Letters
Keeping things together
Sir: It is difficult to understand why an eldest son like Auberon Waugh repeatedly grumbles in your columns about primogen- iture. It is entirely due to this admirable feudal system of inheritance that there remains in England any landscape worth looking at, any historic houses still lived in and any great private art collections. Quite apart from the fact that it has the inestim- able advantage of keeping things together and in, mainly, responsible hands, pri- mogeniture has had the equally worthwhile secondary effect of releasing talented younger sons to make their own way, as Lord Chancellors, merchant princes, empire builders etc. It could be argued that it is largely due to the supply of enterpris- ing younger sons that the 'expansion of Britain' took place between the 17th and 19th centuries.
The trouble at Kedleston is not that it was entailed to Lord Scarsdale but rather that the entail has been broken and the family property settled in a discretionary trust with no fewer than six equal benefi- ciaries, not all of whom are as keen as Lord Scarsdale to see the house, collection and estate kept going as an entity. It is the lack of primogeniture which has created the seemingly insoluble problem in this case. I would argue that the concomitant to the abolition of DT should be the vigorous enforcement of the Settled Land Acts, and primogeniture.
John Martin Robinson
8 Doughty Mews, London WC1
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