THE LAW AND CUSTOM OF PRIMOGENITURE 385 



enough to enjoy a life of constant activity in which " county 

 business " is relieved by field sports and a laborious summer 

 holiday, with independence enough to smile at official favours 

 or displeasure, the model English country gentleman repre- 

 sents a species which has never been developed in any other 

 country, and the absence of which goes far to account for the 

 failure of local self-government in France. Is it, we are asked, 

 a legitimate object of State policy to promote the gradual extinc- 

 tion of this class, and meanwhile to disorganise the whole 

 structure of family life within it, for the sake of any doubtful 

 advantage that may be gained by a wider distribution of pro- 

 prietary rights ? 



Such a landlord as has been described may be taken as the 

 embodiment of the English landed aristocracy, as it should be, 

 from the political and social point of view. Possibly an equally 

 attractive and not less faithful picture might be drawn of a 

 landed democracy, as it should be, illustrated by Swiss and 

 American experience. We have not, however, to deal with 

 ideals, but with realities ; not with exceptions, however numer- 

 ous, but with general tendencies. Let it be granted, once more, 

 that a high standard of political and social responsibility is 

 recognised by a very large number of English country gentle- 

 men the special products, ex hypothesi, of primogeniture ; 

 and, further, that an institution so bound up with much that is 

 admirable should not be lightly disturbed. Still, we are bound 

 to inquire whether these results have not been purchased too 

 dear ; whether the continued maintenance of primogeniture in 

 its integrity involves no countervailing evils, and whether a 

 nearer approximation to ancient usage and foreign codes of land- 

 tenure might not conduce to greater stability and greater unity 

 in our body politic. 



It is certainly impossible to ignore the grave political danger 

 involved in the simple fact that nearly all the soil of Great 

 Britain, the value of which is so incalculable, and progressively 

 advancing, should belong to a section of the population rela- 

 tively small and progressively dwindling. More than twenty 

 years ago Mr. Porter, a very high authority on economical 



