156 Histo7'y of the English Landed Interest. 



elegance of his dress, of ids equipage, of his house and house- 

 hold furniture are objects which from his infancy he has been 

 accustomed to have some anxiet}^ about. The turn of his 

 mind, which this habit naturally forms, follows him when he 

 comes to think of the improvement of land. He embellishes 

 perhaps four or five hundred acres in the neighbourhood of his 

 house, at ten times tiie expense which the land is worth after 

 all his improvements, and finds that if he were to improve his 

 whole estate in the same manner — and he has little taste for 

 any other — he would be a bankrupt before he had finished 

 the tenth part of it. There still remain in both parts of the 

 United Kingdom some great estates wliich have continued 

 without interruption in the hands of the same family since 

 the times of feudal anarchy. Compare the present condition 

 of these estates with the possessions of the small proprietors in 

 their neighbourhood, and you will require no other argument 

 to convince you how unfavourable such extensive properties are 

 to improvement." 



Lord Kaimes also says : " A man who has amassed a great 

 estate in land is miserable at the prospect of being obliged to 

 quit his hold. To soothe his diseased fancy, he makes a deed, 

 securing it for ever to certain heirs, who must without end 

 bear his name and preserve his estate entire. Death, it is true, 

 must at last separate him from his idol. It is some consolation, 

 however, that his will governs and gives law to every subse- 

 quent proprietor. How repugnant to the frail state of man 

 are such swollen conceptions ! Upon these, however, are 

 founded entails which have prevailed in many parts of the 

 world, and unhappily at this day infest Scotland. Did entails 

 produce no other mischief but the gratification of a distempered 

 appetite, they might be endured, although far from deserving 

 approbation ; but, like other transgressions of nature and 

 reason, they are productive of much mischief, not only to 

 commerce, but to the very heirs for whose sake alone it is 

 pretended that they were made." ^ 



Yet many would-be reformers were not disposed to advocate 



' The Sketch of the History of Man. Appendix to the 4tli vol. 

 Kaimes, 1774. 



