We object, further, to the English power of entailing property, as a robbery of the existing generation. The earth and its increase God has given to the children of men—that is, to the living generation. Why should the present race suffer its heritage to be curtailed by the intermeddling of the dead? Let man during his mortal existence plant or pluck up, build or pull down, buy or sell; but why is he, who has been in his grave a century, to determine for what purpose the land shall yield its increase, and the house its rental? We respect the memory of the dead, but we do not think it is their province to have the control of our gold and our fields. Manifestly, if the principle were carried out to its full extent, the existing generation, the gods of the scene, would have no power at all: the dominion conferred by the Creator would be lost, and they would be reduced to mere stewards of the dead. The true lords of the soil would be those who had taken bodily possession of it by descending to the grave, and all the living would be but tenants at their will. We deny the right of the dead to determine the expenditure of a single halfpenny.

A vicious principle brings its own punishment, and so works out its own cure; and there is some hope that Englishmen will at length be driven to abandon their present testamentary system, by the difficulties in which it involves them; for these are many and great, and they arise from the law of bequest, both directly and indirectly. Indeed, it would be both difficult and tedious to trace out the various modes in which the substitution of the Roman for the English law of inheritance would simplify our national movements, exchanging the labyrinths we are now doomed to thread, for straight paths. A few of the more salient points only can we attempt to indicate.

Every community will be naturally desirous that no laws should be enacted which would retard the physical improvement of its territory. And though a government cannot intermeddle with a proprietor so long as he does not injure his neighbour, albeit he should wholly mismanage his estate, because the interference would involve greater evils than it would remedy, it cannot be wise in a government to undertake to execute the schemes of the dead, if it can be shown that these directly tend to a waste of property, and the obstruction of improvement. Now, it is notorious that trustees have, as compared with owners, but a slight interest in the management of estates, and by that power of devising we are now calling in question, a very large amount of property is continually kept under such careless guardianship. Look to the leased estates of the church, to the reports of the commissioners of charities, to collegiate estates, to property in general held on similar con

N. S.-VOL. IV.

ditions, and what can be more manifest than the great public waste incurred? The land so held is the last to exhibit agricultural improvements; cities existing under this tenure always appear as in a state of dotage; if a house in a street be half a century out of date, the phenomenon is fully explained when we are told that it is an endowment: and thus does the nation pay a well-deserved penalty for intermeddling with matters that belong not to it.

The want of simplicity in English law, and its unsearchable involutions, are a standing reproach. All admit the evil, yet where the gigantic industry to work the cure is to be found no one knows. The most inscrutable of these cycles and epicycles are generated by the law of entail. It is the landed property of the gentry, with its long and voluminous train of descents and conveyances, settlements, entails, and incumbrances, that forms the most intricate and most extensive object of legal knowledge.'-(Introd. sec. I.) Regard the earth as the centre of the universe, and our astronomical theory must be complex in the extreme. Regard the sun as the centre of the solar system, and the theory is at once and fully simplified. Let property be left to its natural course of descent, and our laws to secure its transmission need be but few, and those of the plainest kind. You have to legislate only for existing facts. But if you are to legislate for all futurity, with all its contingencies, the laws must of necessity be past finding out.

The main reason why the English law of bequest is valued, is its obvious adaptation to perpetuate the families, or rather the titles, of the nobility. Their estates are entailed, and in almost every imaginable way. A rich man, for example, may choose to settle two vast estates on his son, with this condition annexed that one of them shall be held for ever in tail male, and the other in tail female. We can suppose that son to have an only child, a daughter; and that daughter to have an only child, a son. This son, the great-grandson and only lineal descendant of the testator, can inherit neither of the estates, but they must pass away from him to other heirs, however remote. He loses one of them because his mother had the misfortune to be a woman, and the other because he has the misfortune to be a man. And if this should be treated as an hypothesis only, it is certain that startling and distressing exemplifications of the working of our testamentary system are frequently arising. Thus the late Earl of Montague had most extensive possessions, and a large family, who were, however, ail guilty of the crime of being daughters, and were therefore all disinherited by the decision, not of their father, but of some ancestor or ancestors whom neither they nor he ever saw. The inhuman inequality

thus introduced into families, the miserable position of daughters and younger sons, and the expense thrown upon the country of maintaining, by a vast system of sinecures, a large proportion of these foundlings, may well lead us to suspect that the system of entail itself is essentially vicious. Men do not gather thistles from the fig-tree, nor briers from the vine.

The perpetuity of possession and appropriation at which English law now aims is generally defeated by the very means it employs to secure its purpose. Is the object of man to build up his family? He succeeds only in building up one member of a family, by doing injustice to all the other members in each successive generation; and the one member who becomes the heir, ceases generally at no distant time to be the offspring of the testator. By the failure of issue, or the accident of daughters, the inheritance passes to strangers. His own family, if it do not become extinct, is blended in the general mass of society, and overshadowed and oppressed by means of the entails he creates. Is an estate bequeathed to endow in perpetuity, not a name, but an opinion; not a title, but a sect? It seems to be the peculiar misfortune of such a bequest to embalm the opinion if it be erroneous, and to suck out its very lifeblood if it be true. Take away the glebes and rent-charges, and the Episcopalians of England would at once soar from the degradation of a worldly corporation into the majesty and life of the Christian kingdom. Relieve many a dissenting congregation of the mistaken bounty which has endowed it, and it would exchange the corruption and inertness of pauperism for the vigour and health of self-dependence. And if in some cases the endowments do not appear to be only evil, but to serve some useful purpose, yet are they ever subject to a special liability to abuse; while in these cases of seeming utility they would probably be needless but for the existence of some kindred and contiguous mischief. A Christian church is, by such artificial aid, sustained in a village, where, without that support, it must be dissolved. But were there no state-church in that village, it would probably contain, as it ought, but one church, and that self-supporting; and if otherwise, the inhabitants being so schismatical that they could not be content with one church, it surely would not be desirable to nurse that spirit of schism by endowments.

We reach, then, the conclusion, that it is wise and expedient that Government should ensure the transfer of property according to the will of the testator, but should peremptorily decline to be responsible for its appropriation. If men wish to build an hospital, or a meeting-house, or a club-house, let them do so, and leave to their successors all the powers they themselves

possess; or, to quote again the sentiment of Gibbon, let the power of the testator expire with the acceptance of the testament, each Briton of mature age and discretion acquiring the absolute dominion of his inheritance; and let not the simplicity of law be clouded by the long and intricate entails which confine the happiness and freedom of unborn generations.

ART. VI.-1. The Grenville Papers; being the Correspondence of Richard Grenville, Earl Temple, K.G., and the Right Hon. George Grenville, their Friends and Contemporaries. Now first published from the original MSS. formerly preserved at Stowe. Edited with Notes, by William James Smith, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. London: John Murray.

2. Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham and his Contemporaries. With original Letters and Documents, now first published. By George Thomas, Earl of Albemarle. In two volumes, 8vo. London: Richard Bentley.

UNTIL recently, our historical literature of the last century has been very scanty and incomplete. Even intelligent men have known little of what occurred from 1688 to the breaking-out of the first French revolution. A few names are familiar to English ears; but, for the most part, the interval which elapsed from the accession of the house of Hanover to the period we have named, has been devoid of personal interest, unoccupied either by men or incidents capable of awakening enthusiasm, or of perpetuating their memory. The intrigues and unscrupulous ambition of Bolingbroke, the administrative talents and corrupting policy of Walpole, the worn-out cliqueship of the great whig houses, the effete officialism of Newcastle, the imperious and haughty dictatorship of Chatham, the servility of Bute, the courtly sycophancy of the king's friends,' the unpopularity of the first and second George, and the stolid obstinacy and despotic temper of the third, lie on the surface of our history, and are known, though vaguely and with much misapprehension, by all well-read Englishmen. These are the prominent objects on the political canvas, and even their features are but imperfectly sketched. Of the remainder scarcely anything is known. Their very features are distorted; they appear only in groups, and fail, in consequence, to produce any permanent individual impression.

The same remark holds good in reference to the more important transactions of the period. In illustration, we may adduce the revolt of the North American colonies. It is only of late that the origin, grounds, and course of this momentous event are beginning to be known. Even yet there is much to be learned respecting it. Immediately before the French revolution, it was lost sight of amid the greater turbulence and more terrible incidents of that tragedy. This may account, in part, but it does not account wholly, for the apathy with which the American struggle has been regarded. The period in question, with brief and fitful exceptions, is remembered with humiliation and shame. It was a season of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, in which political delinquency reached its lowest depth, in which patriotism was but a name, pelf and power the stimulants of ambition, and mediocrity of talent, coupled with party passion, sullied our national honor, and endangered our very liberties. No wonder, therefore, that our countrymen turn from it with disgust. What they know of the men and the occurrences of that day is deeply mortifying to their pride, and they may well plead, to be excused from a closer and more scrutinizing glance. Where the little they do know is so repulsive and humiliating, it is no marvel that they decline the labor required in order to a more intimate acquaintance. And yet it is not wise to yield to this impulse. There is much to be learned from the period in question. If it does not furnish many examples it holds out ample warnings. It shows, at least, what statesmen and politics may become when not controlled by a healthful popular influence, and thus deepens the conviction which every page of our history produces, that there is no security for freedom, no effectual guard against corruption and tyranny, but in the intelligence, virtue, and political activity of the people.

It is a hopeful sign, and one in which we much rejoice, that the materials for an enlightened estimate of this period have been recently greatly increased. The Walpole, Chatham, Burke, and Bedford Correspondence, with several Biographies, and the volumes now before us, have cleared up many difficulties which were previously impenetrable, and have set in a just light the character both of actions and of men, about which much misapprehension had existed. It is not, perhaps, too much to say, that on some points we are more competent to form an impartial and sound judgment than even the contemporaries of the men to whom we refer. This advantage is gained at some cost, yet we estimate the former so highly that we are quite willing to pay the latter. The Correspondence which has been given to the world, while containing much that is valuable, contains also