JUDGMENT

Sale, J. - This a suit for the construction of the will and for the administration of the estate of William Lloyd, who died in the Darjeeling district on the 15th of January 1896, leaving the plaintiff, his son, an only child, and a widow who resides in England. The will is dated the 16th of September 1890, and the defendants, who are appointed the trustees for carrying out the wishes of the testator expressed in the will, obtained probate as executors according to the tenor, on the 10th of February 1896. It appears that the testator had for many years carried on, and was carrying on at the date of his death, a banking business in Darjeeling, of which the defendant Alexander Baness Lumley Webb was the manager, and that the business is still being carried on by the defendants as the trustees appointed by the will. It also appears that at the date of the will the plaintiff had attained full age but had not adopted a profession, though it is said that before the death of his father he succeeded in obtaining a commission in the Militia.

2. The main question raised on the construction of the will of the testator is as to the effect to be given to the provisions contained in the will relating to the plaintiff.

3. Subject to the payment of an annuity to the widow, about which no question arises, the will, which is an inartificial and ill-expressed document, contains the following directions:

I leave all my estate, whether private or appertaining to Lloyds Batik, in trust for the benefit of my only child, George William Aylmer Lloyd, and hereby appoint Alexander Baness Lumley Webb and his brother Edwin John Webb trustees for carrying out my wishes.

4. A subsequent clause provides as follows:

And my son is to be allowed only such small sum pecuniary as may force him to earn his own broad. At the end of the year 1900 the trust shall cease.

5. Then follows the provision:

At the end of 1900 years my son is to be allowed to enjoy the estate.

6. The first question is, what is the nature of the gift to the son, is it an absolute gift of the whole estate with immediate vesting, or is it a postponed gift contingent upon the son surviving to the end of the year 1900, when the trust is to cease.

7. It is to be observed that there is no gift over in the will nor is there any separate or express devise of the surplus income of the estate for the period intervening between the death of the testator and the cessation of the trust after providing for the widow's annuity, the son's subsistence allowance, and the trustees' remuneration.

8. It is said that though the testator leaves his estate in trust for the benefit of his son, the benefit which it was intended that the son should take is explained by the subsequent provisions of the will and is limited and controlled thereby. But the object of the trust, so far as it is defined by the subsequent directions of the will, is not to create a benefit in favour of the son, hut to cut that benefit down and to restrict it to a subsistence allowance until the year 1900, when the trust is to determine. It seems to me, therefore, the benefit given by the earlier clause of the will cannot be confined to the benefit to be enjoyed by the son under the terms and during the pendency of the trust.

9. The gift is in express terms of the whole of the estate to trustees for the benefit of the son. The testator, however, desires that his estate is not to come into the possession or enjoyment of the son for a given period so as to afford the son an opportunity of learning to earn his own livelihood. Similar provisions with a similar object have been held to constitu(sic)e an immediate and absolute gift.

10. In Hanson v. Graham 6 Ves. 239 the subject of immediate gifts with postponed enjoyment and gifts postponed to or contingent on the donee attaining a certain age was much discussed, and at p. 248 of the report Sir W. Grant, M. R., observes as follows as regards the decision in the case of Love v. L'Estrange 3 Bro. 337. "