§ The Earl of Aberdeen moved the third reading of the bill for regulating Scotch Entails. The object of the bill was, he said, to give relief to those persons who were in the possession of entailed estates, and which, according to the Scotch law, were so rigorously entailed, that the proprietors had no possible means of providing for their wives and children. The noble earl entered into a history of the Scotch law, pointing out, that when the law was made as it now stood, the rent of land in Scotland did not exceed 300,000l. a year, while at present it amounted, as far as could be known, to between five and six millions. Half the country was locked up in the fetters of entail. Up to a late period, some relief had been found by granting long leases, at the original rents, and taking sums of money, and that this practice had been held by the first lawyers of Scotland, to be sound, up to a very late period, when a celebrated decision of their lordships, the wisdom and justice of which he was far from questioning, had determined differently, and the possessors of entailed estates were now more unable than ever to provide for their wives and younger children. The bill which he had brought in to remedy this evil was approved of by several celebrated lawyers whom he had consulted, and was such a one as, he thought, should meet their lordships' support.
The Lord-Chancellordeclared that some measure of this nature was both just and necessary. When he had recommended the decision which had altered the Scotch law, it was from no wish to make law, but because it was the best judicial opinion he 960 could form, after consulting the judges both on the bench and off the bench, and every other authority worthy of attention. That decision, he understood, had since been declared, even by those who were most adverse to it at first, to have been according to the best principles of the law of Scotland. He warmly recommended the measure to their lordships' support.
§ The bill was then read a third time.