fjgz. 'lA*/ «« entails. 3-33: 



such slender foundations, especially with regard to 

 languages, whose original roots, and their precise 

 meanings, are not sufficientlj understood. J. A, 



ESSAY CONCERNING ENTAILS. 



Sir, To the Editor of the Bee. 



If the right of primogeniture has in all ages and 

 countries, where civilization prevailed, been found in- 

 jurious to society, by withholding stock for frefli in- 

 dustry from the rising generation of men, and due 

 support from the unfortunate and weaker sex, it is 

 evident that xhe Jidei eommifsi, or entail of estates, and 

 property to one male only, in succefsion, must be 

 productive of much more pernicious consequences. 

 Perhaps nothing in the whole tablature of human 

 'existence has so much tended to the corruption of 

 manners, the downfal of nations, and their utter con- 

 quest and extinction, than this very favourite right 

 of primogeniture, above all when fortified by the. 

 authority of the state, against the ordinarj- and wise 

 ordinations of providence in the unfettered course of 

 human events. By means of this preposterous right, 

 suited only to the Jewifli expectations of a Mefsiab, 

 which for near two thousand years have become ridi- 

 culous in the extreme of absurdity, in such a king- 

 dom as Britain, an army of thirty or forty thousand 

 idle men is kept i 1 stop, like drones, the entrances of 

 the political hive, and to abstract the food which hd,s 

 been collected by the industrious community. 



If this injury to tlic state included all the evils tliat. 

 arose from the institution, it might be borne, as the 



