ABSTRACT
Propertied men throughout the century embraced the theory laid out by J.S. Mill in Principles of Political Economy (1848) that as long as private property exists, ownership must encompass the ability to alienate property-either “bestowing it, at death or during life, at the owner’s pleasure” (33)—or it is not ownership. Turning logic into sentiment, testators everywhere, even in literature, claimed their freedom of bequest as a sacred tenet of Englishness.
