It is a great pity that any quarrel about
indoctrination into creeds, should impede
education for our poor. Everybody who has
intercourse with children, knows that they are
incapable of understanding theologic subtleties.
We may put into their mouths and make
them roll about, a form of words, as we may
get them to suck pebbles; but they can no
more extract sense out of the words than
savour from the stones; nor are we able to
compel them so to do. Nor have we any need
to engage in the hopeless trial; with the
record of the life and lessons of Christ lying
ready to our hands, and His own Prayer, an
eternal model to us in its grand simplicity.

But there is something else which may be
worth considering.

Before the French Revolution of 1789, the
feudal system prevailed throughout Europe.
All land was the property of great proprietors
who were the lords of a landless peasantry.
In France, the Revolution overset that state
of things; and land was made attainable by
people of all classes. Napoleon in conquering
some continental nations gave, as a boon, to
please the masses of the conquered, this free-
trade in land. Others willingly and deliberately
adopted the new principle as an
advance upon the feudal system. So, the
Prussian Government, under two Prussian
Peels, the ministers Stein and Hardenburg,
introduced the system of small properties in
1811, and laid the foundation of a social
fabric, the strength and excellence of which,
we are, just now, beginning to comprehend.
Thus it happens, that since the great French
Revolution, the feudal system of ownership
in land, has been superseded in France,
Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Lombardy, the
Tyrol, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, a great
part of Italy and America. It is retained
only by England, Russia, and some of the
worst governed portions of the Austrian
Empire. Let us consider whether we have not
here touched upon another drawback to the
improvements upon which Englishmen have
just right to congratulate their country.

Sir William Manor is a large landed
proprietor, whose estate is his own, to do with
every acre of it as he pleases; that is to say,
he holds in fee-simple. He has no children;
but, to preserve the glory of his house, he
makes a settlement, before he dies, in favour of
two nephews, Montague Johnes, aged twenty-
three, and Villiers Wilkinson, aged six.
Montague Johnes is to be heir to his estate, which
Montague Johnes is to use during his lifetime,
to let and have subletted, to mortgage
or sell, but not to alienate from the family,
because it has been entailed. When Montague
Johnes dies, Villiers Wilkinson becomes
successor to the whole. Into a variety of
complicated relations Villiers Wilkinson may
enter, he may sell the land, but his power of
sale ends with his life; the whole estate must
pass, when he is dead, without the
diminution of an acre, unto Hugh Tombobbean.

Hugh Tombobbean was a lusty child of one
year old when the entail was settled, and he
was made the third man in the list. Hugh
Tombobbean reigns after Villiers Wilkinson,
and must have all the land, but must not
alienate it until he shall have a son who shall
attain the age of twenty-one. In the adult
son of Hugh Tombobbean, one entail expires,
and the estate may then be sold, if Hugh
Tombobbean's son desire, and if all other
persons named in the entail be willing, and if
no other person named in the first settlement,
(and being dead), has left behind him a bequest
which shall provide for the continuance of this
most interesting game. If any die without a
settlement, the property goes undivided to
the nearest heir. Each individual in an
entail may bargain with his property to the
extent of his own right: and so there arises
a great legal game of hide and seek, a mass of
laws, and contingencies, and possibilities, and
impossibilities, and shades of title to a park or
a potato ground, which nobody can fathom
but a lawyer who has made such matters his
especial study and, very often, not even
he. So, people buy land at a risk, who buy
it on the word of a seller; the seller himself
may not know what claims and rights beyond
his own can be established on it. So, great
estates are kept together, by a system
obviously unjust. If great estates be worth
preserving in this country, as we believe
they are, in the hands of solvent
proprietors, they may remain for ever, or by
monied men they may be got together. But,
it is pretty certain that they are hardly worth
maintaining by a system so little in unison
with the politics or morals of the nineteenth
century.

Land differs from other property only
inasmuch as we know the utmost possible extent
of it. Flocks can increasemore gold can be
collected and be coined—more wares can be
manufactured; but after we have turned to
use our millions of waste acreage, and have
reclaimed a few more acres from the sea, there
is no more land to be got, and, therefore, it is
all the more essential that no portion of the
soil we have, should be placed out of the reach
of human dealings. It would be less
mischievous to entail forks and spoons than poles
and furlongs.

Let us suppose Mr. Walkingame, a shop-
keeper, aided by law on the entail principle, in
an attempt to perpetuate the family respectability.
He settles his furniture and ninety
pounds on Jones and Wilkinson. Jones may
be idle and extravagant; but, his furniture is
entailed, and no bailiff can seize it. He may
spend every farthing of his money; but, at his
death ninety pounds have to come back to
Wilkinson. Why need we pursue the
parallel? Laws of this kind may give to the
fortunes of individuals a sickly buoyancy, but
they are, in fact, injurious to all whom they
affect (except the myrmidons of law); like
the unwholesome waters of the Dead Sea,