When great landed estates were a sort of principalities, entails might not be unreasonable.Like what are called the fundamental laws of some monarchies, they might frequently hinder the security of thousands from being endangered by the caprice or extravagance of one man.But in the present state of Europe, when small as well as great estates derive their security from the laws of their country, nothing can be more completely absurd.
They are founded upon the most absurd of all suppositions, the supposition that every successive generation of men have not an equal right to the earth, and to all that it possesses; but that the property of the present generation should be restrained and regulated according to the fancy of those who died perhaps five hundred years ago.Entails, however, are still respected through the greater part of Europe, in those countries particularly in which noble birth is a necessary qualification for the enjoyment either of civil or military honours.Entails are thought necessary for maintaining this exclusive privilege of the nobility to the great offices and honours of their country; and that order having usurped one unjust advantage over the rest of their fellow citizens, lest their poverty should render it ridiculous, it is thought reasonable that they should have another.The common law of England, indeed, is said to abhor perpetuities, and they are accordingly more restricted there than in any other European monarchy; though even England is not altogether without them.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.
Great tracts of uncultivated land were, in this manner, not only engrossed by particular families, but the possibility of their being divided again was as much as possible precluded for ever.It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver.In the disorderly times which gave birth to those barbarous institutions, the great proprietor was sufficiently employed in defending his own territories, or in extending his jurisdiction and authority over those of his neighbours.He had no leisure to attend to the cultivation and improvement of land.
When the establishment of law and order afforded him this leisure, he often wanted the inclination, and almost always the requisite abilities.If the expense of his house and person either equalled or exceeded his revenue, as it did very frequently, he had no stock to employ in this manner.If he was an economist, he generally found it more profitable to employ his annual savings in new purchases than in the improvement of his old estate.To improve land with profit, like all other commercial projects, requires an exact attention to small savings and small gains, of which a man born to a great fortune, even though naturally frugal, is very seldom capable.The situation of such a person naturally disposes him to attend rather to ornament which pleases his fancy than to profit for which he has so little occasion.The elegance of his dress, of his equipage, of his house, and household furniture, are objects which from his infancy he has been accustomed to have some anxiety about.The turn of mind which this habit naturally forms follows him when he comes to think of the improvement of land.He embellishes perhaps four or five hundred acres in the neighbourhood of his house, at ten times the expense which the land is worth after all his improvements; and finds that if he was to improve his whole estate in the same manner, and he has little taste for any other, he would be a bankrupt before he had finished the tenth part of it.There still remain in both parts of the United Kingdom some great estates which have continued without interruption in the hands of the same family since the times of feudal anarchy.
Compare the present condition of those estates with the possessions of the small proprietors in their neighbourhood, and you will require no other argument to convince you how unfavourable such extensive property is to improvement.
If little improvement was to be expected from such great proprietors, still less was to be hoped for from those who occupied the land under them.In the ancient state of Europe, the occupiers of land were all tenants at will.They were all or almost all slaves; but their slavery was of a milder kind than that known among the ancient Greeks and Romans, or even in our West Indian colonies.They were supposed to belong more directly to the land than to their master.They could, therefore, be sold with it, but not separately.They could marry, provided it was with the consent of their master; and he could not afterwards dissolve the marriage by selling the man and wife to different persons.If he maimed or murdered any of them, he was liable to some penalty, though generally but to a small one.They were not, however, capable of acquiring property.Whatever they acquired was acquired to their master, and he could take it from them at pleasure.Whatever cultivation and improvement could be carried on by means of such slaves was properly carried on by their master.It was at his expense.The seed, the cattle, and the instruments of husbandry were all his.It was for his benefit.
Such slaves could acquire nothing but their daily maintenance.It was properly the proprietor himself, therefore, that, in this case, occupied his own lands, and cultivated them by his own bondmen.This species of slavery still subsists in Russia, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and other parts of Germany.It is only in the western and southwestern provinces of Europe that it has gradually been abolished altogether.
