An instance of the loose wording of this bill strikes the reader in the very first section. It proposes to enact "that where any estate in Scotland shall be entailed by a deed of tailzie, dated on or after the first day of March one thousand eight hundred and forty-eight, it shall be lawful for any heir of entail, born after the date of such tailzie, being of full age, and in possession of such entailed estate in virtue of such tailzie, _to acquire such estate in fee-simple_, by applying to the Court of Session, &c." Now, what is this estate which the heir of entail is to acquire in fee-simple? The estate-tail, for so it is by hypothesis. But to talk of acquiring an estate-tail in fee-simple is nothing better than downright nonsense. An estate-tail is, by the origin of the word, cut or carved (taillé) out of the fee-simple. You may talk of converting or enlarging the part into the whole, but you cannot talk of acquiring the part in the entirety of the whole. This is not all; the bill plunges at once _in medias res_, without favouring us with any sort of definition of the important phrase, "heir of entail," in this and other clauses. The same expression in the statute 1 Jac. VII. c. 32, has already (see _Sandford's Entails_, p. 231) given rise to no small questioning and litigation, which promise to be renewed in abundance should this measure pass into a law. Again, perpetual inalienability is not an incident to all estates-tail. Lands merely bound by what are called the prohibitive clauses, may be alienated for a valuable consideration, though not by a voluntary or (as the Scotch say) gratuitous conveyance. Tailzies, however, to which no clauses are annexed, do not prevent the heir from conveying the lands in any manner he pleases. Now, as, the object of this bill is to relax the bonds of perpetual inalienability, we presume that only those tailzies which are guarded by the irritant and resolutive clauses are within its purview. If so, the general expression "deed of tailzie" should have been distinctly limited. If that expression should be held to comprehend all deeds of tailzie, which it must of course do when taken by itself, then the proposed act will exercise a very extensive disabling power, by restricting the unlimited right of alienation under tailzies of simple destination,[2] and the right of alienation for value under tailzies with prohibitive clauses only introduced, to the peculiar form and instrument pointed out by this bill, and which we suppose was devised in analogy to the forms substituted for fines and recoveries by the statute 3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 74. [2] See Erskine's _Institutes_, B. iii. tit. 8, §§ 21-25.