xvii.] DISTRIBUTION OF LAND IN ENGLAND. 71 



the absolute reversionary right to the land, or rever- 

 sion in fee simple, as it is termed, expectant on the 

 determination or failure of the intermediate interests 

 given to his children and the heirs of their bodies. 

 In such a case, if no son had been born or was living, 

 there would be no actual or vested interest, no inter- 

 est which had an existing owner, intervening between 

 the life interest given by the settlement and the 

 ultimate reversion afterwards acquired by the owner 

 of the life interest. And it is a rule of law, adopted 

 with a view to simplification, that if the same person 

 has two interests in the same land, one to commence 

 when the other terminates, and the second in time 

 is of a nature as high as the first or superior to it, 

 then the two will coalesce, the first being merged or 

 drowned in the second, the commencement of which 

 will of course be accelerated. The unborn children 

 of a marriage, upon the celebration of which a strict 

 settlement of land had been made, were therefore 

 liable to be deprived of the benefit intended for 

 them, if no issue entitled under the settlement were 

 in existence, and the husband, the tenant for life, 

 acquired the ultimate property, the reversion or 

 remainder in fee of the land, when the life estate 

 would be merged in the fee ; and although a child 

 might afterwards come into existence, who would 

 have been entitled to an intermediate interest under 

 the settlement if no merger had taken place, the 

 law would not undo, on his account, what it had 



