DESCENT OF LAND. 439 



matters, feci that they are almoners of the bounty, and often 

 proceed to appropriate it to charity, education, or religion, as 

 though nobody else had a right to be consulted. Sometimes it 

 happens that the desire to do good and the passion for immor- 

 tality are blended together, and institutions are established — 

 as the Girard College, for example — which do violence to the 

 religious sentiments of one age, and may shock the civilization 

 and religion of all succeeding times. A majority of men do 

 not act wisely, when they will what they themselves can no 

 longer use ; and their contributions to the cause of humanity 

 would be greater, if they left their estates to the operation of 

 the rule of law, in the belief that a just portion would find its 

 way to the poor, the ignorant and the unfortunate. Other men, 

 it is feared, lead a life of economy — sometimes of parsimony — 

 that at death they may found an institution or contribute to 

 a charity whose record shall make them immortal. For the 

 cause of humanity, let the number of these be few, but it may 

 be considerable. And if among us all there is a man who dis- 

 regards the common obligations of life, who has no neighbor- 

 hood, no social, no domestic, no religious relations or ties, 

 which draw him from the mad pursuit of wealth, and whose 

 summit of ambition is to transmit his poor name to posterity, 

 may he cease to be an object of respect cither liviug or dead. 

 If in centuries, as the result of a noble love of good, or a low 

 passion for immortality, or the union of both, a considerable 

 portion of our soil should become inalienable in the hands of 

 corporations, it would be an occasion of complaint, a source of 

 suffering, a cause of decay. If we view our State as destined 

 to live for centuries — if not, indeed, as we trust, immortal — it 

 is essential to agricultural success, to the purity and perfection 

 of social life, that every obstacle to the alienation of estates, 

 and their free transmission from one hand to another, should 

 be removed. 



