Some time ago, I read a history of legal affairs in the US, from colonial days to the modern; the post-Civil War history devolved into minutia and bored me to skimming and forgetfulness. The history up to about 1800 fascinated me.
From memory, and paraphrasing, it listed three parts of English law which had to be abandoned: primogeniture (eldest male relative inherits everything), entailment (parcels cannot be divided without an act of Parliament), and women (could not own land). All were abandoned because of the severe separate of the colonies from England, and to a lesser extent, the size and geographical variety of the colonies. They were simply impossible to enforce even in the normal course of events. Heirs and the legislature were just too far away and it was too hard to track down relatives who had emigrated, or moved after emigrating, especially if they moved across the Appalachians. And when a husband died and his widow was forced by reality to manage the family property, it became increasingly ridiculous to pretend she was incapable of doing so, and that she had to surrender that land to some unknown cousin-in-law back in England.
I read those entails to be the source of Smith's ire when it comes to primogeniture. Combined with mandatory tithes--which were effectively a 10% income tax and would have been much more burdensome in their day than ours--the two policies seem like they would indeed be a very strong discouragement to land cultivation.
Some time ago, I read a history of legal affairs in the US, from colonial days to the modern; the post-Civil War history devolved into minutia and bored me to skimming and forgetfulness. The history up to about 1800 fascinated me.
From memory, and paraphrasing, it listed three parts of English law which had to be abandoned: primogeniture (eldest male relative inherits everything), entailment (parcels cannot be divided without an act of Parliament), and women (could not own land). All were abandoned because of the severe separate of the colonies from England, and to a lesser extent, the size and geographical variety of the colonies. They were simply impossible to enforce even in the normal course of events. Heirs and the legislature were just too far away and it was too hard to track down relatives who had emigrated, or moved after emigrating, especially if they moved across the Appalachians. And when a husband died and his widow was forced by reality to manage the family property, it became increasingly ridiculous to pretend she was incapable of doing so, and that she had to surrender that land to some unknown cousin-in-law back in England.
I read those entails to be the source of Smith's ire when it comes to primogeniture. Combined with mandatory tithes--which were effectively a 10% income tax and would have been much more burdensome in their day than ours--the two policies seem like they would indeed be a very strong discouragement to land cultivation.