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Updated: June 24, 2025
After the power of alienations, as well as the increase of commerce, had thrown the balance of property into the hands of the commons, the situation of affairs, and the dispositions of men, became susceptible of a more regular plan of liberty; and the laws were not supported singly by the authority of the sovereign.
This mental effort is termed reverie, or somnambulation, and is described more at large in Sect. XIX. on that subject. But I shall here relate another case of that wonderful disease, which fell yesterday under my eye, and to which I have seen many analogous alienations of mind, though not exactly similar in all circumstances.
Henceforth the country lives and great tables of the nobility, which no longer nourished veins that would bleed for them, were fruitless and loathsome till they changed the air, and of princes became courtiers; where their revenues, never to have been exhausted by beef and mutton, were found narrow, whence followed racking of rents, and at length sale of lands, the riddance through the statute of alienations being rendered far more quick and facile than formerly it had been through the new invention of entails.
This cannot be said of some other families in this county, whose fine parks and new-built palaces are fallen under forfeitures and alienations by the misfortunes of the times and by the ruin of their masters' fortunes in that South Sea deluge.
To correct these two defects we have forbidden mortgages as well as alienations of dowry land even when it is situated in the provinces, so that such land can now be dealt with in neither of these ways, even if the wife concurs, lest the weakness of the female sex should be used as a means to the wasting of their property.
This trade held on for many years after the bishops became Protestants; and some of their names are still remembered with infamy, on account of enriching their families by such sacrilegious alienations. By these means, episcopal revenues were so low reduced, that three or four sees were often united to make a tolerable competency.
The friendship and patronage of Montrose were secure until money transactions, the usual source of alienations and bickerings, produced distrust on the one hand, and bitterness on the other.
But these domestic alienations are not confined to those who once moved in the higher orders of society the monthly registers announce almost as many divorces as marriages, and the facility of separation has rendered the one little more than a licentious compact, which the other is considered as a means of dissolving.
Nor, though the kings often sell was the throne of Oceana known to shake, until the statute of alienations broke the pillars, by giving way to the nobility to sell their estates. While Lacedaemon held to the division of land made by Lycurgus, it was immovable; but, breaking that, could stand no longer.
He pointed out signs of national disaster which foreboded the wrath of Heaven, the increase of public and private debts, the spirit of murmuring and jealousy of rulers among the people, divisions and contentions and bitter party alienations, the jealous irritation of England constantly endeavoring to hamper our trade, the Indians making war on the frontiers, the Algerines taking captive our ships and making slaves of our citizens, all evident tokens of the displeasure and impending judgment of an offended Justice.
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