456 Notes of the Month on Affairs in General. APRIL, 



to the increase of exertion, by knowing that he labours equally for the 

 ungrateful and the grateful, and that the distribution of the fruit of his 

 labours is taken out of his hands. So much for the law of equality. 



Another, and perhaps more injurious result, in a public point of view, 

 is the breaking down of property into fragments. No right of eldership 

 exists, to make a head of a family. The French peer can leave his eldest 

 son but the major at or small property annexed to the title. In England 

 the law by which the estate descends to the elder is productive of the 

 best consequences on general society. By constituting a head of the family, 

 families are kept together. The younger members of them have a sup- 

 port in the respect felt for the head, and in the influence which his for- 

 tune or rank gives him in the country. The great establishments, parks, 

 and mansions, of the landholders of England, which are among the 

 highest ornaments of the empire, and are of still more importance as 

 centres of public feeling, of hospitality, of protection to the poor, and of 

 manly habits and honourable feelings in the upper ranks, are kept up 

 by this heirship. And, what is of higher value still, the landed interest, 

 in which is the true strength of England j the peerage, and the general 

 aristocratic branch of the public body, without which the constitution 

 must be either a despotism or a democracy, altogether originate in the 

 right of eldership. There may be occasional hardships in the inequality 

 of an elder and a younger brother's fortune ; but the occasional hardship 

 is counterbalanced by a crowd of advantages, the possession of which 

 gives England a body of the manliest and most patriotic landed gentry 

 on earth, and the absence of which is hourly crumbling down the nobi- 

 lity of France, and will, in the course of half a century, turn its whole 

 population into a mob, unless common sense be vindicated, and the State 

 righted by a revolution. 



We have to regret the recent death of a very intelligent and valuable 

 member of society, the Honourable Douglas Kinnaird. Uniting the 

 accomplishments of a scholar with the habits of a man of the world, 

 no individual was more qualified to enjoy or to gratify the extensive 

 circle of friends, distinguished by rank and talent, to whose intercourse 

 he was entitled equally by his birth, his fortune, and his acquirements. 

 Largely acquainted with literature, he was peculiarly attached to the 

 Drama, and a few years since took an active part in the concerns of 

 Drury-lane Theatre, while it was under the management of a com- 

 mittee. He was the intimate friend of Byron, with whom he kept up, 

 perhaps, a longer and more confidential correspondence than any of his 

 Lordship's surviving friends. He was one of the principal partners in 

 the Bank of Ransom and Co., Pall Mall, a firm not less known for its 

 opulence than for the extent and liberality of its dealings. 



