338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



estates estates so vast as to be unwieldy in management, interposing 

 factors and stewards too often between landlord and tenant ; these 

 vast estates yield incomes culpably great and so enormous that their 

 recipients are often indifferent to improvements in farming in com- 

 parison with proprietors of small farms, and much land is wasted by 

 being held for mere sport. When the holder of an entailed estate 

 quarrels with his heir, the land suffers, that the personal property 

 which may be freely bequeathed may be increased. Such quarrels, if 

 we are to follow the experience of common life, are usually due in part 

 to qualities in the heir which would make him less worthy of the 

 estate than some relative or kinsman to whom the holder might be- 

 queath it were he free to use his judgment. 



Mr. Kinnear, who has written a most sensible book on the subject 

 of property in land, argues convincingly that the diffusion of property 

 rather than its aggregation is desirable, holding that nationally prop- 

 erty will be found to be accumulated more rapidly in the former case 

 than in the latter, while at the same time comfort and content will be 

 more common. He speaks from wide experience in Great Britain, 

 France, and the Channel Islands. Mr. Kinnear suggests that there be 

 limits placed to the amount bequeath able to an individual, so that very 

 large estates may become divided. In common with the majority of 

 competent observers, he prefers the French tenure of small parcels of 

 land to the British tenure of great estates, but he regards the French 

 compulsory division of the bulk of a property at a father's death 

 among his children as wrong : were the father free to will to whom 

 he pleased, the moral effect would be beneficial. 



Children grow disobedient and unfilial when they know they can 

 not be set aside. And speaking of wills, the custom of making what 

 should be naturally one of the saddest events in life the occasion of 

 coming into a father's estate is severely commented upon by the sup- 

 porters of Russian and other communal systems of tenure. In the 

 Russian mir, when a young man becomes of age, he enters into the 

 enjoyment of a share in the common estate, and the effects of this 

 difference are said to be observable in the stronger family feelings 

 which the Russian peasantry cherish in comparison with their West- 

 ern brethren. 



The sad experience of King Lear and the painful presence of the 

 gaping heir are both avoided by those sensible men of wealth who are 

 their own executors to as great an extent as may consist with the 

 reserve of a personal competence. 



The individual holding of land as in France, Germany, England, 

 and America, has been opposed by a great many thinkers and popular 

 leaders. The chief objection lodged against it has been that land, 

 being as absolutely necessary to human subsistence as air and water, it 

 should be as free from monopoly as these ; for as the accumulations of a 

 single holder go on there is risk of his being able to drive people forth 



