14 INFLUENCE OF LAND LAWS I 



his future interest for as long as he has children or 

 descendants living. 



Taking advantage of this restriction, it soon became the 

 usual custom for the father who held the life estate 

 previous to the estate tail to prevail upon his son, the 

 tenant in tail, as soon as he came of legal age, to cut off 

 the entail, which would then be resettled on his father A 

 for life, remainder to himself X for life, remainder to his 

 own son Z as yet unborn in tail. The estate would thus 

 be safely tied up until that unborn son Z was born and 

 had attained legal age, and then the process would be 

 repeated. It will be observed that the tenant in tail in 

 thus complying would give up much. He would have 

 surrendered his remainder in tail on which he might have 

 raised money at once, though this might be at an exorbi- 

 tant interest, and his eventual right to cut off the entail 

 and sell the property as soon as his father was dead and he 

 had come into possession. In lieu of these rights he would 

 only have received a tenancy for life after his father's 

 death. If, however, he were recalcitrant, he would not 

 only meet with the disapprobation of his family, anxious 

 to preserve the family estate intact, but would be probably 

 threatened by a refusal on the part of his father to give 

 him any pecuniary assistance meanwhile, a threat all the 

 more serious if he thought of marriage and a marriage 

 settlement had to be drawn up, at which uncomfortable 

 crises these family arrangements are usually made. 



Thus by a succession of such settlements, which are 

 periodically broken and resettled, the practical results of 

 a strict legal system of entails are obtained not be it 

 observed by the law, but rather against the spirit of the 

 law. So rooted is this prejudice among the larger landed 

 gentry, and so universal is this tendency, that it is said 

 that two-thirds of the land of England are to-day under 



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