vicious indulgence till its wasteful employment becomes an insult and an eyesore to the hard-working? High station is beneficial as an example and encouragement to those who are running the inevitable race. Most true! but what shall we say for those who consider their hereditary honours as the all in all, who forget the contemptuous parallel drawn by Cervantes between them and those they despise-unos fueron que ya no son, y otros son que ya no fueron? What if the inherited wealth be hoarded up in inaction, or scattered in rioting and wantonness? How if the tide of its charity be restricted to the high-water mark of poor-law relief? These are questions which, according to the progress of religion, have to be reproachfully addressed to the many or to the few.

We are willing to conclude with a quotation from the lately published correspondence of an eminent Republican. Thus writes the American Channing:

'Our mobs, though they have spoken in confused and discordant yells, have uttered one truth plainly; and this truth is, that there exists among us what ought to exist in no Christian country-a mass of gross ignorance and vice. They teach one plain lesson to the religious, virtuous, philanthropic, educated, refined, and opulent-and that is, that these have a great work to do, the work of enlightening and lifting up a large portion of their fellow-creatures and their neighbours; that they have no right to spend their lives in accumulating wealth or in selfish indulgences, but that they are to labour, to expend time, thought, wealth, as their circumstances may permit, for the intellectual, moral, spiritual life of a multitude around them, buried in darkness, prejudice, sensuality, excess, and crime. This is the great lesson to be learned from mobs. If we heed not this, if we look for safety to penal laws, rather than to the performance of personal duty, the disinterested labours of Christian love, and the faithful use of the best means of purifying and elevating society, we shall have none to blame but ourselves, if society become the prey of violence and insurrection.'-Memoirs of Dr. Channing, vol. iii, p. 253.

ART. VII-A Treatise on the Succession to Property vacant by death, including Inquiries into the influence of Primogeniture, Entails. Compulsory Partition, Foundations, &c., over the Public Interests. By J. R. M'Culloch, Esq. London. 1848. MR.

R. M.CULLOCH announces it as his design to investigate the origin and practical operation of the principal rules and conditions under which property has been, and continues to be, transferred from the dead to the living;' but his book is very far from exhausting the wide field which these words might seem

to

to indicate. Nor can we affect to regret that he should have practically confined himself to narrower limits. Even were our knowledge of the property-laws which existed in remote times less loose than it is, we suspect that no deductions of a positive nature could be made, from our imperfect acquaintance with what was the true social condition of ancient populations.

The work includes some sketches of remoter systems-all drawn with a bold and free hand; but we do not discover in these any novelty either of statement or of induction. He has applied himself, however, with very superior skill to topics of which it would be difficult to overrate the importance at the present time. The main merit and interest certainly lie in his review of the laws regulating the succession to landed property, which prevail in this country and in France, and in their comparison; including a masterly exposition of the English and Scotch systems of entail.

It is known to most of our readers, that the real-property laws of England and France are not only different from, but antagonistic to each other. But though fundamentally opposed, they are not equally positive in their character. With us the law of primogeniture, or the succession of the eldest son to the exclusion of his brothers and sisters, governs the descent of land only in the event of intestacy. The possessor of the fee simple may reverse or modify its operation, and indeed it is quite the exception when a man permits the law to make his will for him.' The result, however, certainly and fortunately is, that custom, sanctioning the principle established by the legislature, has, through the medium of settlements, wills, and deeds of entail, extended the law of primogeniture, with some important modifications, throughout the whole kingdom. In France the case is different. There the law is compulsory, no discretion being left to the possessor of land, except within very narrow limits. If the law is found to be imperfect-nay, if it works injuriously to the best interests of society, no efforts of the people, individually, can perceptibly correct it. It proceeds in its rapid course, whether for good or for evil, and all counteracting influences are powerless in comparison.

We consider it as a singularly fortunate circumstance that the two systems can be studied in action at the same time, and so near to each other. They prevail respectively in countries at the head of civilization; amidst populations of the greatest activity, intelligence, and industry; and they operate on a scale so vast, that their results are manifest in proportion. They have, moreover, both existed sufficiently long for the full development of their peculiar influences.

As the aristocratical principle was affected to be regarded as the root of all the evils under which old France laboured, the great aim of the original revolutionists was to extinguish it for ever. To do this effectually it was deemed of the first importance that landed estates-that secure basis of a real aristocracy-should be subjected to a process inferring a series of successive diminutions. Hence a law-which, though somewhat modified, was not materially altered in principle by Napoleon-having for its object the compulsory and almost equal division of estates on the death of their possessors. According to it, a person with one child may 'a dispose at pleasure of a moiety of his property-the child inheriting the other moiety as legitim, or matter of right; a person having two children, can only dispose of a third part of his property; a person having more than two, must divide three-fourths of his property equally amongst them-one-fourth part being all that is then left at his disposal. When a father dies intestate, his property is equally divided amongst his children, without respect to sex or seniority.'

The result has well attested the accuracy of the calculations on which this legislation was based. We had occasion some eighteen months ago to enter fully into the question of the present condition of the landed interest of France, and many of our readers may recollect the picture which it was our sad task to lay before them. We are not of course unaware of the attacks which have been made on us in consequence of that exposition; but we have looked in vain for any attempt to get rid of our formidable facts. Deriving our information from state documents, and from other unimpeachable sources, we clearly proved that the law of equal succession has been most injurious, and must in the end prove fatal. It has caused a wonderful subdivision of property, kept agriculture back at a state of semi-barbarism, and produced a large population of agricultural paupers, discontented in proportion to their misery. It has not only prevented the introduction of any improved system of culture, but has affected most seriously the stock of animals in France, with reference both to their relative numbers and to their quality. The law has, at the same time, signally failed in producing any one of the social advantages which its framers predicted and their dupes anticipated. The peasant proprietors, in place of being independent and contented, are, the immense majority of them, wretchedly poor, and hopelessly involved in debt. They are the slaves of the money-lenders. They not only have no capital, but they may be said to exist by sufferance. We speak of the mass-there are exceptions—these exceptions are found, however, where, from a happy conjunction of circumstances, the system has approached at a humble distance

that

that prevailing in this country-namely, one of considerable farms, and a broad-field agriculture. It was said that this equal succession law, by giving a large proportion of the population a stake in the country, would be a security against revolution and war. We can scarcely write these words with gravity. Of revolution it is quite needless to speak. And as to war, who is there that knows France but must be aware that multitudes of her peasant proprietors would gladly abandon their petty holdings at the first blast of the trumpet-exchanging a life of monotonous penury for the excitement of the field and the comparative comfort of the camp? Who is there, we would again ask, that knows Paris intimately, but is conscious that no inconsiderable proportion of her excitable and savage population is composed of men who, deriving incomes from their small and constantly diminishing properties, just sufficient, with the aid of gambling and cheating, to support them in idleness and vice, are ready for every species of violence, for civil or for foreign contest?

We do not intend to reproduce our array of statistical facts, but trust our readers will study Mr. M'Culloch's pages, from which they will perceive how fully we are supported in our views by that able and pains-taking inquirer.

'It is seldom,' says Mr. M'Culloch, in speaking of the law of equal succession, that a law adapted to a particular emergency may be maintained with advantage as a general rule of national policy; and it would have been singular had a device, originally fallen upon for the express purpose of splitting estates, been found beneficial as a rule for permanently regulating the succession to property in a great kingdom. Considered in a general point of view, the French law of succession seems to have all the disadvantages of perpetual entails with none of their advantages. By interfering so much with the disposal of a man's property it weakens the motives to accumulation, while by rendering the children in great measure independent it weakens the parental authority, and has in this respect the same influence over an entire family that the law of entail has over the eldest son.

'The children of those who have any property are aware, from their earliest years, that, whether they deserve it or not, it must be parcelled amongst them. And can any one doubt that this certainty contributes to paralyse their efforts, and renders them less enterprising and less dutiful than they would have been had their condition depended principally on themselves, and they had known they had no claim, other than their own deserts, on their parents? These, however, are not its worst effects. This, and every similar system, is sure to occasion too great an increase of the agricultural population; and at the same time that it makes the land be divided into portions so minute that they neither afford sufficient employment to those occupying them, nor can be effectually cultivated.. . . . Should a family be unusually large, or should the paternal property be insufficient, when divided, to main

tain the children in nearly the same class as their father, some of the more adventurous may perhaps sell their portions, and engage in other pursuits. But in the majority of cases they continue to reside on the little properties obtained from their ancestors; and the fair presumption is, that the process of division and subdivision will continue until the land has been generally parcelled out into patches, and filled with a population destitute of the means, and perhaps also of the desire, of rising in the world.'

We are very happy that Mr. M'Culloch has stated these deductions so plainly and convincingly. At the same time we believe that, as to the matter in question, there is but little tendency in this country to follow the example of France. Notwithstanding the attempts which have been made, under various guises, to inoculate us with hostility to the law of primogeniture, the great bulk of our community remain firm to the old and true faith. And no wonder :-not only can we distinctly trace much of our own prosperity and the stability of our institutions to the principle of primogeniture, but we have only to cast our eyes across the Channel to perceive the vast importance, both politically and socially, of maintaining it inviolate. To the abandonment of it France principally owes her never-ending troubles; and as she perseveres in her present course, in the minute subdivision of her soil, so will her future be more and more overshadowed.

Though in the vast majority of instances land in this country is transmitted from the dead to the living not by the simple operation of the law on intestacy, but through the instrumentality of settlements, wills, or deeds of entail, primogeniture has fortunately, as we have already said, so moulded the practice among us, that the succession of eldest sons to the whole inheritance may be considered as all but universal. The right authorizing that practice of limiting property so that it may be transmitted to a particular series of heirs-has been long recognised here as elsewhere, and from it has arisen that system of entails which so extensively prevails, with different degrees of strictness, in England and Scotland.

It is not our intention to enter into the history of English entails, which is involved in some degree of obscurity. They had their origin, in all probability, not only in the passion natural to man-to found a family and perpetuate a name-but in the efforts made by the great landed proprietors in troublesome times to secure their estates against forfeiture. Reducing themselves to the condition of tenants for life, and securing the inheritance on their issue, if they legally offended against and came within the grasp of the supreme power, their life-interests could

alone