ut the whole of the United States, with the exception of
the State of Vermont, where the male heir inherits a double portion:
Kent's Commentaries, volume IV, page 370. Mr Kent, in the same work,
volume IV, pages 1-22, gives an historical account of American
legislation on the subject of entail; by this we learn that previous to
the revolution the colonies followed the English law of entail. Estates
tail were abolished in Virginia in 1776, on a motion of Mr Jefferson.
They were suppressed in New York in 1786; and have since been abolished
in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Missouri. In
Vermont, Indiana, Illinois, South Carolina, and Louisiana, entail was
never introduced. Those States which thought proper to preserve the
English law of entail, modified it in such a way as to deprive it of its
most aristocratic tendencies. `Our general principles on the subject of
government,' says Mr Kent, `tend to favour the free circulation of
property.'

"It cannot fail to strike the French reader who studies the law of
inheritance, that on these questions the French legislation is
infinitely more democratic even than the American.

"The American law makes an equal division of the father's property, but
only in the case of his will not being known; `for every man,' says the
law, `in the State of New York, (_Revised Statutes_, volume III,
_Appendix_, page 51), has entire liberty, power, and authority, to
dispose of his property by will, to leave it entire, or divided in
favour of any persons he choses as his heirs, provided he do not leave
it to a political body or any corporation.' The French law obliges the
testator to divide his property equally, or nearly so, among his heirs.

"Most of the American republics still admit of entails, under certain
restrictions; but the French law prohibits entail in all cases.

"If the social condition of the Americans is more democratic than that
of the French, the laws of the latter are the most democratic of the
two. This may be explained more easily than at first appears to be the
case. In France, democracy is still occupied in the work of
destruction; in America, it reigns quietly over the ruins it has
made."--_Democracy in America, by A De Tocqueville_.

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Note 3. In New England the estates are exceedingly small, but they are
rarely subjected to further division.

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