462 History of the English Landed Interest. 



could not grant leases binding on the latter. Gradually, 

 however, the powers of the tenant-for-life in this respect were 

 slightly widened, so that in 1856, and still more so in 1877, 

 they were approaching the freedom which, under the Act of 

 1882, allows a landed proprieter to ignore within certain wide 

 limits the interests of the remainderman.^ 



Both the Grovernment Loan and the Lease System are 

 however open to grave objection, in order to understand which 

 we must go somewhat into details in examining their respec- 

 tive machineries. The sums voted by Parliament for private 

 drainage works, etc., were soon exhausted, and Land Improve- 

 ment Companies took up the lapsed process and lent monies 

 for the erection of buildings and construction of other im- 

 provements on the security of the certificate of the Enclosure 

 Commissioners which gave them a first charge on the inherit- 

 ance. The interest, viz. 4| per cent., on which the Land- 

 companies lent their monies, was apparently reasonable 

 enough, but when there came to be added to this the sinking 

 fund, calculated to repay the loan in twenty-five years, 

 together with the interest and sinking fund on the first 

 expenditure, it was found that the total rate of interest was 

 sometimes as high as 15 per cent, and averaged generally 1} 

 By 1878 the total capital thus sunk in the land amounted to 

 £12,000,000, and the question began to be mooted whether a 

 charge of 7 per cent, was not too heavy on the tenant-for- 

 life, and therefore if a permanent mortgage at a much 

 smaller rate of interest were not preferable. It was, however, 

 recognised that the latter process would in time deal a death 

 blow to the Family Settlement System. The alternative was 

 to give the tenant-for-life permission to liquidate any debts 

 incurred on account of permanently improving his estates by 

 selling a portion of the settled property. In support of this 

 remedy it was argued that in the commercial world it would 



' rrinciples of Real Property, ed. 1892, p. 113. Josh. Williams. 



2 Enfjlish Land and Eiujlish Landlords, p. 69. G. C. Brodrick. 



^ The Savernake case of last year would tend to prove that even the 

 mansion house is not sacred to the commercial proclivities of a tenant- 

 for-life. 



