Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 393, July 1848

The person whose consent is to be obtained (whoever that mysterious person may be) is, as we have seen, to be born after the date of the act. In conformity with this principle, one would have supposed that where the next heir-substitute shall have been born before that date, then it should be necessary to obtain the consent of the first person entitled to take per formam doni , who shall be born after this date, together with the consent of all those who are to take before him. The third clause, however, introduces a new form of protection to the settlement, and merely enacts that, in such cases, the consent of a certain number of the heirs-substitute is to be obtained, (the blank left for the number was filled up with the word "three" in committee of the House of Commons. Nothing said about the issue in tail, as before.

Where the main enactments of the bill are so incomprehensible, it is useless to dwell on its details. We can only say, that whatever evils may be shown to exist under the present law, they will not only fail to be cured, but must be aggravated tenfold, by such a product of off-hand legislation —

that it must necessarily die of its own deformity, unless the law-courts will lick it into shape by their decisions, – a shape (as it must be) in which its own parents would not know it again.

The law of real property in France exhibits a system so distinctly antagonistic to our English and Scottish law of entail, that we cannot be surprised at the attention with which Mr M'Culloch has investigated its influences.

"According to the law of France, a person with one child may dispose at pleasure of a moiety of his property, the child inheriting the other moiety as legitim, or matter of right; a person having two children can only dispose of a third part of his property; and those having more than two must divide three-fourths of their property equally amongst them, one-fourth part being all that is then left at their disposal. When a father dies intestate, his property is equally divided among his children, without respect to sex or seniority. Nothing can be more distinctly opposed to the principles we have endeavoured to establish, and to the system followed in this country, than this law. It is therefore lucky that it is now no novelty. It has been established for more than half a century, so that we may trace and exhibit its practical influence over the condition of the extensive population subject to its operation. Such an experiment is of rare occurrence, but when made is invaluable. And if its results should confirm the conclusions already come to, it will go far to establish them on an unassailable basis." – P. 80-81.

We have already seen how these results may be traced in the state of French agriculture. They may also, we think, be discerned in the relative position which the landholders of France bear to other classes in the social scale. These, numbering between four and five millions, ought, as a class, to constitute the leaders of the nation. So far from this being the case, they are perhaps the most inert and uninfluential portion of the community, having apparently had little or no voice in the two revolutions which have swept over their heads within the last eighteen years, and as little in the erection, maintenance, or downfall of the Throne of the Barricades. It yet remains to be seen whether they will continue to accept every thing which the clubs of Paris are willing to force upon them. As tax-payers and cultivators of the soil, it can hardly suit them to be propagandists; as men who have something to lose, they will not readily give in to the dictatorial vagaries of Ledru Rollin. If, however, they would hold their own, it is time for them to be up and doing. France has been governed by a minority before now.

We have always regarded it as one of the main advantages of a landed aristocracy, that it raises up a principle of social rank antagonistic to that of mere wealth. In France, the constant subdivision and transfer of land breaks down this influence, and causes land to be regarded as a mere marketable article and equivalent for money.

"In countries where the custom of primogeniture exercises a powerful influence, families become identified with estates – the family representing the estate, and the estate the family. The wealth and consideration enjoyed by the latter depend upon, and are intimately connected with, the possession of the lands which have descended to them from their ancestors. They estimate their value by another than a mere pecuniary standard. They are attached to them by the oldest and most endearing associations; and they are seldom parted with except under the most painful circumstances. Hence the perpetuity of property in England in the same families, notwithstanding the limited duration of entails; great numbers of estates being at this moment enjoyed by those whose ancestors acquired them at or soon after the Conquest. But in France such feelings are proscribed. Estates and families have there no abiding connexion; and at the demise of an individual who has a number of children, his estate can hardly escape being subdivided. And this effect of the law tends to imbue the proprietors with corresponding sentiments and feelings. 'Non seulement,' says M. De Tocqueville, 'la loi des successions rend difficile aux familles de conserver intacts les mêmes domaines, mais elle leur òte le désir de le tenter, et elle les entraîne, en quelque sorte, à coopérer avec elle à leur propre ruine.'" – P. 85-86.

But Mr M'Culloch dwells more particularly on the injurious effects to agriculture from the parcelling out of the land into small properties. He shows that a small proprietor is not so efficient a cultivator of the soil as a tenant, in which doctrine Arthur Young had preceded him. He shows, also, that the subdivision of properties leads to the subdivision of farms, and urges that it is impossible to have good farming on small patches of land. Of the miseries of an agricultural system carried on by small farmers on petty holdings, we have already a sufficient example in Ireland. We cannot but think, however, that the progress of things in England has too much swallowed up those little farms of from thirty to fifty acres, which at one time were common over the country. Not but what capital is employed at a great disadvantage on these little holdings – but where there is a general system of good-sized farms, an intermixture, of smaller farms is not attended with injurious effects proportional to those which arise where the whole of the land is split up into minute parcels. And then small farmers furnish a link between the yeomanry and peasantry, which it is useful to maintain, cheering the poor man's lot by pointing out to him a path by which lie may advance from the position of a day-labourer to that of an occupier of land. On the same principle, we are rejoiced to observe the gradual extension of the allotment system; although it would have a still more beneficial effect, we think, if the land was granted in the shape of a croft about the cottage, thus giving the tenant a greater interest, and more individual sense of proprietorship, than when his piece of land is packed, along with a number of others, into a mass of unsightly patches.

In connexion with the small holdings in Ireland, it should not be forgotten that this subdivision of the land results mainly from the practice of sub-letting; and this again has arisen in a great degree from the practice of granting long leases, the want of which in England has served, among many other things, for an outcry against the landlords. Mr M'Culloch has pointed out the evils of too long leases on the farming tenant, that they superinduce a sense of security which easily degenerates into indolence. But the influence on Ireland is even worse, by breaking up the land into small patches, on which the occupier can but just maintain himself, paying an exorbitant rent to the middleman. For it is not the eager demand for land amongst the Irish peasantry, as we sometimes hear, that has produced this subdivision of the land, but the subdivision that has produced the demand, by putting the cultivation of the land into the hands of a class who are unable, through want of skill and capital, to carry it on; who cannot, therefore, furnish employment for the labourers, and thus drive them to grasp at little parcels of land as their only means of securing a wretched subsistence; and this security, as we know, has more than once proved but a fancied one, as in the disastrous failure of the potato crop.