THE LAW AND CUSTOM OF PRIMOGENITURE 399 



leases. With that far larger and more important class who are 

 engaged in amassing wealth in the assured hope of leaving it as 

 they please, enforced partible succession would assuredly find as 

 little favour as with the landed aristocracy ; and if there be a lean- 

 ing in this class towards any foreign land law, it is not towards 

 that of France, but towards those of the United States and our 

 own colonies. As for the great mass of Englishmen it may be 

 taken as certain that a law placing the State in loco parentis, and 

 declaring that a father who has made his own fortune shall not 

 be free to deal with it by will or to disinherit a child, however 

 worthless and ungrateful, would be in the highest degree unpop- 

 ular. Upon these grounds, apart from all economical considera- 

 tions, we must dismiss this proposal as an impossible solution of 

 the problem before us impossible because it would satisfy no 

 class or school of thought in England, because it has no founda- 

 tion to support it in the organic framework of English society, 

 and because the very ideas necessary to lay such a foundation 

 are entirely wanting. It would be rash to assert that so direct 

 an interference with personal rights will never be accepted by 

 this country, but we may safely assert that if the only alternative 

 to English primogeniture were indefeasible equal succession, that 

 institution would probably fulfil the prediction of Adam Smith, 

 and survive for generations longer. 



For different but equally cogent reasons we must reject as im- 

 practicable the bold suggestion of Mr. J. S. Mill, who condemns 

 both the English and French rules of succession, that it would 

 be expedient to restrict, " not what any one may bequeath, but 

 what any one should be permitted to acquire by bequest or in- 

 heritance," so that it should not exceed a maximum ''suffi- 

 ciently high to afford the means of a comfortable independence." 

 A very little reflection upon the practical application of this 

 suggestion ought surely to convince us that even if it were pos- 

 sible to make it the basis of a testamentary code, it would be 

 hopeless to carry it out with any approach to real equity. But a 

 detailed criticism of it would here be out of place, because it is 

 not so much designed to check the abuses of primogeniture as 

 to realise a favourite idea of Bentham, by diverting the surplus of 



