THE LAW AND CUSTOM OF PRIMOGENITURE 395 



dealings with land, multiplies the difficulties and cost of transfer, 

 and discourages a far-sighted application of capital to agriculture, 

 either by the landlord, who is usually a mere life-owner, or by 

 the tenant, who seldom holds a lease. It must be condemned, 

 morally, because it holds out to almost every eldest son in what 

 must still be regarded as the governing class the assurance of 

 wealth and power, whether he be worthy of it or not, and subject 

 to no condition but that of surviving his father. Lastly, it must 

 be condemned, in the interest of family government, because it 

 fatally weakens the authority of parents over eldest sons, and 

 introduces a degree of inequality into the relations of children 

 brought up together which often mars the cordiality of their 

 intercourse in after life. 



V 



These considerations are amply sufficient to prove the expedi- 

 ency not to say the necessity of reforming the institution of 

 primogeniture, so far as it depends on law. Upon one principle 

 to be embraced in any such reform, public opinion has long pro- 

 nounced itself so decisively that it may be taken as already con- 

 ceded. This principle is the assimilation of real to personal 

 property, in respect of distribution on intestacy. Even the stout- 

 est adherents of primogeniture, as a custom, are beginning to 

 allow that, in default of a will or settlement, the law should 

 incline to equality, especially as intestacies are more likely to 

 occur in poor than in wealthy families. To what extent a change 

 in the law of succession on intestacy would affect the practice of 

 testators and settlors is a matter of mere speculation, on which 

 it would be rash to speak confidently. Many are of opinion that 

 no legal presumption in favour of equal partition would avail in the 

 least to counteract the rooted propensity of Englishmen, once 

 possessed of land, to found and keep up a family, but that, on 

 the contrary, people who are now content to die intestate would 

 forthwith make wills disinheriting all their children but one. 

 This opinion appears to derive some little weight from the history 

 of landed property in Kent, where a great many estates have 

 been disgavelled, and where it is said that wills are not more 



