Page:The Settled Estates Act, 1882.djvu/22

18 the settlement, or under the direction of the Court, and the income applied in the same way as rents would have been applied, for settling lands purchased or taken in exchange on the trusts of the settlement; and in order to obviate any reckless schemes of improvement, all such schemes may be submitted to the trustees or to the Court as the case may be, and either the approval of a body of commissioners, to be called the Land Commissioners, or of an engineer or surveyor appointed by them or the Court, or the approval of the Court itself, is to be obtained. An obligation, moreover, is imposed on the tenant for life and his successors to maintain, repair, and insure improvements under rigorous conditions of supervision by the commissioners. There are, moreover, provisions that these powers shall not be assignable to, or exercisable by, assignees of the tenant for life, and a general proviso shewing the spirit of the Act, that a tenant for life shall, in exercising powers, have regard to the interests of all parties interested under the settlement, and be considered a trustee for such persons.

Finally, without going into any more minute analysis of this large measure, which contains 65 long sections subdivided into numerous sub-sections, it is provided that any prohibition against or limitation of these powers in the settlement is to be void, but that nothing in the Act shall abridge or affect any power given by the settlement.

This short description of the Act will suffice to show the lines upon which it is based, viz., of giving to a tenant for life all the powers of management