Court Opinion

ID: 9811609
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:25:44.010086+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:20:08.917723
License: Public Domain

Avery, J.
(concurring): Concurring fully in the conclusion of my brother who delivers the opinion of the Court, I can not yield my assent to the reasons given for holding that colored mutes are entitled to a ratable share of the fund. If the testator had bequeathed six thousand dollars in trust for the education of the colored mute children at the time when his will took effect, the bequest would have been declared void, because at the time it was illegal to educate such children. If in express words he had named the “white mutes”.as the beneficiaries it will be conceded without citation of authorities that it would have been a valid bequest to a class that could be easily ascertained and identified, and that, in the face of such a clear expression of an intent which it would have been at the time lawful to carry out, no part of the interest accruing from the fund could have ever been directed to any other use than that-intended by Kelly. But as he refrained from confining its benefits by express terms to white mutes the law presumes that he disposed of his property in contemplation of such changes as might be made in our laws and with intent that his bequest should inure to the benefit of all who should at any time fall within the classes of mutes for whose education the State might in future provide. If the law had been so altered as to extend the benefits of tuition in her public schools to mutes up to the age of forty, those who were made beneficiaries by removing restrictions as to the age of pupils, would have been none the less entitled to share in the benefit of this fund, because the alteration was made subsequently to the testator’s death. The same principle that *170would bring them within the class designated by the testator as cestuis que t/rust would entitle colored mutes, after they were made beneficiaries of .the State, to claim the right to share in the testator’s bounty.
If it be true that the legislature did not confine.the privi-ledge of receiving instruction in the Institution exclusively to white pupils till after the death of the testator, it is not material, since other statutes, which must be construed along with those relating specifically to the education of mutes at that time, made it illegal to open schools for colored pupils. We are not at liberty to impute to the testator an unlawful, purpose, and hold that the courts must carry out his intent. But he might have given his bounty, intending that its application should be left dependent upon future changes in the law, like the loan, which proved a donation by the federal Government to the State for the benefit of the common schools.