The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1879-12-20
Lord CarIncton on Entail.

When the Marquis Of Harrington declared
that il is time to ask whether the English land
system has not broken down, all England was
surprised. Lord Harrington Is the heir of tn,
I Duke of DevSnshre, one of the largest land
owners in England. The Marquis of Tav
stock, the heir of the Duke of Bedford has eX
pressed similar views, and more recently still
Lord Carngton-the owner of $4,000 acres
and having rentroll Of 5000, O0O-has been
poDdent of the Nep York Tribune gives, in a
recent letter, tolerably full outline of his
views.
The great evil Of the present system, accord
ING to Lord Darlington, is the fact that large
estates are entalled. An entail is a feature of
English law which permits an owner of real
estate to settle it inallenably upon his descend.
ants that IS, so that 1t cannot be alienated or
sold but must descend by Inheritance to his
heirs, in some prescribed manner. The usual
course is for the inheritance to be limited to
heirs male in the order Of their birth. The
nominal owner of the land is really but a life
tenant. He can mortgage the land under GER
tam circumstances, he can let it run to vast
or drain the soil of all its fertility, he can cut
down the timber but he cannot sell an acre,
even for the purpose of paying off mortgage
or improving the rest of the estate. His pre-
decessor may have handed down to him an es
tate so hampered by Indebtedness and so i'm
poverished by mismanagement, that the owner
of vast estate may really be al poor man. with
out either credit or ready money. However
great his desire to help his tenaBtry, his own
necessities compel HIM to demand the highest
rent that he can possibly get, and to refuse to
make any improvements which are lmpera.
tive
The argument in favor of this system Is, of
course, that II prevents improvidence and the
wasting of large estates by reckle spendthrfts
But Lord CaringtOn replies to this that the
facts are that a man does not usually succeed
to his estates until middle life, when he has
sowcd his wild oats and is disposed to settle
down. And even If 1t were true that a few
spendthriits were thus kept from squanderlng
their substance in riotOus living, II is folly for
tins TO hamper all the landed propretors of
England, and to prevent men who are anxious
to better their land and tighten the burdens Of
their tenantry from carrying out their wishes
Free trade in land, Lord Carington declares, is
the only solution of England's agricultural
problem.
These words were spoken by Lord Caring
ton to his tenants at a dinner on his estate
They have drawn howl ofrage from the Tor
les The drgumeRtum dd h0mtHem has been
freely used, and the noble lord has been re-
minded that his family name Is Smith, that
his pcerage is only eighty years old, that his
family's fortune was made IN business, that he
has hitherto been best known as a boon com
paRion of the Prince of Wales, etc. All Of
which things are, Of course. very satisfactory
answers 20 his indictment of the present land
system.
The question is one on which the people CT
Great Britain will soon act, through Parlia-
ment and though the right of entail and the
law of primogeniture may not he abolished al
together for many years to come, there can
hardly be doubt that they will be so far modi-
fed HAT the worst evils of the existing system
will BE- mitigaied. -.Eramiaer.