[1] In effect this involves the establishment of all religious
denominations, for none can exist without the express authorization
of the state, and all are subject to more or less interference on its
part. Thus the emperor-king is, in his capacity of head of the state,
technically "bishop" of the Evangelical Church, the constitution of
which was fixed by an imperial patent in 1866 and modified by.
another in 1891 (see Herzog-Hauck, _Realencykl._ ed. 1904, _s._
"Osterreich").--[ED.]
[2] Also in the other German Protestant states. The relations of the
Roman Catholic Church with the various governments are settled by
separate concordats with the papacy (see CONCORDAT).
[3] Andrew Lang, _Hist. of Scotland_, ii. p. 75 ff. Compare with this
the position of the reformers generally in England, where even so
stout a Puritan as William Harrison (_Description of England_, 1570)
does not dream of separating the organic life of the Church of
England from that of the pre-Reformation Church. (Ed).
ESTABLISHMENT OF A PORT, the technical expression for the time that
elapses between the moon's transit across the meridian at new or full
moon at a given place and the time of high water at that place. The
interval (constant at any one place) may vary from 6 mins. (Harwich) to
11 hrs. 45 mins. (North Foreland). At London Bridge it is 1 hr. 58 mins.
(See also TIDE.)
ESTAING, CHARLES HECTOR, COMTE D' (1729-1794), French admiral, was born
at the chateau of Ruvel, Auvergne, in 1729. He entered the army as a
colonel of infantry, and in 1757 he accompanied count de Lally to the
East Indies, with the rank of brigadier-general. In 1759 he was made
prisoner at the siege of Madras, but was released on parole. Before the
ratification of his exchange he obtained command of some vessels, and
conducted various naval attacks against the English; and having, on his
return to France in 1760, fallen accidentally into their hands, he was,
on the ground of having broken his parole, thrown into prison at
Portsmouth, but as the charge could not be properly substantiated he was
soon afterwards released. In 1763 he was named lieutenant-general in the
navy, and in 1777 vice-admiral; and in 1778 he obtained the command of a
fleet intended to assist the United States against Great Britain. He
sailed on the 13th of April, and between the 11th and the 22nd of July,
blockaded Howe at Sandy Hook, but did not venture to attack him, though
greatly superior in force. In concert with the American generals, he
planned an attack on Newport, preparatory to which he compelled the
British to destroy some war vessels that were in the harbour; but before
the concerted attack could take place, he put to sea against the English
fleet, under Lord Howe, when owing to a violent storm, which arose
suddenly and compelled the two fleets to separate before engaging in
battle, many of his vessels were so shattered that he found it necessary
to put into Boston for repairs. He then sailed for the West Indies on
the 4th of November. After a feeble attempt to retake Santa Lucia from
Admiral Barrington, he captured St Vincent and Grenada. On the 6th of
July 1779 he fought a drawn battle with Admiral John Byron, who retired
to St Christopher. Though superior in force, D'Estaing would not attack
the English in the roadstead, but set sail to attack Savannah. All his
attempts, as well as those of the Americans, against the town were
repulsed with heavy loss, and he was finally compelled to retire. He
returned to France in 1780. He was in command of the combined fleet
before Cadiz when the peace was signed in 1783; but from that time his
chief attention was devoted to politics. In 1787 he was elected to the
assembly of the notables; in 1789 he was appointed commandant of the
national guard; and in 1792 he was chosen admiral by the National
Assembly. Though in favour of national reform he continued to cherish a
strong feeling of loyalty to the royal family, and on the trial of Marie
Antoinette in 1793 bore testimony in her favour. On this account, and
because of certain friendly letters which had passed between him and the
queen, he was himself brought to trial, and was executed on the 28th of
April 1794.
See _Marins et soldats francais en Amerique_, by the Viscomte de
Noailles (1903); Beatson, _Naval and Military Memoirs of Great
Britain_, vol. v.
ESTATE (through O. Fr. _estat_, mod. _etat_, from Lat. _status_, state,
condition, position, _stare_, to stand), the state or condition in which
a man lives, now chiefly used poetically and in such phrases as "man's
estate," or "of high estate"; "state" has superseded most of the uses of
the word except (1) in property and (2) in constitutional law.
1. In the law of property the word is employed in several senses. In the
widest sense a man's estate comprises his entire belongings; so much of
it as consists of land and certain other interests associated therewith
is his "real estate"; the rest is his "personal estate." The word is
more particularly applied to interests in land, and in popular and
general use "an estate" means the land itself. The strict technical
meaning of "an estate" is an interest in lands, and this conception lies
at the root of the English theory of property in land. "The first thing
that the student has to do," says Joshua Williams (_Law of Real
Property_), "is to get rid of the idea of absolute ownership. Such an
idea is quite unknown to the English law. No man is in law the absolute
owner of lands. He can only hold an estate in them." That is, the notion
of tenure, of holding by a tenant from a lord, prevails. The last lord
of all from whom all land was ultimately held was the king. Persons
holding directly from the king and granting to others were the king's
tenants _in capite_, and were the mesne lords of their tenants.
Estates in land may be classified according to (1) the quantity of their
interest or duration, (2) the time of enjoyment, and (3) the number and
connexion of the tenants. According to (1), an estate may be either a
freehold of inheritance or a freehold not of inheritance. A freehold of
inheritance may be (_a_) an estate in fee simple, which is the largest
estate a man can hold in English law, and comes close to the idea of
absolute ownership, repudiated by Williams; an estate in fee simple is
inheritable by a man's heirs generally, he has full powers of
disposition over it, and may alienate the whole or part. (_b_) It may
also be in limited fees, which are again subdivided into (i.) qualified
or base fee, (ii.) fee conditional, so called at the common law,
afterwards, on the passing of the statute _De Donis Conditionalibus_,
fee tail, which may be general as to the heirs of a man's body, or
special, as to the heirs _male_ (or _female_) of his body. A freehold
not of inheritance may be either (1) conventional, as an estate for
life, which may be either an estate for one's own life or for the life
of another (_pur autre vie_); (2) legal, or created by operation of law,
as tenancy in tail after possibility of issue extinct (i.e. where an
estate is given to a man and the heirs of his body by his present wife,
and the wife dies without issue, the husband becomes tenant in tail
after possibility of issue extinct); tenancy by curtesy (see CURTESY);
tenancy in dower (see DOWER).
Estates not of freehold or less than freehold are subdivided into (i.)
estates for years (often called estates for a term of years, the
instrument creating it being termed a _lease_ or demise, and the estate
itself a _leasehold interest_); (ii.) estates at will, that is, where
lands or tenements are let by one man to another to have and to hold at
the will of the lessor; (iii.) estates at sufferance, where one comes
into possession of land under a lawful title, and continues in
possession after his title has determined.
According to (2), estates are either in possession or in expectancy.
Estates in expectancy are either (_a_) in remainder, which may be vested
or contingent, or (_b_) in reversion (see REMAINDER, REVERSION).
According to (3), estates may be either (i.) in severalty, that is, the
holding of an estate by a person in his own right only, without any
other person being joined or connected with him in point of interest
therein; (ii.) estates in joint tenancy (see JOINT); (iii.) coparcenary
(q.v.); and (iv.) tenancy in common, where two or more hold the same
land, by several and distinct titles, but with unity of possession. (See
also REAL PROPERTY.)
2. In constitutional law an estate is an order or class having a
definite share as such in the body politic, and participating either
directly or by its representatives in the government. The system of
representation by estates took its rise in western Europe during the
13th century, at a time when the feudal system was being broken up
through various causes, notably the growing wealth and power of the
towns. In the feudal council the clergy and the territorial nobles had
alone had a voice; but the 13th century, to quote Stubbs (_Const. Hist_.
ii. 168, ed. 1875), "turns the feudal council into an assembly of
estates, and draws the constitution of the third estate from the ancient
local machinery which it concentrates." This is, allowing for
differences of detail, true of other countries as well as England. To
the two estates already existing, clergy and nobles, is added a third,
that of the commons (burgesses and knights of the shire) in England,
that of the _roturiers_ in France (known as the _tiers etat_). This
division into three estates became the norm, but it was not universal,
nor inevitable.[1] Even in England there was a tendency to create other
estates, the king for instance treating with the merchants separately
for grants of money to be raised by taxing the general body of merchants
in the country; and there was a similar tendency on the part of the
lawyers. But for the accident of their sitting and voting together, the
burgesses and knights of the shire would also have formed separate
estates. In Aragon the cortes contained four estates (_brazos_ or arms),
the clergy, the great barons (_ricos hombres_), the minor barons
(knights or _infanzones_), and the towns. The Swedish diet had also
four--clergy, barons, burghers and peasants.
The system of estates, based on the medieval conception of society as
divided into definite orders, formed the basis of whatever
constitutional forms survived in Europe till the French Revolution. In
England, of course, it had early become obscured, the House of Commons
representing the whole nation outside the narrow order of the peers. The
creation of an estate of lesser nobles or landowners had been prevented
by the fusion of the knights of the shire with the burgesses; the
spiritual estate was ruled out by the determination of the clergy to
deliberate and tax themselves in their own convocation, leaving the
bishops, as spiritual peers, to represent their interests in parliament.
The phrase "the three estates of the realm" still survives, but to most
men it conveys no clear meaning. The erroneous conception early
arose--Hallam says it was current among the popular lawyers of the 17th
century--that the "three estates" were king, lords and commons, as
representing the three great divisions of legislative authority. Such a
conception might be possible in Hungary, where the crown of St. Stephen
symbolizes not so much the royal power as the co-ordination of the
powers of all the organs of the state, including the king; but in
England the king represents the whole nation and in no sense a separate
interest within it, which is the essence of an estate. The phrase "three
estates" as applied to the English constitution at present is, in fact,
misleading. It is now usually understood of the lords spiritual, the
lords temporal, and the commons.
The conception of the "three estates of the realm" as the great
divisions of legislative authority led in England to the coining of the
phrase "fourth estate," to indicate some power of corresponding
magnitude in the state distinct from them. Fielding thus spoke of "the
mob," and Hazlitt of Cobbett; but the phrase is now usually applied to
the press, a usage originating in a speech by Burke (Carlyle,
_Hero-worship_, Lect. v.).
In the constitutional struggles of the European continent, from the
Revolution onward, the rival theories of representation by estates and
of popular representation have played a great part. The crucial moment
of the French Revolution was when the vote according to "order" was
rejected and the estates of the clergy and nobles were merged with the
_tiers etat_, the states-general thus becoming the National Assembly.
This was the precedent followed, generally speaking, during the 19th
century in the other countries in which constitutional government was
established. In most of them the medieval estates lingered on in
provincial diets (_Landtage_),[2] and the famous Article XIII. of the
Federal Act (_Bundesakte_) of Vienna decreed that "assemblies of
estates" should be set up, wherever not already existing, in the German
states. The efforts of Metternich and the statesmen of his school were
directed, not so much to abolishing the constitutional model, as to
establishing it, if need were, on traditional and conservative lines.
This is what was meant by the famous reply of the emperor Francis I. to
the Magyar deputation; "All the world is playing the fool and demanding
fanciful constitutions." When the need for making constitutional
concessions became urgent, the attempt was accordingly made to base them
on the system of estates. But the central diet convoked in 1847 by
Frederick William IV. to Berlin, technically a concentration of
provincial estates, quickly converted itself as Metternich had
prophesied--into a national assembly; and precisely the same thing
happened in the case of the first Austrian parliament in 1848. In
Hungary the revolution was in some respects more conservative in
character. The March Laws of 1848 preserved the general character of the
House of Magnates, comparable to the British House of Lords, but
converted the Lower House from what was practically representative of
the estate of the lesser nobles into a national representative assembly.
Of all the sovereign states of Europe only the grand-duchies of
Mecklenburg still (1909) retain the ancient system of estates untouched.
The diet, which is common to the two duchies, consists of the
_Ritterschaft_, in which all tenants in chivalry (_Rittergutsbesitzer_),
whether noble or non-noble, have a voice, and the _Landschaft_, which
consists of the chief magistrates of the towns. The former is taken as
representative of the peasant proprietors and copy-holders
(_Hintersassen_), the latter of the burghers.
The plural form ESTATES or STATES (Fr. _etats_, Ger. _Stande_) is the
name commonly given to an assembly of estates (_assemblee des etats_,
_Standeversammlung_). When such an assembly is not merely local or
provincial it is called the estates-general or states-general (_etats
generaux_), e.g. in France the assembly of the deputies of the three
estates of the realm as distinct from the provincial estates which met
periodically in the so-called _pays d'etats_.
For further details about the estates in England and elsewhere see W.
Stubbs, _Constitutional History_, vol. ii. (1896); H. Hallam, _The
Middle Ages_ (1855); F.W. Maitland, _Constitutional History of
England_ (1908); A. Luchaire, _Histoire des institutions monarchiques
de la France_ (1883-1885); G. Waitz, _Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte_
(Kiel, 1865-1878); and A.S. Rait, _The Scottish Parliament_ (1901).
See also REPRESENTATION.