THE LAW AND CUSTOM OF PRIMOGENITURE 401 



marriage settlement, which is manifestly, of all settlements, the 

 one entitled to most indulgence. Upon this ground a second 

 distinction might be drawn between entails upon the unborn 

 children of the settlor himself and entails upon the unborn chil- 

 dren of some other person. It may, possibly, be reasonable to 

 allow a man about to marry the power of providing for his own 

 unborn children by an ante-nuptial settlement, and yet quite 

 unreasonable to entrust the same power to a stranger, animated, 

 perhaps, with the senseless ambition of immortalising an ignoble 

 name. But it may well be doubted whether it can ever serve any 

 good end that a bachelor should be enabled to designate as his 

 heir a child which may never be born, so irrevocably as to defeat 

 his own capacity of choosing among his children when they are 

 born, or rather when their characters are sufficiently formed. 

 This anomaly might be rectified by an enactment importing into 

 every settlement, by implication of law, a power of appointment, 

 to be exercised at the discretion of the father, but only among 

 the children, and, when exercised, to override the entail. It 

 might also be provided that every tenant for life under an ordi- 

 nary family settlement should have the power, by a like implication 

 of law, to charge the estate, for the benefit of his wife or younger 

 children, to an amount bearing a stated proportion to its annual 

 value. The proportion so fixed would thenceforth constitute, so 

 to speak, a legal standard of family justice, and though its adop- 

 tion would be permissive and not compulsory, the consciences of 

 many would be awakened to a sense of their parental obligations, 

 till it came to be thought a disgraceful thing for a nobleman with 

 ;^ 50,000 a year to cut off his daughters, either married or single, 

 with portions of ;^50oo or ;^ 10,000. 



A far more effective blow might be struck at primogeniture, 

 as founded on family settlements, by absolutely putting an end 

 to life-estates in land. Supposing this to be done, but the right 

 of entailing to be preserved, each successive head of a family 

 would be left to inherit the undivided property as tenant-in-tail 

 instead of as tenant for life, unless the entail had been cut off 

 by his predecessor. The chief difference from the family point 

 of view would be that eldest sons, being entirely in the power 



