400 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



private accumulations into the public treasury an object which 

 may or may not be desirable in itself, but which is beyond the 

 legitimate scope of our present inquiry. 



By what means, then, can the vices inherent in the English 

 system of entail and settlement be remedied without impeaching 

 the essential rights of proprietorship and disposition ? According 

 to some law reformers, nothing more is required for this purpose 

 than a simple legislative prohibition of entails upon unborn chil- 

 dren. There can be no doubt that such a measure, if so framed 

 as to exclude the evasion of its principle by the creation of 

 "powers" or otherwise, might reduce by twenty-one years the 

 period for which land can be lawfully kept extra commercium by 

 the force of a single instrument. But it would leave the mischief 

 of limited ownership and contingent incumbrances wholly un- 

 touched within the allotted circle of a life or lives in being, or 

 rather, it would stimulate family pride and legal ingenuity to 

 devise new modes of settlement which should make up by their 

 greater complexity for the brevity of their restrictive operations. 

 Indeed, it is quite possible that a mere prohibition of entails 

 upon unborn children, without any further change in the law, 

 would have less practical effect than some minor amendments of 

 a less sweeping character. In the first place, a broad distinction 

 might be drawn between settlements made by will and settlements 

 made by deed inter vivos, especially upon marriage. Posthumous 

 dispositions of all kinds are watched in these days, on very suffi- 

 cient grounds, with increasing jealousy, and posthumous entails 

 are liable to peculiar objections which do not attach to others. 

 When they are derived from wills executed in prospect of death, 

 they are far more likely to be capricious and self-defeating than 

 if they had originated from the same mind in the full vigour of 

 life ; if the will has been executed long before the testator's 

 death, from which it, nevertheless, " speaks," it may not repre- 

 sent his final intention, and may even contravene his first inten- 

 tion, owing to circumstances which have occurred since the date 

 of its execution. In any case, the power of entailing by will 

 is exercised secretly, and with much less security for delibera- 

 tion than is afforded by the negotiations that usually precede a 



