276 A LIFE'S WORK IN IRELAND. 



would settle their estates on their living children. 

 Nothing would give a chance of attaining the end 

 sought by the opponents of settlements but peremptory 

 ])rohibition of all limited estates in land, i.e. forbidding 

 all settlements whatever, whether on persons living or 

 yet unborn, that the owner of land, on his marriage or 

 otherwise, should be forbidden by law to settle his 

 estate for his own life or that of himself and his wife. 

 If settlements on unborn children were forbidden, but 

 not the power of settKng for the lives of persons living, 

 it is clear that every motive which now makes men 

 settle their estates to the extent the law permits, 

 would operate just the same to make them settle 

 their estates as far as the altered law permitted, and 

 they would do so. A father, being absolute owner, 

 whose son was about to marry, would settle the 

 estate for the life of his son and his intended wife, 

 just as those who acquire landed property after they 

 have married now do. If the son was owner, he 

 would do as he does now, and for the same reasons. 

 It is the habits and ideas, I might almost say instincts, 

 of the class who own land, which have been the growth 

 of generations and even centuries, that are the true 

 cause of men striving to keep in their families the 

 land they own. Landowners, with very rare excep- 

 tions, wish their families and estates should continue 

 after them. And then as settlements are mostly 

 made on marriage, it is really the influence of the 

 girl a man wants to marry and of her family, that 



