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anything in its institutions by which either integrity and trustworthiness, or the contrary qualities, are encouraged. The law everywhere ostensibly favors at least pecuniary honesty and the faith of contracts; but if it affords facilities for evading those obligations by trick and chicanery, or by the unscrupulous use of riches in instituting unjust or resisting just litigation; if there are ways and means by which persons may attain the ends of roguery, under the apparent sanction of the law.; to that extent the law is demoralizing, even in regard to pecuniary integrity. And such cases are, unfortunately, frequent under the English system. If, again, the law, by a misplaced indulgence, protects idleness or prodigality against their natural consequences, or dismisses crime with inadequate penalties, the effect, both on the prudential and on the social virtues, requires no comment. When the law, by its own dispensations and injunctions, establishes injustice between individual and individual; as all laws do which recognize any form of slavery; as the laws of all countries do, though not all in the same degree, in respect to the family relations; and as the laws of many countries do, though in still more unequal degrees, as between rich and poor; the effect on the moral sentiments of the people is still more disastrous. But these subjects introduce considerations so much larger and deeper than those of political economy, that I only advert to them in order not to pass wholly unnoticed, things superior in importance to those of which I treat.

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CHAPTER IX.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

1. HAVING Spoken thus far of the effects produced by the excellences or defects of the general system of the law, I shall now touch upon those resulting from the special character of particular parts of it. As a selection must be made, I shall confine myself to a few leading topics. The portions of the civil law of a country which are of most importance economically, (next to those which determine the status of the laborer, as slave, serf, or free,) are those relating to the two subjects of Inheritance and Contract. Of the laws relating to contract, none are more important economically, than the laws of partnership, and those of insolvency. It happens that on all these three points, there is just ground for condemning some of the provisions of the English law. I cannot, therefore, select topics more suitable to be touched upon in the present treatise.

With regard to Inheritance, I have, in an early part of this work, considered the general principles of the subject, and suggested what appear to me to be, in themselves, putting all prejudices apart, the best dispositions which the law could adopt. Freedom of bequest as the general rule, but limited by two things, first, that if there are descendants, who, being unable to provide for themselves, would become burdensome to the state, the equivalent of whatever the state would accord to them should be reserved from the property for their benefit; and secondly, that no one person should be permitted to acquire by inheritance more than the amount of a moderate independence. In case of intestacy, the whole property to escheat to the state; which should be bound to make a just and reasonable provision

for descendants, that is, such a provision as the parent or ancestor ought to have made, their circumstances, capacities, and mode of bringing up, being considered.

The laws of inheritance, however, have probably several phases of improvement to go through, before ideas so far removed from present modes of thinking will be taken into serious consideration; and as, among the recognized modes of determining the succession to property, some must be better and others worse, it is necessary to consider which of them deserves the preference. As an intermediate course, therefore, less eligible in itself, but better adapted to existing feelings and ideas, I would recommend the extension to all property, the present English law of inheritance affecting personal property (freedom of bequest, and, in case of intestacy, equal division) except that no rights should be acknowledged in collaterals, and that the property of those who have neither descendants nor ascendants, and make no will, should escheat to the state.

The laws of existing nations deviate from these maxims in two opposite ways. In England, and most of the countries in which the influence of feudality is still felt in the laws, one of the objects aimed at in respect to land and other immovable property, is to keep it together in large masses; accordingly, in cases of intestacy, it passes, generally speaking (for the local custom of some places is different) exclusively to the eldest son. And though the rule of primogeniture is not binding on testators, who in England have nominally the power of bequeathing their property as they please, any one proprietor may so exercise this power as to deprive his successors of it, by entailing the property on one particular line of his descendants; which, beside preventing it from passing by inheritance in any other than the prescribed manner, is attended with the incidental consequence of precluding it from being sold; since each successive possessor, having only a life interest in the property,

cannot alienate it for a longer period than his own life. In other countries, such as France, the law, on the contrary, compels division of inheritances; not only, in case of intestacy, sharing the property, both real and personal, equally among all the children, or (if there are no children) among all relatives in the same degree of propinquity; but also not recognizing any power of bequest, or recognizing it over only a limited proportion of the property, the remainder being subjected to compulsory equal division.

Neither of these systems, I apprehend, was introduced, or is maintained, in the countries where it exists, from any general considerations of justice, or any foresight of economical consequences, but chiefly from political motives; in the one case to keep up large hereditary fortunes, and a landed aristocracy; in the other, to break these down, and prevent their resurrection. The first object, as an aim of national policy, I conceive to be eminently undesirable; so far as the second is desirable, I have pointed out what seems to me a better mode of attaining it. The merit or demerit, however, of either purpose, belongs to the general science of politics, not to the limited department of that science which is the subject of the present treatise. Each of the two systems is a real and efficient instrument for the purpose intended by it; but each, as it appears to me, achieves that purpose at the cost of much mischief.

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2. There are two arguments of an economical character, which are urged in favor of primogeniture. One is, the stimulus applied to the industry and ambition of younger children, by leaving them to be the architects of their own fortunes. This argument was put by Dr. Johnson in a manner more forcible than complimentary to an hereditary aristocracy, when he said, by way of recommendation of primogeniture, that it "makes but one fool in a family." It is curious that a defender of aristocratic institutions should

be the person to assert that to inherit such a fortune as takes away any necessity for exertion, is generally fatal to activity and strength of mind; in the present state of education, however, the proposition, with some allowance for exaggeration, may be admitted to be true. But whatever force there is in the argument, counts in favor of limiting the eldest, as well as all the other children, to a mere provision, and dispensing with even the "one fool" whom Dr. Johnson was willing to tolerate. If unearned riches are so pernicious to the character, one does not see why, in order to withhold the poison from the junior members of a family, there should be no way but to unite in all their separate potions, and administer them in the largest possible dose to one selected victim. That it should be necessary to inflict this great evil on the eldest son, from sheer want of knowing what else to do with a large fortune, is surely the most arbitrarily conjured up of all embarrassments.

Some writers, however, look upon the effect of primogeniture in stimulating industry, as depending, not so much upon the poverty of the younger children, as upon the contrast between that poverty and the riches of the elder; thinking it indispensable to the activity and energy of the hive, that there should be a huge drone here and there, to impress the working bees with a due sense of the advantages of honey. "Their inferiority in point of wealth," says Mr. McCulloch, speaking of the younger children, "and their desire to escape from this lower situation, and to attain to the same level with their elder brothers, inspires them with an energy and vigor they could not otherwise feel. But the advantage of preserving large estates from being frittered down by a scheme of equal division, is not limited to its influence over the younger children of their owners. raises universally the standard of competence, and gives new force to the springs which set industry in motion. The manner of living among the great landlords is that in

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