Speculations From Political Economy (Paperback)

Now the fact is that all tying up is to the detriment of the public. No man can provide for all contingencies. Indeed he can see so little a way ahead that in a few years it frequently happens that all the careful provisions of the will are working exactly as the testator would have desired them not to work. Land tied up is always worth less to the owner because it is tied up; and we have seen that the interest of the commonwealth is the sum of the interests of all its component members. When you tell me that an estate is now of small value to its life-owner and unget-at-able for any public purposes, in consequence of a will made by a man who died twenty years ago, it appears to me that you shew me convincingly that we have not Free Trade in land.