It follows, therefore, that if, with a Government Land Registry Office (say one for each county), you required the purchaser only to get in the legal estate, i.e. holding him not responsible for the trusts or the application of the purchase money, then land could be transferred exactly as money in the funds is now, in spite of all the complications of our law (or rather custom) of entail.
The law of entail in England (so called) is not what the popular orators suppose. The eldest son inherits really; that is, if there be no will, no settlement, or other disposition of the property. But there nearly always is. It is a very rare thing for the heir-at-law to take land (except some very small pieces) by the law of inheritance. As to entail, it is practically carried out by a continued system of surrender and re-settlement—a device of lawyers which is, in its historical development, an evasion (rather than a part) of the law. Nevertheless, I think it is a matter of importance that the shackles which fetter land should be loosened, and that the present powers of owners to tie up land legally should be very much curtailed. It is a sad proof of the way riches cling to the heart of man even when he is leaving this world, that, whatever powers of tying up land are sanctioned, an owner will usually exert them to the uttermost. He is leaving his property, but he will keep a hold on it fifty years after he is dead if he can. He will, after exhausting his powers in life interests, leave the residuum to an unborn child "in strict tail-male so far as the rules of law will permit;" and he will stick in a springing use to effect that, if his greatnephew, the Rev. George, should ever from an Anglican become a pervert to Roman Catholicism, he shall take no benefit under the will.
Now the fact is that all tying up is to the detriment of the public. No man can provide for all contingencies. Indeed he can see so little a way ahead that in a few years it frequently happens that all the careful provisions of the will are working exactly as the testator would have desired them not to work. Land tied up is always worth less to the owner because it is tied up; and we have seen that the interest of the commonwealth is the sum of the interests of all its component members. When you tell me that an estate is now of small value to its life-owner and unget-at-able for any public purposes, in consequence of a will made by a man who died twenty years ago, it appears to me that you shew me convincingly that we have not Free Trade in land.
I would propose that, either by will, settlement, or other instrument, an owner should be able to give any number of life interests, and nothing more; all trusts being placed outside the law. The first objection will be that if the powers of owners are so restricted, the desire for the ownership of land will be lessened: the value of all the land in England will fall. This might be so, I admit, to some extent; and it would favour the employ of the land for agricultural profit.
The next objection is that it would become necessary to give land (and money) directly to women without the intervention of trustees: that women do not understand business and require to be taken care of. My reply is that they always will require to be taken care of unless they are entrusted with the management of their own affairs. The loss to the nation, the expenses, the sacrifice of time and labour in trusteeships, have now assumed gigantic proportions. If women were given their own property to manage, some would (at first) fool it away: we know what high interest, adventurers, unprincipled persons, etc., can effect. But each woman defrauded or stripped of her property to starve would be a warning to all the rest: in a few years women would manage their property just as well as men. I believe they would manage it better. A smaller percentage of women would gamble on the Stock Exchange, the Mining Exchange, Austrian and Spanish lotteries, and horse-races; and a much smaller percentage of women would embark in desperate "business" speculations, heavy purchases of foreign produce, etc.
It should be noted that in cutting down the powers of owners to legally tie up, I do not interfere with honourable trusteeships of any kind not enforceable by law or in equity. Such exist now, and more largely than is generally supposed. The absolute devises and bequests to friends (not relatives) are often on private (not expressed) trust to provide for illegitimate children or numerous other purposes which a man may not wish to parade to his family.
8. EQUALISING OF TAXATION.
There has been no readjustment of the land tax for very many years. It is a property rate, and originally was rateably levied at four shillings in the pound. By the small increase in value of some land, the large increase in value of other land, since the days of Queen Anne, it has now become unequal in the highest degree. The farm A, gross rental £100 a year, has a land tax of £5 a year; the suburban estate B, gross rental £1000 a year, has a land tax of £2:l0s. a year. The land tax assessors were sworn in annually (twenty years ago, and may be still) to assess the tax equally, but it was perfectly understood that the tax was to be collected every year on the old long-standing assessment.