THE LAW AND CUSTOM OF PRIMOGENITURE 389 



is so potent as the prospect of founding a family, it is forgotten 

 that, whatever be the force of this incentive, it is exhausted by 

 one individual to the detriment of his descendants. The first 

 bearer of a title may have rendered important services to the 

 State in the attempt to achieve success ; but no sooner is success 

 achieved than an indefinite series of male successors is placed 

 above the operation of the very motives which inspired and 

 ennobled the exertions of their ancestor. Again, when it is con- 

 tended that primogeniture keeps up the local settlement of fam- 

 ilies, which is assumed to be an unmixed benefit, it is entirely 

 forgotten that while it roots the elder branch for the time being 

 in the soil, it uproots all the others. The eldest male in each 

 generation is selected to occupy the family mansion and estates, 

 but the other members of the family are by the same act divorced 

 from the place of their birth, and scattered abroad to seek their 

 living in other parts of England, in the metropolis, or in the 

 colonies. This dispersion of families, which does not equally 

 prevail in any other class, is, in fact, often represented as one 

 of the blessings incident to primogeniture. It is by no means 

 uncommon to hear eloquent discourses on the happiness of 

 younger sons in having to start in life without a competence, 

 and especially without a competence in land, by persons to whom 

 it never occurs that, if the heritage of poverty be so enviable, it 

 would not be difficult to devise means whereby it might be shared 

 by eldest sons also. 



Equally delusive is the notion that primogeniture operates as a 

 democratic solvent upon the landed gentry, inasmuch as younger 

 sons, who might otherwise help to form an exclusive aristocracy, 

 are thus constantly thrust down into the plebeian class. The 

 fusion of the upper and middle classes in England, so far as it 

 exists at all, is not the effect of primogeniture, but of national 

 temperament. In Germany, where titles descend to younger sons, 

 the utmost insolence of family pride is manifested by the poorest 

 scions of nobility ; in America, where popular opinion almost en- 

 forces the equal division of property, social equality is complete, 

 and younger sons are more industrious than in England. In 

 short, men's habits and bearing are governed rather by early 



