THE DECLINE OF FAMILIES 117 



a limited number of offspring, who in their turn would 

 be likely to prove infertile. 



Gal ton brought evidence to show that the judges, as 

 a whole, were a prolific stock. He then made a study 

 of the judges who received peerages and who last sat 

 on the Bench previous to the close of the reign of 

 George IV. Thirty -one peerages were conferred, 

 nineteen remain unto this present, and twelve are 

 extinct. On analysing the marriages of these Law 

 Lords and their descendants, the following results were 

 obtained : 



(1) Out of thirty-one peerages, in seventeen cases 

 marriage with an heiress or co-heiress was followed by 

 sterility, sometimes in several instances in the same family. 



(2) The direct male line of eight peerages, viz. 

 Colpepper, Harcourt, Northington, Clarendon, Jeffreys, 

 Raymond, Trevor, and Rosslyn, was extinguished after 

 alliances with heiresses, and six others had very narrow 

 escapes. 



Of the four extinct law peerages that are unac- 

 counted for, two peers Somers and Thurlow died 

 unmarried, and two only remain whose failure cannot 

 be accounted for by marriage with heiresses. 



The same class of result is obtained if the statesmen 

 of George III. and the premiers since 1760 down to 

 recent times be made the subject of a similar inquiry. 

 Twenty -two such men were considered. Fourteen 

 have left no male descendants, and in seven of these 

 cases the original peers or their sons married heiresses, 

 viz. Canning, Lord Castlereagh, Lord Grenville, George 

 Grenville, Lord Holland, Lord Stowell, and Walpole 

 (first Earl of Orford). 



