APPENDIX.

Sketches concerning SCOTLAND.

SKETCH I

Scotch Entails confidered in Moral and Political Views.

M

AN is by nature a hoarding animal; and to fecure what is acquired by honeft induftry, the sense of property is made a branch of human nature (a). During the infancy of nations, when artificial wants are unknown, the hoarding appetite makes no figure. The ufe of money produced a great alteration in the human heart. Money having at command the goods of fortune, introduced inequality of tank, luxury, and artificial wants without end. No bounds are

fet

(a) Book 1. Sketch 2.

fet to hoarding, where an appetite for ar tificial wants is indulged: love of money becomes the ruling paffion: it is coveted by many, in order to be hoarded; and means are abfurdly converted into an end.

The sense of property, weak among favages, ripens gradually till it arrives at maturity in polished nations. In every ftage of the progrefs, fome new power added to property; and now, for centuries, men have enjoyed every power over their own goods, that a rational mind can defire (a): they have the free disposal during life, and even after death, by naming an heir. These powers are fufficient for accomplishing every rational purpose: they are fufficient for commerce, and they are fufficient for benevolence. But the artificial wants of men are boundless: content with the full enjoyment of their property during life, nor with the prospect of its being enjoyed by a favourite heir, they are anxiously bent to preserve it to themfelves for ever. A man who has amaffed a great eftate in land, is miferable at the

(c) Hiftorical Law-tracts, Tract. 3.

not

profpect

:

prospect of being obliged to quit his hold : to footh his diseased fancy, he makes à deed fecuring it for ever to certain heirs ; who must without end bear his name, and preserve his eftate entire. Death, it is true, must at last feparate him from his idol it is fome confolation, however, that his will governs and gives law to every fubfequent proprietor. How repugnant to the frail ftate of man are fuch fwollen conceptions! Upon thefe, however, are founded entails, which have prevailed in many parts of the world, and unhappily at this day infest Scotland. Did entails produce no other mifchief but the gratification of a distempered appetite, they might be endured, though far from deferving approbation: but, like other tranfgreffions of nature and reason, they are productive of much mischief, not only to commerce, but to the very heirs for whofe fake alone it is pretended that they are made.

Confidering that the law of nature has beftowed on man every power of property that is neceffary either for commerce or for benevolence, how blind was it in the English legislature to add a moft irrational VOL. II. 3 L

power,

power, that of making an entail! But men will always be mending; and, when a lawgiver ventures to tamper with the laws of nature, he hazards much mischief. We have a pregnant inftance above, of an attempt to mend the laws of God in many abfurd regulations for the poor; and that the law authorising entails is another inftance of the fame kind, will be evident from what follows.

The mischievous effects of English entails were foon difcovered: they occafioned fuch injustice and oppreffion, that even the judges ventured to relieve the nation from them by an artificial form, termed fine and recovery. And yet, though no moderate man would defire more power over his eftate than he has by common law, the legislature of Scotland enabled every land-proprietor to fetter his eftate for ever; to tyrannize over his heirs; and to reduce their property to a fhadow, by prohibiting them to alien, and by prohibiting them to contract debt, were it even to redeem them from death or flavery. Thus, many a man, fonder of his eftate than of his wife and children, grudges the use of It to his natural heirs, reducing them to

the