Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 May 1884 — The Law of Primogeniture. [ARTICLE]

The Law of Primogeniture.

It is a very easy matter to abolish the law of primogeniture. In fact, more than a dozen years ago, when I was a * member of Mr. Gladstone’s first Government, the question had been discussed, and a bill was under preparation for that precise object, and I think myself that there woqld be no difficulty whatever in these days, opinion having grown and advanced so much, in passing such a measure in the House of Commons. I know nothing of the House of Lords; but I suspect that even in that house a great change has taken place, for only the year before last a bill of considerable value in the direction of which I am speaking—the freedom of land—was brought into Parliament by Lord Cairns, and passed through both houses with almost no difficulty. Well; then, we should have the sons and daughters treated as sons and daughters, not outcasts. Now, a man leaves, or the law gives, td the eldest son this handsome estate and this tine house; and what does it give to the other sons or the daughters ? The law gives, I believe, just nothing. [Cheers.] What would any man say to a father of a family who took his eldest son and gave him an education, sent him to one of your good schools in your neighborhood, or Oxford, Or Cambridge, or elsewhere, and gave him the best education money could give, and left his other sons and daughters without learning even so much as their alphabet? Suppose such a case arose, what would humanity, or what would the moral Bense of the country, say to a disposition like that? Surely, if a man was bound to give to his children such fair education as he can offer them, surely he is equally bound, from the means he posesses, to make—f do not now speak of equal provision—some reasonable and righteous provision for all his children. If he neglects or omits to do this, it becomes the duty of the law, which a Christian professing Parliament has made, to make that provision for them. The law should be consistent with natural justice, and with that course which a just and affectionate parent would have pursued if he had done his duty. There is no reason why the law of settlement and entail should not be so limited as to be practically abolished for ail mischievous purposes. Transfers might be made perfectly simple. Ships and shares and many vastproperties of other kinds can be transferred almost without cost. A friend of mine told me last week that he bought a house in London. He was a member of' the House of Commons. There was no difficulty about the title of deeds or anything, but the transfer of that house cost him £2OO. Why, it might have been done and not cost him more than 200 shillings, or less than that. The amount of business transactions would be enormously increased, and whenever this new measure of reform becomes established as the law of the land, I hope the first great measure that will be undertaken will be to free the land of England from these feudal and ancient claims, and that it will be made free, as we suceeded five-and-thirty years ago in making its produce free.— Speech by John Bright.