354 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



This conclusion, mainly founded on the legal history of 

 Germany and India, is further confirmed by the great customary 

 of Ireland, known as the Brehon Code, which not only adopts 

 the rule of equal division but extends the right of inheritance 

 to bastard children. It is hardly necessary to state that a like 

 rule, but applying only to legitimate sons, was established by the 

 Anglo-Saxon custom of gavelkind, which still prevails, as of com- 

 mon right, over the greater part of Kent and, in a qualified form, 

 governs the descent of copyhold lands in some other parts 

 of the kingdom. The Athenian law of succession, under the 

 Solonian constitution, was the same in all essential respects with 

 the Anglo-Saxon. All the sons inherited equally, upon the death 

 of their father, and the only privilege reserved to the eldest was 

 that of exercising the first choice in the division. The right of 

 primogeniture, as Blackstone observes, seems to have been main- 

 tained by the Jews alone, among the oldest races whose laws are 

 known to us ; and even the Mosaic law assigned no more than 

 a double portion to the eldest son, while the ""birthright" of 

 pre-Mosaic times, as appears from the case of Reuben, might be 

 set aside by the father. 



. It is equally certain that primogeniture is not derived from 

 Roman law the real fountain head of so many institutions and 

 ideas once supposed to be indigenous. According to Roman law 

 " when the succession was ab intestato, and the group (of co- 

 heirs) consisted of the children of the deceased, they each took 

 an equal share of the property ; nor, though males had at one 

 time some advantages over females, is there the slightest trace 

 of primogeniture." Intestacy, it is true, was rare among the 

 Romans ; but Sir H. Maine has given cogent reasons for believ- 

 ing that Roman wills, so far from being made for the purpose 

 of accumulating property upon one representative of the family, 

 were usually made for the contrary purpose of dividing the in- 

 heritance more equitably among all the children and defeating 

 the rule which excluded sons already emancipated from succession 

 ab intestato. 



We may assume, then, with as much confidence as is possible 

 in inquiries of this nature, that primogeniture is essentially a 



