Foreign News: Fertile Idea

“Many a peer of England brews. . . A. E. HOUSEMAN

Thirteen peers, grave dukes and sad-eyed earls, have brewed and tasted this twelvemonth an idea snugly within the law.

The Idea: a limited company (corporation) is a “fictitious person” who can never die. Therefore, on turning one’s estate into a limited company, it passes beyond the reach of the death duties (inheritance tax).

Not until the great Dukes of Marlborough and Portland incorporated their estates recently, did the peerage consider this practice purged of all ignoble taint. Since then estate incorporations have become decorously numerous.

Finally, last week, the Earl of Rosebery, Baron Primrose, 79, onetime Prime Minister (1894-95), valedicted by reactionaries as “the last Victorian,” paused on the brink of the grave (TIME, Feb. 15) to incorporate. His thousands of acres (reputedly he is one of the richest landowners in the United Kingdom) were dubbed The Rosebery Estates, Ltd. Capital stock was issued at a pound a share to a total value of £362,500 ($1,762,000), half common, half preferred.