72 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE [xvn. 



already done, but would treat the interest of the 

 child as non-existent. This is the main, if not the 

 only chance of a settled estate becoming alienable, 

 which is guarded against by the invention of Palmer 

 and Bridgman. 



Now in the first place the cases would be few in 

 which the husband could acquire, before there was a 

 son issue of the marriage, the remainder expectant on 

 the determination of the provision for his children 

 and their descendants ; and the cases must have 

 been fewer still in which an English gentleman, 

 while any hope of issue remained, would take advan- 

 tage of a legal technicality, for the sake of depriving 

 his own progeny of the benefits provided for them by 

 a solemn compact to which he had, as was usually 

 the case, been himself a party, or under which, if not 

 a party to it, he had taken a substantial benefit. 



But not only did these difficulties stand in the 

 way of defeating a strict settlement, but the danger 

 of its being thus set aside might be guarded against, 

 even before the days of Bridgman and Palmer, by 

 placing the property in the hands of trustees. To 

 suppose, therefore, that the introduction of a device 

 to prevent contingent remainders from the danger of 

 being thus defeated a danger which, as we have 

 seen, could exist in rare instances only produced the 

 deterioration in the position of the English labourer 

 alleged to have taken place by Mr. Rogers, appears 

 to me a conclusion for which even a show of proba- 



