522 



LAND LAWS. 



devises, it has been limited to cases of intes- 

 tacy. The general custom of settling land or 

 disposing of it by will has rendered the direct 

 effects of primogeniture comparatively unim- 

 portant. Its abolition is, however, demanded by 

 many on the ground that it is " the key-stone 

 of the whole system " by which land is tied up, 

 and because the doing away with it would pave 

 the .way for more successfully attacking the 

 custom of settling land from generation to gen- 

 eration on the eldest son, and thereby creating 

 what has been called " a general system of 

 artificial primogeniture." Liberal statesmen 

 generally, and not a few of the Conservatives, 

 favor its abolition. 



Entails. Estates in tail, established by the 

 statute de donis, were from the first regarded 

 by many statesmen and writers and by the 

 people as undesirable; but, defended by the 

 nobility because they preserved family estates 

 from forfeiture, they continued practically un- 

 disturbed for more than two centuries. Then 

 the courts so applied common recoveries as to 

 bar entails. A little later entailed estates were 

 made liable to forfeiture for treason, the statute 

 of fines was so construed as to furnish a means 

 for terminating them, and they were abridged 

 in other ways. In 1833 fines and recoveries 

 were abolished, and the tenant for life was in 

 most cases enabled to bar the entail by a deed 

 enrolled in the Court of Chancery. But to pro- 

 tect family settlements, when under the same 

 settlement that creates an estate in tail the 

 parent or some one else holds a life-interest, 

 the first tenant in tail in order to cut off the 

 entail must have the consent of the tenant for 

 life, who is called the protector of the settle- 

 ment. It is not possible, therefore, absolutely to 

 tie up an estate by entail for longer than the 

 lives of persons living and twenty- one years 

 and a few months afterward, when the first 

 tenant in tail will of course be of age and able 

 to alien the estate. 



Settlements. By combining what remains of 

 the law of entail with various principles relat- 

 ing to trusts, and by the aid of devices for con- 

 veyancing developed under the statute of uses, 

 land-owners have, however, been able, through 

 successive settlements, pretty effectually to tie 

 up the greater part of the land in the country. 

 There are a great many technicalities connected 

 with this system of strict settlement which 

 custom and the general sentiment among the 

 land-owning class have kept up. The general 

 features of settlement are comparatively sim- 

 ple. ^A land-owner, A, wishing to settle prop- 

 erty in his family, conveys it to trustees for 

 the benefit of his son B, for life, giving an es- 

 tate in tail to B's oldest son, C, and to B's other 

 sons in succession, and also, on the failure of 

 A's issue, to his younger sons in succession, 

 and, on the failure of male offspring, to the 

 daughters. He receives back from the trustees 

 only a life interest, and, as his son has only a 

 like interest, neither of them can alien the 

 property. When, however, the first tenant in 



tail is of age, the estate may, with the consent 

 of the protector of the settlement, be sold. In- 

 stead of aliening, the tenant in tail is likely, in 

 consideration of being provided with an ade- 

 quate allowance during the lifetime of his fa- 

 ther, and for other reasons, to resettle the es- 

 tate, keeping a life-estate for himself, giving 

 his son a life-interest and an estate in tail to his 

 grandson and others in succession. Provisions 

 are commonly made in these settlements for 

 widows, daughters, and the younger branches 

 of the family, for improvements and for the 

 sale of a portion or the whole of the property. 

 When the settlement makes no provision for 

 the sale, the Court of Chancery may order the 

 property to be sold to pay off incumbrances or 

 for other reasons. The sale of settled land has, 

 however, always been a troublesome and diffi- 

 cult transaction. The Settled Estates Act of 

 1856 and the amending acts of 1858 and 1864 

 purported to render all settled property capa- 

 ble of sale, but they contained so many restric- 

 tions and provisos for guarding all possible act- 

 ual and contingent interests that they were 

 effective in but few cases. Additional powers 

 were also given to tenants for life to make 

 leases and borrow money to make improve- 

 ments, but none of these measures removed the 

 obstacles in the way of dealing freely with the 

 land and using it for the best interests of all 

 parties interested in it and of the public. Ac- 

 cordingly, the Settled Land Act (1882), of which 

 Lord Cairns was the author and chief pro- 

 moter, was passed, enabling the tenant for life 

 to sell, or exchange, the settled land or any 

 part of it, "except the principal mansion-house 

 and the demesne thereof and other lands usu- 

 ally occupied therewith." He may also sell 

 the principal mansion with its surroundings 

 and the heirlooms of the family, if he has the 

 consent of the trustees or an order of the court. 

 The money derived from the sale may be used 

 to pay off incumbrances, or may be invested in 

 land or in securities of certain kinds by the 

 trustees or court, according to the direction of 

 the tenant for life. The tenant for life may 

 lease the settled land, for building purposes for 

 ninety-nine years, for mining for sixty years, 

 and for other purposes for twenty-one years. 

 He can not enlarge his own interest in the es- 

 tate, but can deal pretty freely with the land 

 and can leave the property wholly or partly in 

 the form of money instead of land. Under this 

 act many family collections of books and works 

 of art and large quantities of land have come 

 into the market. Owing to the great depres- 

 sion of the agricultural interests, the land has 

 rarely been sold. It is generally agreed that 

 the measure has pretty thoroughly undermined 

 the system of family entails and strict settle- 

 ments of land, and that, if carried out in the 

 spirit in which it was framed, it will produce 

 great changes. Lord Salisbury, who repre- 

 sents the Conservative view, recently declared 

 that Lord Cairns's Act had gone quite far 

 enough, that it had broken up all the objection- 



