Later Agrarian Legislation. 463 



be considered rash for a tradesman or merchant to carry on, 

 by means of borrowed money, a business too large for his 

 available fortune, and that his proper course would be, not to 

 widen his capital by borrowed funds till it covered all the 

 wants of the expenditure connected with the undertaking, but 

 to reduce the limits of the undertaking till it obviated the 

 necessity of widening his capital. No prudent farmer under- 

 took a tenancji' too large for his means, and therefore no landed 

 proprietor should be left under the necessity of succeeding to 

 such a damnosa heredltas. 



Many, however, contended that this should not be the chief 

 end of a wise Government ; that what was really wanted 

 was a measure calculated to promote the application of free 

 capital to the soil ; and that this would be best effected 

 by the abolition of family settlements altogether. Again, 

 however, the Legislature refused to wantonl}'- interfere with 

 the rights of property ; so while it maintained the principle 

 of entails, it afforded the tenant-for-life a loophole of escape 

 from one of its chief drawbacks. It in fact gave him the 

 choice between carrying on a large business with crippled 

 means, or of reducing it to a working concern in proportion to 

 the remaining capital. Under the latest Land Legislation 

 the inheritance per se remains intact and inviolable, only its 

 form being alterable ; but every stick and stone of the realty 

 can, under certain circumstances, be converted into the scrip 

 and bonds of personalty by means of certain legal formalities 

 and a few strokes of the pen. 



We now come to discuss the third and last remedy required 

 before English husbandry could be free for further develop- 

 ment. Ever since the Statute of Gloucester (6 Ed. I) which 

 established the maxim, " Quicquid plantatur solo, solo cedit," 

 the occupier has had the greatest difficulty in reaping the full 

 harvest of his improvements, and neither an elaborate system 

 of tenant-right, nor the most equitable of leases, nor even 

 recent legislation have afforded him that perfect security to 

 which he is entitled. 



The drawbacks to the agricultural lease are as obvious to- 

 day as they w^ere in 1850, and no practical man who has had 



