, are no doubt, in
the receipt of daily wages, but theoretically and
practically the force consists of men engaged in
businesses and professions upon which they and
their families depend for a living. It is manifest that
men so situated cannot serve abroad; and if, in case
of war or national emergency, Volunteer regiments
are to be expected to volunteer for foreign service, and
the men who fail to do so are to be looked upon as
wanting in patriotic zeal, the whole character and
intention of the force will be changed, and with this
change will come a corresponding diminution in num-
bers. There might still, perhaps, remain a certain
number of regiments ready at any time for foreign
service, but our Volunteer army would then be counted
by tens instead of by hundreds of thousands, and all
idea -of its representing an armed nation capable of
defending itself in the absence of Regulars and Militia
would have to be abandoned.—l remain your obedient
servant, ELcHo.
Brighton, March 12.

A. young lady of Buffalo says she longs for fingers
like the prongs of a pitchfork, with diamonds rings enough
to fill them ft the ends.

"CHAPMAN v. LEWIS.

The above cause has been tried at the Maidstone assizes,
before the Lord Chief Justice and a Special Jury.,—We take-
the following report of the case from The Times :
" This was the revival of a remarkable case of dis-
puted title to an estate, which has been for some years
the subject of litigation, has been twice before tried in
this Gourt, and has long excited great interest in the
county of Kent: The case was one which turned en
tirely on disputed pedigree—a class of cases which very
rarely come into e.ourts of law. In the present case—
in which the property in dispute is altogether worth
about £1,200 a year—the question had arisen in this
way :—The last possessors were two old maiden ladies,
named Chapman—Elizabeth and Catherine—who died,
the one in 1863 and the other in 1869. As they died
without leaving any near or known relations, it was
necessary to search upwards and backwards, so to speak,
for their heirs-at-law—that is, to look for them among the
relations of their father or-grandfather; and, as they
were born in the last century, there was necessarily
, some difficulty in the discovery of their heirs. The rule
of law requires in such cases that the heir shall be
sought in the paternal line of ancestors, and there was
no difficulty in tracing the direct lineal paternal an-
.cestars backwards for four generations up to one
William Chapman, who died in 1748. But though the
Court of Chancery many years ago. issued advertise-
ments for the discovery of the heir, it was found im-
possible to discover any living representative of any
of these Chapmans, the paternal ancestors of the old
ladies—not for any want of Chapmans • on the con-
trary, the part of the county in which the estate Res—
in Great Chart, between Ashford and Faversham—may
he said to be full of Chapmans. It appears that they
have been settled there for centuries • and the
difficulty is not in any deficiency of bhapmans,
but in the multiplicity of them. The difficulty,
in a word, was in the identification of any particular
Chapman, so as to be certain either that he died with-
out issue or that any other Chapmans were his
children. And the difficulty was all the greater
because, as often happens in English families, the
same Christian names—John, Thomas, and William—
were repeated over and over again, and in more than
one instance, in the course of descent, it happened
that there was more than one William Chapman or
Thomas Chapman in the same neighbourhood about
the same age—indeed, in one instance, curiously
enough, exactly the same age; so that the difficulty
of identity was sometimes insuperable. For these
reasons, despite the multiplicity of Chapmans in.
this part of the county, there was a practical impos-
sibility of proving or finding any living heirs of
the paternal line of ancestry—that is, a Chapman
descended from the William Chapman of the reign
of George ll.' and for a long time it appeared
impossible to discover any heir at all. On this
account the lord of the manor, Colonel Deedes
claimed the estate by " escheat " for want of
heirs, and some years ago brought his action to re-
cover it. That action was twice tried in this Court
in 1873, first before the Lord Chief Justice at the
spring Assizes, when the jury, after a long trial, were
so perplexed by the evidence as to pedigree that they
could not agree and were discharged. The case was
tried again at the Summer Assizes before another
Judge, and the jury were then satisfied that there was
not a failure of heirs—indeed, the difficulty was rather
in their number, for, as Mr. Hawkins humorously
observed, there were about 450 relations of John
Chapman living about the neighbourhood where the
Chapmans have been settled for centuries, and the
difficulty was in discovering who was the right heir.
That, however, it was not material to do in the action
brought by the lord of the manor on the ground of
a failure of heirs. and, as the jury were satisfied
that there were heirs, they found a verdict against
him. The publicity the case had now gained
of course stimulated researches into pedigree, and
the result was that a person named George Chapman,
born at Charing in 1839, the son of a Thomas Chapman
born in 1806, claimed the estate as heir-at-law, or at all
events a moiety of it, the estate being held in gavel.
kind, according to the custom of the county of Kent.
As already stated, however, it was found practically
impossible for any one to show heirship to the old
ladies' paternal ancestor, the William Chapman of the
reign of George 11., and his claim was founded on that
very fact; for according to a legal rule or presumption
—lately recognized in the Court of Appeal—the absence
of any claire of heirship to a particular person, and of
all proof of heirship, raises a presumption that there
are no heirs of that person now living, and so the
claim of George Chapman is based on the presumption
thus arising that the William Chapman of George 11.,
the paternal ancestor of the last owner., left no heirs.
That being so, then, according to the rule of law, he
had a right to trace descent in the maternal line—
that is, he had to trace title from the maternal ancestor
of the old ladies, the last possessors of the estate, and
he accordingly traced title -from their great grand-
mother, the wife of the William Chapman of the time
of George 11. She was a Martha Manooch, and he
had a sister Susan, who also married a Chapman, and
from her the claimant traced his title as her great-
great-grandson, his father being according to his case, her
great-grandson; and his ancestry through four genera-
tions of Chapmans, all of whom lived and died at
Charing, was traced to Susan Chapman, who was born
in 1687 and died in 1726, having married a Thomas
Chapman, who died in 1767, leaving a son,*another
Thomas Chapman, who, born in 1726, died in 1804,
and was the claimant's grandfather. Thus the
plaintiff's case rested on two grounds—first, the
absence of heirs in the upward line of descent to
William Chapman of George IL, the paternal
ancestor; and then his direct descent in the maternal
line from the sister of that William Chapman's wife,
the maternal ancestress of the old ladies—that is,
the plaintiff claimed from Suzan Chapman, who
died in 1726, snore than half a century before her
sister, Martha Chapman, and who was married and
left issue, and from whom the plaintiff George
claimed to be descended in the fifth generation.
Thus there were nine distinct generations, four up-
wards and five downwards, through which ahe plain-
tiff had to trace his title, accounting at each stage for
i all the issue, so as to show that he s the right heir.
In the meantime it should be stated that Elizabeth
Chapman, one of the old ladies, who was co-owner
with her sister Catherine, had left her moiety of the
property to the tenants ; but, as her sister died
lunatic, there was a moiety of the estate undisposed
of; and this was the subject of dispute. The tenants
being in possession—' beati possiclentes'—of course were
warranted by law in resisting all claims until either
• failure of heirs or heirship in some particular person
was established; and at the same time they set up
title in another person said to be descended from old
William Chapman's father.
This particular action was brought to recover a farm
in the parish of Great Chart, in the county of Kent,
the farm being part of the estate the title to which is
the subject of dispute. Such was the aspect of the
cage as it now came again before a Kentish jury, the
question being one of far greater difficulty than in the
former trials, for then the question only was whether
there was an heir, whereas the question now was
which was the right heir.
Mr. F. M. White, Q.C., and Mr. Kingsford were for
the plaintiff, the claimant; Mr. Brown, QC., and
Mr. Lumley Smith were for the defendants, the
tenants. -

The statement of the ease by Mr. White, on the
part of the claimant, involving as it did the deduction
of his title through all these links of descent, was, of
course, necessarily very lengthy, and the necessity at
every stage of accounting for all the children, showing I
who died without issue, and tracing the progeny of
every one who had issue, involved a great deal of
intricacy and difficulty. The difficulty was all the
greater, because these Chapmans, as the Lord Chief
Justicp observed, seemed to have been a long-lived
race, and, living in a healthy part of this fine
county, they appear to have most of them attained
to great age, many of them living to the age of 80
or 90. Thus each Chapman lived a good long life,
and it was necessary as to each of them to
prove either that he died without issue, or what
issue he had, and so the proof was long, intricate, and
difficult. The Judge and jury were provided with
printed pedigrees in order to enable them to follow the
statement of counsel, and at the suggestion of the Lord
Chief Justice the counsel on the other side stated at
each step what they admitted—as, for instance, the
death of any one without issue—so as to simplify the
case as far as possible, and a great many points in the
deduction of pedigree were thus disposed of; but still
the proof occupied a long time. It was proved that
one of the old ladies, the last owners—Miss Elizabeth
Chapman—had stated that she had no known rela-
tives except her sister, who died unmarried. Then it
was proved that at her death in 1863 an advertisement
was published under the order of the Court of Chan-
cery, calling upon all persons interested to come forward
and prove their heirship. The London Gazette of
November 10, 1863, was produced, containing an
advertisement calling upon persons claiming to be
heirs of Catherine, who was then living and a lunatic,
to come forward and prove their kinship, with a view
to their being appointed committees of the lunatic.
This advertisement it appeared had been inserted by
the Commissioners of Lunacy. It was copied into a
Canterbury paper, and other country papers, and
excited great interest in the county. This led a
solicitor at Charing to make searches and inquiries
into the pedigree, and he was now called as a witness
to prove the result.
The case for the defendants was that Thomas, son
of William and Sarah Elvey of Nuneham, who was in
court, is the right heir of William Chapman of Westrell,
who died in 1748, the paternal ancestor of the old
ladies, the last possessors.
The case ultimately resolved itself into the single
point of the identity of this William Chapman of
Westwell, the paternal ancestor, with William Chap-
man of Badlesmere, the ancestor of the Elveys. On
this counsel on both sides addressed the jury, and then
- The Lord Chief Justice summed up the case. He
told the jury of the rule of presumption or probability
as to the absence of living heirs of any person, arising
from the non-appearance of heirs after diligent inquiry
and the notoriety that heirs for a valuable property were
wanting. The case for the plaintiff rested on the pre-
sumption upon this ground that no heirs in the paternal
line—no heirs of William Chapman of Westwell—were
living. Then arose the question, had the plaintiff made
out his descent in the maternal line—that was from
Susan, the sister of Martha, the wife of that William
Chapman. Even if he had, then arose the second ques-
tion, whether the defendants had made out that heirs
of William Chapman 's father—Thomas Chapman ef
Eastling—were living. If this was made out, then,
as the heirs in the paternal line would displace heirs
of the maternal line, the defendants would succeed.
The descent in the paternal line must prevail, sup-
posing it made out by either side, and the question
was whether either side had made it out, and if not,
whether the claimant had made out his descent in the
maternal line.
In a minute or two the jury found in favour of the
defendants, and in answer to the Lord Chief Justice
they said they thought that the defendants had shown
title as heirs of the paternal line.
The Lord Chief Justice gave judgment for the de-
fendants.
It is to be observed, however, that the trial only
decides that the plaintiff is not entitled, and another
action must still be brought to determine who is
entitled."

HUMOURS or THE SCROOL•ROOM TEA-TABLE.—" Do
help me first, Mummy! Do help me first !
"Why should you be helped first, Gerald ?" " Be-
cause I'm waiting so patiently, and haven't asked ! "
Punch.

PRINCE BISMARCK AND LORD ODO
RUSSELL.

A nerlin letter in tbe Journal de Genre (says the Paris
Correspondent of the Standard) vouclvs for the authenticity
of the following statement, alleged to have been made a
fortnight ago by Prince Bismarck to Lord Odo Russell :
" I quite understand the excitement caused in
England by what is going on in the East; but after
all it would be necessary for you to ascertain precisely
where the shoe pinches, in order to discover the
proper remedy. Bear in mind, in the first place, that
palliative measures are all you can hope for, How-
ever much Russia may, in your opinion, abuse her
victory, you can do nothing, or at least very little.
Even if you were the masters how could you, after
the debates in your Parliament, venture to restore
Turkish rule in the Christian provinces that have
been emancipated from it? The thing is impossible,
but were it not so, the experiment would be a very
risky one. Your troops are excellent; but, as Marshal
Bugeaud said, you have very few of them, and it
would not be easy for you to raise fresh ones.
Your countrymen would, no doubt, flock to the
colours with great enthusiasm; but reflect that
you would not have another siege of Sebasto-
pol to undertake, but an active, arduous cam-
paign, involving great hardships and privations;
and your young men from the City, from
Manchester, and Liverpool would soon find it very
trying. In a word, you will admit that you might
possibly be beaten, and then you would be in a very
had plight indeed' why run the risk of that? _ What
do you care about Bulgaria ? What are Bessarabia or
the Danube to you? You have but one concern, and
that is the road to India, and you know quite well
that that route is not the valley of the Euphrates, but
Egypt and the Suez Canal. Well, then, take Egypt.
Lord Odo Russell having made a gesture of dissent,
Prince Bismarck continued—
"Why, of course. With Egypt, Malta, and Gib-
raltar nothing could enter the Mediterranean without
your leave, and everybody will be satisfied, excepting
France, perhaps; but it is not your business nor mine
to make France happy. Moreover, she will soon be
reconciled to it. Since Bonaparte's expedition she
must have lost the illusion of ever turning Egypt to
any account, it is quite enough for her that her
material interests there should be safeguarded, and she
could not wish to see them in better hands than yours."