DEMOCRATIC TENDENCY. 215 



the eldest of each succeeding generation ; but in modern civ 

 ilized society, with its constant re-familization, and in En 

 gland especially, where immediate isolated domiciliation of 

 every newly-wedded pair is deemed essential to harmony 

 and happiness, it seems to me more naturally abhorrent and 

 wrong than polygamy or chattel-slavery. 



Doubtless, if you take it up as a matter to be reasoned 

 upon, there is much to be said for it, as there is for slavery, 

 or, among the Turks, for extra wiveing, I suppose ; and first, I 

 fully appreciate that without it, could in no way be sustained 

 such noble buildings and grounds national banner-bearers 

 of dignity schools of art and systematic encouragement of 

 art, and perhaps I should add, systematic, enterprising ag 

 ricultural improvements, such as this of five thousand acres 

 thorough-drained in the best manner, by the conviction of its 

 profit in one man s brain instead of fifty men s, as it must be 

 with us. And finally, it may be that for some few, there is 

 sustained by it a local home, a family nucleus, more perma 

 nently than it can be with us. 



But there is every thing to be said against it, too, that 

 there is against an aristocratical government and society, for 

 the customs of primogeniture and entail are in fact the basis 

 of aristocracy. And between an aristocratical government 

 and society, with all its dignities, and amenities, and refine 

 ments, and a democracy with all its dangers, and annoy 

 ances, and humiliations, I do not believe that any man that 

 has had fair observation of our two countries, and who is not 

 utterly faithless in God and man, a thorough coward, or 

 whose judgment ys not shamefully warped by prejudice, habit, 

 or selfishness, can hesitate a moment. I think that few En- 

 glishmen, few even of the English nobility, and no English 

 statesman, would advise us to return to their system. I think 

 that most of them would be sorry to believe that England 



