382 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



and what consistency is there in a programme which couples 

 the abolition of that right and the adoption of free trade in 

 land with provisions designed to withdraw from the market 

 and consolidate into large municipal domains more and more 

 of the properties which are already supposed to be too few ? 

 This is not the place to discuss the moral or economical 

 aspects of these provisions ; suffice it to point out that, except 

 so far as they are aimed at overgrown private estates, they have 

 nothing in common with the policy of reforming the law and 

 custom of primogeniture. This policy assumes the mainte- 

 nance of private property, and is directed to its more equitable 

 distribution among individuals, without contemplating a return 

 to a communal system of ownership, which, if accepted, would 

 supersede all laws of inheritance and powers of disposition. 

 It is the more necessary to insist on this point, because the 

 cause of primogeniture has been strengthened, and the efforts 

 of its opponents weakened, by the unfounded impression that 

 it cannot be touched without reconstructing our whole law of 

 property, whereas no more is demanded or required than an 

 amendment of one single chapter. 



The most familiar, as well as the strongest, arguments in 

 favour of "primogeniture as it exists in England are derived 

 from considerations which must be called, in the largest sense, 

 political. It was as a powerful bulwark of our landed aristoc- 

 racy that Burke defended it in his "Appeal from the New to 

 the Old Whigs," emphatically declaring that "without question 

 it has a tendency (I think a most happy tendency) to preserve 

 a character of consequence, weight, and prevalent influence over' 

 others, in the whole body of the landed interest." The Real 

 Property Commissioners appointed in 1828 fully endorsed this 

 opinion in their first report, which contains a laudation of 

 the settlements then in use as the best means of " preserving 

 families," and as investing the ostensible lord of the soil "with 

 exactly the dominion and power of disposition over it required for 

 the public good." The English law of intestacy is regarded by 

 the commissioners with equal approbation, since it " appears far 

 better adapted to the constitution and habits of this kingdom 



