found proceeding from one authority, and their execution left to another. Experience shews that unchecked power often leads the best men wrong, and produces general mischief.
12. We are unable to reconcile this arbitrary change with regard for the future prosperity of the country; because the law now proposed, preventing a father from the disposal of ancestral property, without the consent of his son and grandson, would immediately, as I observed before, subject all past transfers of land to legal contest, and would at once render this large and fertile province a scene of confusion and misery. Besides, Bengal has been always remarkable for her riches, insomuch as to have been styled by her Mohummudan conquerors “Junnutoolbelad,” or paradise of regions; during the British occupation of India especially, she has been manifoldly prosperous. Any one possessed of landed property, whether self-acquired or ancestral, has been able, under the long established law of the land, to procure easily, on the credit of that property, loans of money to lay out on the improvement of his estate, in trade or in manufactures, whereby he enriches himself and his family and benefits the country. Were the change which it is threatened to introduce into the law of inheritance to be sanctioned, and the privilege of disposing of ancestral property (though not entailed) without the consent of heirs be denied to landholders, they being incapacitated from a free disposal of the property in their actual possession, would naturally lose the credit they at present enjoy, and be compelled to confine their concerns to the extent of their actual savings from their income; the consequence would be, that a
