I.: Right of Primogeniture and Entails.

For the last ten years a great deal has been written and said, and justly too, on the evils of monopolies; but hardly any one has touched upon the monopoly of land. Many, even of the Aristocracy, have been zealous and persevering in their endeavours to establish unrestricted freedom in commerce; they perceived the advantages of liberty in the exchange of commodities, but they have been indifferent or silent on the advantages of liberty in the exchange of the soil. Yet, what is the right of primogeniture and the law of entail, but a monopoly as grievous and pernicious as that of the Bank of England and East India Company? What right had an assembly of half-civilized men, some five hundred years ago, to tie up the great estates of the country in perpetuity; to enact that, whatever changes of society might intervene, they should never be subdivided, nor severed from their lineal heirs as long as they endured? Was not this creating a monopoly? Did it not interpose insuperable obstacles to the sale and division of property—keep up the price of land to an artificial height—impede fair competition—limit the market of buyers—and impose restrictions on the freedom of those who might be disposed to sell?

Moreover, the statute De donis, or of “Great Men,” as it is frequently called, perpetuated a landed interest; that is, an order of men with interests distinct from those of the community, and who, armed with the power of the state, have been able to treat with special favor their peculiar class, by imposing upon it lighter burthens, by protecting it from competition, and other expedients which tended directly to their own greatness and emolument by the sacrifice of the general welfare.

The motives which originated this feudal institution, as before observed, have, in great part, ceased to exist. In the disorderly era of Edward I. the right of the first-born to the undivided possession of his ancestor was a law of peace; and, by consolidating indisputably the power which the entire property gave in the hands of a single person, it was a law of security. To divide the inheritance was to ruin it, and to expose the dwellers upon it, who depended on the proprietor for protection, to be oppressed and swallowed up in the desolating incursions of neighbouring and ferocious rivals. In the existing state of society no such pretexts can be urged. The poor as well as the rich enjoy personal security, and the owner of a single acre of land is as secure in the enjoyment as the owner of 100,000. The right of primogeniture, however, still subsists; and as, of all institutions, it is the most adapted to flatter the pride of great families, it will be tenaciously upheld by the Aristocracy. In other respects it is an unmixed evil; it is even injurious to the real interests of the landowners; for nothing can be more contrary to the welfare of a numerous family than a right which, in order “to enrich one, beggars all the rest of the children;” and reduces them to the alternative of obtaining subsistence either as mendicants or depredators on the bounty and involuntary contributions of the community.

The same reasoning applies to entails, which are the natural consequence of primogeniture. They were introduced to preserve the lineal succession of which primogeniture first gave the idea, and to hinder any part of the original patrimony from being conveyed out of the proposed line, either by gift, devise, or alienation, either by the folly or by the misfortune of any of its successive possessors. When great landed estates were a sort of principality, such curtailed inheritances might not be indefensible. Like what are called the fundamental laws of some communities, they might frequently hinder the security of thousands from being endangered by the incapacity or extravagance of one man. But, in the existing state of Europe, when property is so well secured, when small as well as great estates derive their security from inviolable laws, nothing can be more absurd than such defensive restrictions. They are founded upon the most absurd of all suppositions, the supposition that every successive generation of men have not an equal right to the earth and to all that it contains; but that the property of the present generation should be fettered and regulated by barbarians who died centuries ago. Entails, however, are still respected in England; and it is only in particular cases, by means of legal fictions, prompted by the spirit of commerce, and new views of social expediency, that estates tied up by them can be alienated. They are deemed essential to the maintenance of the monopoly of the aristocracy in the enjoyment of political power, honour, dignities, and offices; having usurped many advantages over their fellow citizens, lest their poverty should render them ridiculous, it is thought reasonable that they should have others. It is, however, an oppressive and indefensible grievance. In the present state of society there is no utility in guaranteeing to particular families the perpetual enjoyment of vast masses of property—that this property shall not be liable to the ordinary vicissitudes of life—that it shall not, like personal estates, either be deviseable or saleable—and that all, except members of the privileged order, shall be irrevocably interdicted from ever becoming proprietors of the soil—of that soil which is the common inheritance of the whole community.

Other evils result from this feudal institution. Primogeniture enriches one, and leaves all the other members of a family destitute. Hence they are thrown, like mendicants, on the public for support; but they are unlike mendicants in this—that the public has no option, whether they will support them or not. The Aristocracy, usurping the power of the state, have the means under various pretexts, of extorting, for the junior branches of their families, a forced subsistence. They patronize a ponderous and sinecure church-establishment; they wage long and unnecessary wars, to create employments in the army and navy; they conquer and retain useless colonies; they set on foot expensive missions of diplomacy, and keep an ambassdor or consul, and often both, at almost every petty state and every petty port in the world; they create offices without duties, grant unmerited pensions, keep up unnecessary places in the royal household, in the admiralty, the treasury, the customs, excise, courts of law, and every department of the public administration: by these and other expedients, the junior as well as elder branches of the great families are amply provided for out of the taxes. They live in profusion and luxury; and those by whom they are maintained alone subsist in indigence and privation.

It is only in the less civilized states of Europe, in Hungary, Bohemia, Poland and Russia, that primogeniture is retained. Countries enjoying the benefits of political regeneration have abolished this remnant of feudality, and introduced the law of equal partibility. The happy effects of this reform are visible in the condition of France and the Netherlands; in the greater harmony subsisting among the different classes of society—in the absence of the miserable jealousy and exclusiveness that embitter domestic intercourse in England—in the public spirit, unanimity, and personal independence of the inhabitants, produced, no doubt, by a conviction of common interests, reciprocal obligations, and equal participation in all the advantages and enjoyments of the social state.