or even obliging, all peers to tie up by perpetual entail a certain portion of their estates to accompany the title. Such anomalies as that of an Earl of Buchan (Lord Erskine's father, see Lord Campbell's _Lives of the Chancellors_) living in the uppermost flat of a sixteen-story house, would thereby be avoided with considerable advantage to the national interests. Mr M'Culloch, therefore, who quotes Sir William Temple and Dr Johnson on the same side, would preserve the law of perpetual entail for the Scottish peerage, and extend it also to that of England. In other respects he is, as we have above stated, in favour of a considerable modification of the Scottish law of entail. He admits, however, the difficulty of dealing with existing entails. "These have established a right of property not only in the actual possessors and their families, but, speaking generally, in a wide circle of collateral heirs; nor could the rights of the unborn heirs be affected without annulling the clauses in a great number of settlements, and also in marriage-contracts and other deeds _inter vivos_. It is, therefore, hardly possible materially to relax the fetters of entails with strict justice to all parties, though it might perhaps be slowly and gradually effected without inflicting any very serious hardship on any individual. We incline to think that this might be most easily brought about by saving the rights of living heirs of entail, and of such heirs as may be born under existing marriage-contracts. The interests of the possible heirs that might be prejudiced by the adoption of some such rule as this, are of so very unsubstantial a description that they might safely be neglected." P. 78. At the time we write, a measure is pending before Parliament, entitled "A Bill for the amendment of the Law of Entail in Scotland," and endorsed with the names of the Lord-Advocate, Sir George Grey, and Mr Solicitor-General for Scotland. Whatever difficulties Mr M'Culloch feels with regard to relaxing the fetters of entail, it is obvious that the contrivers of this bill are in nowise hampered by them. They go to work in the most off-hand manner possible. A short and unobtrusive-looking bill is to drive clean through all the existing settlements and deeds of tailzie, with their complicated train of clauses irritant and resolutive, as if no mortal was concerned in the matter, and estates were the proper toys of law-makers.