Every lawyer knows that the progress of legal decisions in England has been adverse to entails, and that although the statute De Donis continues on the statute-book, yet it was long ago rendered almost nugatory by the introduction of fines and recoveries. Hence the term entail is now popularly applied to denote the strict settlement of lands, under provisions which prevent them from passing from the heirs to whom they are limited; this having been, of old, the result of an entail properly so called, though it now requires a more complicated mode of settling, and can only endure (so as to render the lands inalienable) for a life or any number of lives in being, and twenty-one years afterwards. This more popular meaning of the word entail is that which Mr M'Culloch follows--his object being to treat of the influence of tying up lands from alienation. Measuring the practice of entails by the rule of utility, Mr M'Culloch selects two points as the principal topics of discussion. "In the first place, it is alleged in favour of entails that they stimulate exertion and economy; that they hold out to industry and ambition the strongest and safest excitement in the prospect of founding an imperishable name and a powerful family, and of being remembered and venerated by endless generations as their chief and benefactor. And, in the second place, it is said that entails form the only solid bulwark of a respectable aristocracy, and prevent generations from being ruined by the folly or misfortunes of an individual."--P. 78. The first of these propositions is, no doubt, partially true; but the motive put forward has not, we think, as a matter of experience, the force that might, at first sight, be attributed to it. Perhaps the keenest accumulators of wealth have not been those who have fixed their capital in a landed estate. The man of business habits and judicious speculation is drawn to make his fortune in obedience to a passion which is partly developed, and at all events fostered, by the pursuit of his life. It cannot be said to arise altogether from a notion of benefiting posterity, of being the founder of a house--the man of whom future Fitztomkynses shall be ashamed--that John Tomkins, merchant, sets at nought all the expostulations of self-indulgence: "Tun' mare transilias? tibi tortâ cannabe fulto Cœna sit in transtro? Veientanumque rubellum Exhalet vapidâ læsum pice fissilis obba?"