Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow SECTION IX.: ANCIENT LAW. - The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 2

Return to Title Page for The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 2

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Economics
Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law
Topic: Property

SECTION IX.: ANCIENT LAW. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 2 [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 2.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


SECTION IX.

ANCIENT LAW.

Shall we dig into antiquity? The result will be still more favourable. Reckoning from the subversion of the Roman empire, property, considered as surviving to the proprietor, is comparatively of modern date. Under the feudal system, in the morning of its days estates greater than life estates were unknown; the most fixed of all possessions fell back into the common stock upon the death of the possessor; and before the reign of the Conqueror was at an end, the feudal tree, transplanted from the continent into this our island, had covered almost the whole surface of the kingdom with its gloomy shade. This venerable system had, indeed, before that period, lost a good deal of its vigour, which is the same thing as to say its rigour; and the principle of succession had taken root under it, but not without being loaded with conditions, and weakened by defalcations and distortions, over and above those which have been already glanced at, and which we are plagued with to this day. The relaxation, too, was an innovation, which, in the vocabulary of antiquarian idolatry, as well as of indiscriminating timidity, means a corruption of the primeval state of things.

At a much later period, moveable property took, if not exactly the same course with immoveable, a course more opposite to that indicated by utility, and equally repugnant to that which seems prescribed by nature. The more substantial part—the immoveable—had been reserved for the maw of feudal anarchy: the lighter part—the moveable—was carried off by some holy personage for pious uses; and of all uses, the most pious was his own. Moveable and immoveable together, power without mercy, or imposture without shame, took the whole under their charge; the claims of the widow and the orphan were as little regarded as those of the most distant relative. So late even as the latter part of the reign of Edward III.* it required an exertion of parliamentary power to make the man of God disgorge, in favour of the fatherless and the widow.

The right of bequest, the right of governing property by one who is no longer in existence to enjoy it, is an innovation still more modern. In its relation to moveables, it was conquered from the spiritual power by gradual and undefinable encroachments: the validity of its exercise having, from the conquest to the present time, depended on the decision of that same power, which, till the above-mentioned statute of Edward III. was interested in denying it: and after the right was secured, the facility of its exercise must for a long time have been confined within narrow bounds by the scarcity of literary acquirements. In its relation to immoveables, it was not placed on solid ground till the statute of Henry VIII., and then only by implication: nor (to take the matter in the words of Blackstone) was it “till even after the restoration, that the power of devising real property became so universal as at present.”*

All this while, the law of escheat, coeval with the reign of the Conqueror, dwelt upon as a subject of importance in the reign of Henry II., touched upon by a numerous series of statutes reaching down as low as Edward VI., recognised by decisions of so recent a period as the late reign, exists in indisputable vigour; although the facility of tracing out heirs in these times of universal and instantaneous communication, added to the want of an administrative establishment, adapted to the collection of such a branch of revenue, prevent it from being noticed in its present state in the account-book of finance.

[* ]31 Edward III. parl. 1, ch. ii. 9, co. 40, in Burn’s Eccl. Law, iv. 197.

[]Hume has fallen into a mistake on this subject, in supposing that in the reign of Henry II. moveables were the prey, not of the spiritual power but the temporal. “It appears,” says he, vol. i. anno 1100, “from Glanville, the famous justiciary of Henry II., that in his time, where any man died intestate, an accident which must have been frequent when the art of writing was so little known, the king, or the lord of the fief, pretended to seize all the moveables, and to exclude every heir, even the children of the deceased,—a sure mark of a tyrannical and arbitrary government.”

So far Hume, referring to Glanville, I. vi. c. 16. But what Hume understands of intestates in general, Glanville confines to bastards.

[* ]II. Comment. ch. i.

[]Glanville, I. vii. c. 17.

[][George II.] Atkyn’s Reports.