A community consists of so many families; a family of so many children.

On the eldest born you bestow, not what is to satisfy him, but what is to make those who are begotten a year or two after him restless, envious, and discontented. "The sense they

are to feel of their inferiority in point of wealth, is to induce them to make extraordinary exertions," not to gratify their own wants remember! but to equal another's fortune!

There are five brothers: to one the father says, "I leave you more than you want because it will make your brothers wretched until they have as much." To the four other brothers the same kind parent observes, "I have left you less than you want, that you may have no peace till you have more than you require." The one is to have every appetite pampered, in order that the others may have every faculty worn out.

Observe! if the younger brother found himself in his proper place-if he felt contented at being poor when his elder brother was rich, the whole value of your system would be gone: where you make four contented persons you make four paupers; it is only where you make four miserable persons that you have a chance

of making four rich persons; and you have contrived all this-who would suppose it !-for the benefit of whom? not of the four poor persons -not of the one over-rich person-you have consulted the well-being of nobody in order to make every body well off.

You cannot tell me that the course you pursue, as best for that indefinite creature called society, is best for any one of the creatures of which society is formed; thus, to a nameless, shapeless, insensible whole, you sacrifice every one of the real feeling, sensitive parts; and this, because a nation should be rich, you esteem making a people happy.

It may be possible, therefore, to substitute for your stimulus to the acquisition of wealth, another stimulus;-not so strong perhaps as that it replaces, but nevertheless better; because, instead of being inimical to the happiness which wealth is to procure, it may in itself contain elements of enjoyment.

Is such the custom of equal succession? A man starts in the world with £400 a year. He quadruples this, and has at the end of his days four children. He says, on his death-bed to each of these children: "I started in the world with £400 a year-I have succeeded in the world; I have made myself a name; I

have made myself a fortune; and I have the happiness to leave each of you just what I myself began with.”

Here there is no envy, no jealousy working

upon the three brothers to become as rich as the elder one-filial admiration, parental affection, a respect for their parent's memory, a desire to do as much for their own childrenthese are the emotions you inspire!

con

Contrast such emotions with those you have been eulogizing! they are surely more sistent with human nature, if they are not so powerful over human ambition. The abolition of the law of primogeniture does not destroy all inducement to industry. It substitutes one inducement for another-an inducement which may be weaker, but which is better; more pious, more noble; not only exciting the energy, but elevating the character, and developing the affections; less productive, it may be, of wealth which is a means of happiness, but more consistent with happiness which wealth is intended to procure.

The opponent to the law of primogeniture might reply thus, and reply with success if the advantages of primogeniture depended upon the argument with which Mr. Macculloch principally defends it: I say "principally

defends it," because what follows is rather an excuse for its defects than a proof of its merits.

ARGUMENT 2.

It has sometimes been (exaggeratedly) contended that the custom of primogeniture is injurious, because it interests the leading families of the country in the support of expensive public establishments in which their younger brothers are commonly placed.

This bias, if it really exist, seems to be very faint. In so far as the administration of public justice is concerned, the younger branches of great families have certainly evinced no very particular desire to encroach upon the many lucrative situations it affords.

The advantages held out by the army, to a man who has been genteelly brought up, are certainly in a pecuniary point of view very far from alluring; and had the bias in question been so strong as represented, it is surprising that some more strenuous efforts should not have been made, by the wealthier classes, to get the pay of the officers augmented.

Much has been said about situations in the colonies; but colonies were not originally acquired to provide situations for any particular class, but to extend the commerce of the country; and at this moment, if we except a few of the higher appointments, the others are as commonly filled by the sons of manufacturers and merchants as by those of landed gentlemen.

And supposing outlets for the latter, in the army, navy and church, were narrowed, it would merely oblige a greater number of them to enter upon the more lucrative pursuits of commerce and manufactures, a change which, whether advantageous or not to others, would be anything but injurious to them.

I confess that if I thought what Mr. Macculloch said in favor of the law of primogeniture not very strong, what he says in apology of it appears to me even more strikingly

weak.

In the first place as to the law: "The younger branches of great families have evinced no particular desire to encroach upon the many lucrative situations which it affords."

The law happens to be a very hardworking profession, and as the fame and fortune to be acquired at it depend more upon the public than upon the government, government, no persons are likely to enter upon the laborious offices of that career who have not a considerable degree of talent and industry to devote to it.

To say, therefore, that the younger branches of the great families do not do this-is to say -what? that the law of primogeniture fails where it ought, according to Mr. Macculloch's previous argument, to be most successful-that it actually fails in inspiring that very industry and energy which he said, a little while ago, it was its peculiar principle and merit to beget!

But is it true that the younger branches of these families do not run after the honors and lucre of the legal profession, where those honors and that lucre can be most easily obtained?-