The New York herald., 1876-03-24
Breach of Trust and Embe11lement

tion may be consigned to State Prison for
from five to fifteen years, in proportion TO the
amount of money involved in his offence;
but for the man who betrays trust to any
amount whatever by which the property OF
many orphan children is put into his hands
the criminal law of the State has no penal,
ties This is all wrong, and should be rem
edied without delay. 1t is mere sentimen-
tality to treat the nature of the relationship
between the trustee of a private estate and
the heirs of that estate as though they were
apart from all other human relations in
which while there is confidence on one side
there are obligations on the other Trustees
are men who are dealing with other peoples
money, and, with all allowance made for the
latitude that must be given to them in order
that they may keep the money safe or invest
it proftably, the courts should have the OPP
portunity to discriminate where, in any
given case honest errors end and fraudulent
appropriation begins. Human life is to be
made as sacred as possible by the protection
of the law, yet it is doubtful if Rubenstein
and Dolan together have done as much harm
in the families of their victims as is scattered
by the villany of one trustee who has left in
his hands the subsistence of widows and
orphans and squanders it all away. But
Rubenstein and Dolan will in all probability
hang and the trustee may come and go none
the worse for all the terrors of justice Our
State prisons are filled with wretches whose
Ortv fro11 Af1la tr1c m
templates with contempt Men who have
forged some ones name and gained fifty dol
lars who have pried open door at midnight
and stolen asilver-plated teapot; who have re-
lieved some plethoric millionaire in crowd
of an indifferent watch, they are in for two
years, ten years, five years Twenty men
could be named in any of our prisons the
aggregate of whose sentences would foot up
q hundred years, while the aggregate value
of the property stolen by them would not
foot up thousand dollars But gentle
manly trustee who has converted to his own
uses hundred thousand dollars or two hun
dred thousand dollars put into his hand to
be kept for others, may drive past the prison
doors twice day and never feel uneasy at
crime in the eyes of the law; he
has only done an injury to the
heirs, for which they can have a civil rem
edy against his estate and it is supposed
not to be the fault of the law if his own
tate was all squandered before he began on
the trusts. Indeed, on this point the law
is not so bad as on the other If trustees
are appointed subject to the authority of the
Surrogate he may, and in certain cases
must, require them to give bonds: and then
if they converted moneys to their own uses
their bondsmen were responsible. Unfor-
tunately, however, for people in this neigh
borhood, the Surrogate's Office is part of
our local administration that has been in no
greater favor with honest men than some
more notorious of our courts, and one
of the things naturally desired was
to make the administration of estates
as far independent of the authorities
as was possible. This is a natural impulse
on the part of the people, and through this
impulse they are shut out from that method
of disposing of their property which the law
seems to contemplate as regular. BY the
state of the law and the corruptions of our
administrative system people are forced to
put their property into the hands of
trustees, and because, for this reason,
they do not get the security that the law pre-
sumes is given, the Legislature should give
an equivalent guarantee by providing that
trustees of private estates as well as officers
of corporations shall be liable to the penal
ties for embezzlement as provided in partly
of the Revised Statutes, chap. l, art. s.
! Our law contemplates that breach of trust
is an injury for which there is a civil
remedy-is an offence whose evil effects are
restricted to the immediate victims, and not
q crime in so far as crime is an offence
against society at large. But this distinc-
ton is scarcely good one in the present
condition of society here. With rotten
ness prevalent and spreading, with
Surrogates Court at the mercy of
with large accumulations of wealth that
force the creation of trusts, the great
body of society becomes interested in such
charges, and the act that shows that they
may be abused with impunity, and SO tends
to encourage dishonest courses, is crime
against the whole community, and if ever
severe penalty could be fairly applied on the
theory that it prevents crime it can now in
cases of this nature.
A CENTENNIAL CANDIDATE. William NJ
Evarts is the first citizen of the Republic in
unanv resnectS-a man who has honorod