362 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



and those who are struggHng to enter its ranks. By the great 

 majority of this class, embracing the whole nobility, the squires 

 of England, the lairds of Scotland, and the Irish gentry of 

 every degree, primogeniture is accepted almost as a fundamen- 

 tal law of nature, to which the practice of entails only gives 

 a convenient and effectual expression. Adam Smith remarks 

 that " in Scotland more than one-fifth, perhaps more than one- 

 third, part of the whole lands of the country, are at present 

 supposed to be under strict entail" that is, entailed under 

 a system introduced in 1685, which barred alienation far more 

 inexorably than was permitted by the English rule against 

 perpetuities. Mr. McCulloch, writing in 1849, calculated that 

 at least half Scotland was then entailed, though an act passed 

 in the previous year had already facilitated disentailing by 

 provisions borrowed from the English law. In England, where 

 so much land is in the hands of corporations or trustees for 

 public objects, and where almost all deeds relating to land are 

 in private custody, we cannot venture to speak with so much 

 confidence on this point. Considering, however, that in most 

 counties large estates predominate over small, and that large 

 estates, by the general testimony of the legal profession, are 

 almost always entailed either by will or settlement, while small 

 estates, if hereditary, are very often entailed, there is no rash- 

 ness in concluding, in accordance with the evidence given before 

 Mr. Pusey's committee, that a much larger area is under settle- 

 ment than at the free disposal of individual landowners. 



It has frequently been asserted that a mere fraction of the 

 land which yearly changes hands on death is governed by the 

 .law of intestacy. There are no adequate means of testing this 

 assertion, but the probability is that it overstates the case. 

 There is scarcely a wealthy or noble family of any consider- 

 able antiquity in which the estates have not at some time de- 

 scended to an heir or coparceners by the effect of this law, 

 and such an event is far more likely to happen in families less 

 guided by the advice of solicitors. What is really true is that 

 landowners seldom deliberately intend to die intestate and that 

 most descents by operation of law are the result of negligence 



