404 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



and widely ramified as the custom of entail and settlement, the 

 more irresistible will appear the conclusion that it is better to 

 reform it altogether, by abolishing all kinds of ownership except 

 ownership in fee-simple, with all customary and copyhold tenures, 

 and by imposing proper restrictions on the length of leases. The 

 conception of such a measure would demand an effort of con- 

 structive statesmanship quite as bold as that of the Irish Land 

 Bill, while its execution would affect still vaster interests, and 

 must be spread over a longer period of time. Once carried, 

 however, it would cut half the knots which together make up the 

 English Land Question. One of these knots consists in the 

 difficulty, expense, and delay attending the transfer of land, 

 especially in small lots, and it is sometimes assumed, too hastily, 

 that all this could be rectified by a good system of registration, 

 such as exists in most Continental states, where a public court 

 does what is here done by conveyancers. It should be remem- 

 bered that even where a transfer of stock is effected by a mere 

 stroke of the pen a long and costly investigation must often be 

 previously undertaken on behalf of the trustees who authorise 

 the sale. No system of registration could bring about free trade 

 in land under settlement, but a register would become invaluable 

 both to vendors and purchasers when every name in it would 

 be that of an owner in fee. Trusts of land, with all their vexa- 

 tious incidents, would soon be obsolete when there were no 

 reversionary interests to be protected. Mortgages on old family 

 properties would be rarer and more easily cleared off when every 

 acre of land could be turned into ready money at the owner's 

 pleasure. They would, however, be more frequently contracted 

 on new purchases by capitalist farmers when it was discovered 

 that it might be cheaper to pay interest to a mortgagee than 

 rent to a landlord. 



But these advantages, it must be confessed, might perhaps be 

 secured by less radical methods. What cannot be secured by any 

 method consistent with the principle of modern entails is, in one 

 word, unity of proprietorship. A settled estate is an estate which 

 has not, and may never have, a real proprietor. For the common 

 family settlement is a contrivance whereby the land itself may be 



