British colonial development owes much to the adventurous disposition fostered by the out door life and the economic necessities of the younger sons of the land-holding classes.
Formerly the main economic objection to the legal fetters imposed on land-holders by settlements, was that during a settlement the land was taken out of commerce as it had no proprietor who could sell. This difficulty has now been removed as the result of an import ant act of Parliament (The Settled Land Act 1882). Every English tenant for life may now be considered as a kind of plenipotentiary agent for the whole family, born and unborn. Sub ject to certain not onerous restrictions, he can sell or lease for long periods on the recognized terms as he pleases, indeed he can do almost anything which a prudent and honest owner would do, but always on the terms that the property or the proceeds of sale are kept to de scend in due course of settlement. But the real fetters on an English tenant for life are not those which the law imposes, but the fet ters of tradition and family sentiment which no legal power or ingenuity can remove.
(2) Lands Not Settled.—Apart from this liberty of terminable settlement the English law does not favor restrictions on the powers of a landholder. No entail can by English law be created which cannot be destroyed as soon as some persons unborn at the date of its creation attains 21 years of age. In the 15th century English lawyers, more daring than their Scot tish brethren, with public feeling behind them, went so far as in substance to defeat the pro visions of a Statute of Edward I We Donis Conditionalibus, (A.D. 1285), by which Parlia ment had sought to make entails perpetual. Where land is not settled, in the case of the death of a landholder without a will, the com mon law on feudal principles gives his land to his eldest son; pre-feudal customs are, how ever, not left entirely without witnesses; in parts of the county of Kent the older custom of equal division, known as gavel-kind, still pre vails, and in a few ancient boroughs under the custom known as °Borough English° the young-, est son alone succeeds. But cases of intestacy
are not common among the wealthy classes.
Wills.— A tenant in fee simple has, contrary to feudal principles, been gradually empowered by successive acts of Parliament, culminating in the year 1662, to dispose of his land by will after his death in the same absolute manner as during his life. He can disinherit totally or partially all or any of his children and can at his pleasure give the land to strangers or, since the year 1891, even to charity. But the charity as a rule is bound to sell the land and not re tain it.
Landlord and Tenant. (1) The Town.— There is a sharp contrast between the land sys tem in the towns and in the country. In and near towns the proportion of settled to unsettled land is probably smaller than in the country; but even in the case of settled land the tie be tween landlord and tenant is purely economic. A town landlord may often be of inferior social standing to his tenant; further, urban and sub urban land is often owned'by commercial com panies formed for dealings in land. But both in town and country, England is a land of large properties and it is the exception to find that the actual occupier of land is, in the popular phrase, This own landlord." On all land in or near towns, building is usually done on the lease-hold system. By this system the land is let, usually to a builder, for a long period, from 80 to 99 years. The lessee contracts to build and keep his building in re pair; to pay an annual aground rent"; to dis charge all taxes levied on the land, and in fact to bear all possible burdens connected with it. At the end of the lease the land and the build ing on it revert to the successors of the original landlord. The long lease thus granted may usually be sold or mortgaged at the pleasure of the lessee, and the building itself is frequently sublet by the lessee as landlord to the actual oc cupant as tenant, who pays to the original lessee or his successor a full or "rack° rent for build ing and land together.