the dominion of institutions so vicious, the nations of Europe have reaped the benefits of a progressive civilization? It is because the concurrence of various causes is necessary to annihilate the vivifying power of human perfectibility, and to reduce nations to the deplorable stagnation of which those of Asia offer so many examples. How many iniquitous and restrictive institutions have bent and given way before the efforts of the active tendencies of civilization! Contemplate the picture of the middle ages :-pressed down under the yoke of the most odious servitude, the people broke it, and opened a route for themselves, although dragging after them the remnants of the chain which ignorance and the pride of the nobility had forged for them: -roused by the desire of improving their condition, individuals displayed an energy that rose superior to the cruel errors of legislation; and their efforts pushed the whole of society forward in a career of which time more and more softened the asperities. Thus do nations prosper without the rapidity of their advance attesting an organization exclusive of all unjust and pernicious principles. And, in fact, what social system is exempt from them? The evil which is hid from our eyes, our grandchildren, enriched with the lights of experience, will discover under that external envelope whose brilliance now perhaps dazzles and misleads us.

CHAPTER VIII.

ON THE PRIVILEGES OF PROPERTY CONSIDERED IN CONNEXION WITH THE PROSPERITY OF THE FAMILIES WHO ENJOY THEM.

HAVING seen how costly is the maintenance of a territorial aristocracy, let us try to estimate the value of the advantages which the spoliation of the greater number procures for the privileged minority.

It usually happens that bad institutions fall short of their object, and that the fruits of injustice quickly decay; let us therefore see if unjust prerogatives have actually contributed to the well-being and prosperity of noble families.

This question has already been treated by a great writer. "All the aristocracies," says Sismondi, "that have maintained themselves in the world, in Greece, Rome, Florence, Venice, and in the Italian republics, have been ruled by the law of an equal division among all the children of a family. Colossal fortunes have been maintained in them for several centuries, even when they are engaged in trade, such as those of the Strozzi and Medici at Florence, and the Fuggers at Augsburgh; we rarely saw in these families a great number of brothers, and still they did not for all that become sooner extinct.

"All the bodies of nobility, which we have seen reduced to a degrading state of poverty in the monarchies or principalities of Spain, Italy, Germany, and ancient France, lived under the regime of majorats

and entails. We have always seen each father have a great number of sons, of whom all the younger were condemned to idleness and poverty. Their numbers did not prevent noble families from becoming extinct : it was even a common saying as to them, that a father who has eight children has rarely grandchildren; but if it at times happened that the younger sons married, they gave birth to new families who lived in misery, and who thus destroyed the respect sought to be attached to historic names."

Such are the facts; and certainly their uniformity in different countries authorizes us to consider them as the result of what commonly follows from the laws which confer a privilege on titled bodies. It is, besides, easy to account for this result.

We have already seen that, in consecrating the right of primogeniture, and in stamping an inalienable character on the patrimony of a privileged caste, fiduciary laws not only disinherited the younger branches of a family, but tended, by little and little, to accumulate heritages in the hands of a number of individuals more and more restricted, through the effect of accidents in the succession and the failure of lines; of which two causes the result was, that a small number of great houses rose upon the ruins of the entire caste, and that the younger branches, the victims of an unjust exclusion, suffered an indigence the more severe, that they were unable, without derogating from their rank, to escape from it by betaking themselves to some industrial occupation.

Thus is the gradual impoverishment of the titled families in the monarchies of Europe sufficiently explained. But how does it happen that the protection

afforded by majorats has not prevented a number of nobles from losing the advantages of wealth, which seemingly ought to result from them? Here we must take into account the influence of the prejudices and manners peculiar to the unoccupied classes, and above all, the evils inseparable from the transformation of an absolute right of property into a simple life-interest; in fact, even if the pride of rank and family had not made idleness a duty to the nobility, they would have found in the very nature of their privileges, invincible obstacles to the improvement of their domains. The funds which a free proprietor raises, either by the sale of part of his estate, or by mortgaging it, the holder of an entailed property is unable to procure. Does he wish to bring into cultivation a tract of waste land, to drain a marsh, or construct an iron work? Whatever advantages these operations may present to him, the impossibility of offering a guarantee to lenders deprives him of the means of realising the object in view. Much more, if an unforeseen accident happen to deteriorate his property, if he is called upon to restore a mill, a homestead that has fallen down, or repair an embankment, it is, for the most part, only by contracting loans on usurious terms-by entering into engagements ruinous in proportion to the risk of the lender-that he is able to prevent the wasting away of his property.

Of all kinds of property there is none that is less suited to the shackles of inalienability than that of land; it is exposed to so many accidents, and requires so much outlay, that unless there be a fund in reserve to meet them, the owner can never keep up its value. Doubtless, economy is a virtue not interdicted to nobles, but such are the difficulties inherent in their position,

and in the forms under which they possess, that while they have the most indispensable occasion for this virtue, everything conspires to make them despise it. With what appeals to their vanity are they not beset! Complacent followers discourse to them of the splendour of their forefathers, their hospitality, the number of their servants, their feasts, their equipages, their horses and their hounds: not to display, in the same place, an equal magnificence, is held out as a sort of disgrace, until it too often happens that pride, feeding the inclinations growing out of idleness, nourishes them into ruinous passions. Such was the principal cause of the decay of a caste, whose condition invited it to luxury and dissipation, whilst it withheld the means of repairing the consequences to which they led. In ancient France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, misery had reached a great number of families who believed their dignity interested in keeping up a certain external splendour; and there were very few noble fortunes that were not loaded with debts and encumbrances.

But it may here be asked, if privileged families have nothing but their entailed lands? Does not a vulgar proverb, on the contrary, attest how careful they were to repair, by mercenary marriages, the breaches made in their fortunes by time and prodigality? No doubt; but these same nobles, if they received dowries with their wives, had to provide them for their daughters, and to assure provisions for their younger sons; so that, sooner or later, these advances reduced them to the simple possession of the majorat. Institutions which prescribe what is unjust, always fail in producing the effect intended by them. It is to no purpose that fiduciary laws sacrifice natural justice to an object of