The Land and the Community. 157 



the alteration of our land laws until they were assured that 

 the prosperity of the community demanded some such step. 

 Even thus early there were examples available for economists 

 who sought to prove that our custom of primogeniture was 

 preferable to other forms of inheritance. The equal division 

 of landed estates among the children of the deceased proprietor 

 would, of course, have tended to largely subdivide the English 

 soil into lesser freeholds. But it was greatly questioned 

 whether a large class of small landed gentry was a desirable 

 institution. Speaking of the Irish custom of gavelkind, Sir 

 John Davis remarked, "It did breed another mischief; for 

 thereby everybody being born to land, as well bastard as 

 legitimate, they all held themselves to be gentlemen ; and 

 though their portions were ever so small, and themselves ever 

 so poor (for gavelkind must needs in the end make a poor 

 gentility), yet they scorned to descend to husbandry or mer- 

 chandise, or to learn any mechanical art or science ; and this 

 is the true cause why there never were any corporate towns 

 erected in the Irish counties." ^ 



The Law of Entails in Scotland had been powerfully 

 attacked by a pamphleteer in 1765,^ but the defence it 

 called forth from Sir John Dalrymple in the same year was a 

 crushing rejoinder.^ Had space admitted it, we should have 

 placed before the reader a brief analysis of these productions 

 but it will be well to leave the discussion of this wide and 

 complex question for later examination, when the views of 

 the economists both on agriculture and commerce had become 

 moderated, and when by the development of history fresh 

 lights had been brought to bear on the problem. 



* Discourse of the True Causes tohy Ireland was never Subdued. Davis 

 Tracts, p. 130, ed. 1787. 



' A Free Disquisition Concerning the Laws of Entails in Scotland^ 

 Occasioned by some Late Proposals for Amending that Law. Edinburgh, 

 1765. 



^ Considerations on the Polity of Entails in a Nation, by John Dal- 

 rymple. Edinburgh, 1765. 



