50 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE [xii. 



amassed by commerce : the mere landowner, whether 

 his estate was entailed or not, being rarely in a 

 condition to become a purchaser. 



Now the statute in many instances opposed an 

 effectual bar to accumulation by either of these 

 modes. If land on being entailed were given, as it 

 often, perhaps generally, was given, to a man and the 

 heirs male of his body, it could not pass, so long as 

 a male descendant existed, to any female, and so 

 long therefore, the union by marriage of such an 

 estate with another also entailed on male issue 

 became, while such issue survived, impossible. Just 

 as two kingdoms, in which the Salic Law prevails, 

 can never become consolidated by marriage. In the 

 same way the rich citizen of London, of Hull, or 

 Bristol, bent upon purchasing land enough for the 

 founder of a county family, must often have been 

 checked in the attempt, by coming upon some 

 Naboth's vineyard, protected from annexation by the 

 statute De Donis. 



For the origin of large estate we must therefore, 

 as has already been shown, look to a period long 

 anterior to this statute. 



That the statute did produce evils and incon- 

 veniences cannot be doubted, since, otherwise, the 

 judges of the Common Pleas would not have sanc- 

 tioned the transparent collusion, by which the heir 

 in tail was deprived of his legal right. What these 



